As sports slow down, recruiting heats up

The current sports slowdown ended college football spring practices and that has left college coaches with one thing to focus on. Recruiting. For high profile high school athletes that means non-stop calls. Over in Athens, UGA coach Kirby Smart admits that right now is a bit of a feeding frenzy.

"I know these kids are getting bombarded because recruiting is a competitive market. And as you can imagine they're getting a lot of calls because a lot of college coaches don't have anything going on and they're calling on these kids a lot," says Smart.

While most sports journalists have seen a slowdown during the COVID-19 crisis, FOX 5 Recruiting expert Rusty Mansell has plenty to cover for his website 247 Sports.

"I talked to four or five recruits, specifically Barrett Carter out of North Gwinnett, the four-star linebacker. Smael Mondon another top 100 player out of Paulding County. Those kids told me they're getting flat out killed," says Mansell.

In a response to the increased activity, some recruits are trying to cut down on the clutter.

"You saw a prime example today Micah Morris, a top 100 player from Camden County, committable offers anywhere in the country. He said look I'm going to narrow this thing down to five schools and tell those schools that's who I am interested in and that way I can take the other 20 and basically just stop taking calls," says Mansell.

The increase in calls is also because athletes aren't able to make on campus recruiting visits during this time. Because of the February dead period, followed by 2 spring break weekends, Kirby Smart feels like his team is behind the eight ball when it comes to showing off his program.

"We lost all that time so for us it has really been FaceTime communications and talking to family members," says Smart.

Other programs are taking a different path. Auburn has been posting virtual tours of their facilities for recruits.

"Showing the dorms they're going to live in. The weight room, those types of things. You're going to see more colleges do that as we go on and colleges adapt. Look, I've never dealt with this, the prospects have never dealt with this, college football coaches and staffs have never dealt with this, nobody planned for anything like this. So we're all learning on the go and I'm telling you the teams that adapt and get the recruits attention are the ones that are going to pay off in December when we have this signing day," says Mansell.