This weekend is the NFL draft, obviously. If you are a person who enjoys sports it could have hardly escaped your attention that the draft is this weekend. I have been watching, like everyone else, but it has been in the back ground. In the foreground has been a host of things. Just tonight I spent an hour on sprocle while "watching" the draft. It's not my fault, whoever the Browns take will suck and the UC guys won't get play until tomorrow if at all. One of the things that has occupied the forefront of my brain tonight while watching the draft is the current Football Recruiting class.
There are two main things that are interesting about the current class as constructed. 1) It is not even May yet and this class is already 6 deep. In comparison with some programs that isn't much, for example Texas A&M has 19 commits already. In the context of the Big East that is a lot of commits. Among current Big East schools UC's 6 is tops, though TCU, which is nominally a Big East school for the purposes of this recruiting class, has 10 commits. The newest of which is is an Under Armour All American. So that's pretty grand.
Back to topic, there are 6 Bearcat commits to date, That is a much quicker pace than is normal here at UC. Just for a frame of reference here are the dates of the first commits for every class going back to the class of 2007.
| Class | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 |
| First Commit | 7/26/07 | 4/26/07 | 2/7/08 | 2/14/09 | 3/29/10 | 4/11/11 |
The interesting thing is that the April 11th commitment from Deionte Buckley is the latest 1st commit in a class since 2008. But in the 19 days since Buckley committed five more players have jumped on board with UC. The only class to start faster was the 2010 class which had 6 commits, 7 if you count Alex Smith who flipped to Kentucky late in the process.
2) A UC staff has not hit the defensive side of the ball this hard in a long time. 5 of the 6 current commits will be defenders, primarily along the line and in the secondary. The biggest difference between the current roster and the rosters of the 2008 and 09 or even the 07 team is that there is a stunning lack of depth in general, and on defense in particular. Butch Jones, unlike Brian Kelly, recognizes this as a problem and is taking the proper steps to rectify the situation through recruiting.
3) The only other thing that I find interesting to this point is the sheer volume of QB's that this staff is recruiting. Here is the complete list to date.
- Zeke Pike (Auburn)
- Wes Lunt
- Tyler Cameron
- Bennie Coney
- Greg Windham
- Patrick Towles (Kentucky)
- Andre Scott
- Tyler O'Connor
- Gunner Kiel
- Aloyis Gray
- Chad Kelly
- Shane Dillon
- Maty Mauk
If you are keeping track at home that is 13 offers to QB's in the 2012 class. Two of them are off the board and won't be coming back onto it unless they transfer from which ever shcool the sign with. That leaves 11 offers for at most 2 spots, but most likely 1. A couple of these guys aren't exactly pure QB's. Andre Scott and Aloyis Gray are nominally QB's, but the future for both of them lies elsewhere. It is still wide open for a QB. I have no idea who the guy might be. But I am hearing that quite a few guys are getting closer to committing to UC. The trickle of players in from Warren Central may very well become a flood.
I should note that I don't have sources, I know some people who are well informed, but I am not one of those people myself. I don't track down coaches and players or anything like that. Most of what I find out I get from monitoring twitter, mainly those who do track down coaches and players, and from newspapers in areas that I know this staff recruits in. Let me know if you like this sort of stuff or not. I am big on recruiting, if for no other reason than it gives me something to do in the looooong off season. If you don't share the same vigor for the subject let me know.