College-specific websites add to the daily recruiting grind for prospects, coaches

After Armwood High School won the Class 6A state title game, running back Matt Jones, a Florida commit, was greeted by a swarm of reporters.

Some did ask about his 80-yard touchdown catch, which proved to be the game winner in the Hawks’ 40-31 victory over Miami Central.

But most of the horde was from a myriad of websites focused on the Gators’ recruiting and thus more interested in Jones’s thoughts on a running back from Georgia decommitting from Florida’s class and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis’ bolt to Kansas.

It was a near replica of the scene from the previous week. Jones, limited by an ankle injury, rushed for 13 yards on 10 carries against Gainesville, yet reporters still flocked to him to ask a litany of Florida-centric questions.

Meanwhile sophomore defensive back Kyle Gibson, whose forced fumble gave the Hawks the last chance they needed to win, was virtually ignored.

As a high-profile recruit, Jones faces daily calls and text messages from “recruitniks,” many of whom work for websites that are behind a paywall. For Florida alone, there are no fewer than six sites — GatorCountry, Rivals’ InsideTheGators, Scout’s FightinGators, 247Sports’s GatorBait, ESPN’s GatorNation and SwampNews — that focus exclusively on recruiting news.

“It wears the kids down,” Armwood defensive coordinator Matt Thompson said.

Coaches, too.

“I don’t answer the phone for any of those guys,” said Armwood head coach Sean Callahan, noting that he gets calls fairly often. “They tell me who they are, and I just say, ‘I don’t have time, I’ve got to go to class’ or something like that. It gets worse and worse each year.”

Jones hasn’t wavered on his Florida commitment since he announced it Feb. 16, nearly a year before he could officially sign. Another top area recruit, Lakewood defensive end Dante Fowler Jr., committed to Florida State but has gone to Gainesville several times since making his choice. He, along with fellow five-star recruit Nelson Agholor from Berkeley Prep, faces even more scrutiny, if that’s possible.

“It’s a lot, like, geez,” Fowler said after a practice leading up to the Under Armour All-American game of his daily calls and texts from recruitniks. “One day it was like 20, but it’s normally around five, seven a day.”

Fowler added that he does enjoy the attention, but he doesn’t always respond to incoming inquiries.

“It all depends on how I feel,” he said. “If I’m just relaxing, I’ll maybe answer a couple, but if I’m, like, playing a video game, no, then they have to wait. You can’t interrupt that stuff.”

While the recruiting process is still game-like to Fowler, it’s a high-stakes business for the large corporations that sponsor websites, combines and camps. And as a five-star, 6-foot-3, 236-pound prospect, Fowler sells better than the average high school athlete.

“It’s not sexy to have a 5-foot-11, 190-pound kid being lauded and applauded as a prospect,” said Larry Blustein, a veteran recruiting analyst for the Miami Herald. “He’s not sellable in the eyes of the corporate world. And that’s what it is, it’s all about the dollar.

“Look at all the apparel companies that are behind it, they know that during the course of a lifetime that a (Miramar cornerback) Tracy Howard or a (Jefferson defensive lineman) Tyriq McCord will end up buying thousands and thousands of pairs of Nike shoes, which amounts to an endorsement for them.”

One benefit to the growth of the recruiting industry is the trickle-down effect big-name prospects bring to their teammates, said Dallas Jackson, senior analyst for Rivals. If people come to Armwood to see Jones run, they’ll also see the linemen that block for him (four of the Hawks’ starting five offensive linemen have committed to schools).

“Your team has to embrace it,” said Tampa Catholic coach Bob Henriquez, who has coached several four- and five-star prospects in his 26-year career. “Because of all the recruiters being around, they saw other kids. The team has to see it that way, that it will help them and help the school. If not, then it really pulls away from the team concept.”

As for when this current era of Internet recruitniks started to emerge, two local coaches — Plant’s Robert Weiner and Jefferson’s Jeremy Earle — point to the same event: the May 18, 2006, Plant vs. Jefferson spring jamboree, held at Robinson.

The Dragons’ senior quarterback, Stephen Garcia, had drawn interest from BCS schools since his sophomore year, and Robert Marve had led Plant to a huge upset over Jefferson the previous season and was on the verge of an undefeated senior year. There were well over 100 college coaches for the game that spring as well as an abundance of South Carolina fans’ websites, Weiner said.

Ultimately, though, Earle said the early exposure may have done more harm than good to Garcia, who was dismissed from the Gamecocks midway through the past season after a tumultuous five-year tenure.  

“He went to South Carolina, and it was rock-star status, almost to a fault,” he said. “I would definitely say that if he’s just another quarterback coming in, he doesn’t start his career in trouble at South Carolina. But he had the personality, he had the buzz, he was in books, and everybody loved him.”  

Signing day 2012
Have offers, visits or commitments we should know about? Want to send us photos from your signing day ceremony Wednesday? Shoot us an email at hometeam@tampabay.com

Laura Keeley can be reached at lkeeley@tampabay.com