Why Texas Tech football hasn’t seen recruiting bump under Matt Wells

The December early signing period has changed the game

In 2017 the NCAA instituted a new early signing period that allowed recruits to officially sign with schools in December rather than waiting until the traditional signing day in February.  And since then the entire recruiting landscape of college football has changed dramatically.

According to Forbes, approximately 2,000 of the 2,800 players in the class of 2019 that signed letters of intent did so in December.  And out of the top 300 players in the ESPN rankings, all but 79 inked with their schools of choice in the early window.

That makes life tremendously difficult for coaches like Matt Wells, who are hired just weeks prior to the most important period on the recruiting calendar.  And it not only impacts a new staff’s first class, which is often referred to as a “transition class” but it also is now staring to have a carry-over impact for the second class a new coach tries to put together.

Now that recruits are able to sign two months earlier than they were prior to 2017, the entire time frame for the recruiting process has been sped up.  Whereas the fall months were once the prime window when high school seniors would make their final college choices, the spring and summer months are now when most of the top players are committing.

These players want to make certain they have a spot at their preferred schools before all of the available scholarships are spoken for and they are jumping aboard more quickly than ever knowing that many schools will sign their entire class in December.  We are seeing more and more that recruits are taking their entire allotment of official visits in the spring and early summer rather than in the fall because of the new recruiting calendar.

This impacts a coach like Wells significantly.  Under the old system, he would have been able to put together the bulk of his class in the fall after he had been on campus for at least nine months.  This would have been beneficial because recruits could have seen his team play and gotten a feel for what Texas Tech will look like as a program moving forward.

But now, he has to try to sell the class of 2020 on what his vision is without the players having tangible results to evaluate.  That is a difficult sell at a school such as Texas Tech, especially when trying to recruit against Big 12 contenders and other programs from around the nation that are raiding the Texas high school talent pool.

When Wells took over, we saw a tremendous number of 2020 recruits reporting offers from Tech even before the 2019 class was officially put to bed in February.  That’s because Wells and his staff knew that they had no time to wait when trying to put together their first true class.

Keep in mind that Tech is set to host at least 15 recruits next weekend and there will almost certainly been some commitments after that.  But because this staff is still new to the university and to the recruits they are trying to woo, we are seeing the impact of the new recruiting calendar continue to impact Wells’ efforts to improve the talent base on the roster.