Texas Tech football: Conference realignment uncertainty may be hurting recruiting

For the last month, the Texas Tech football program has been caught up in the drama of conference realignment. And while we all await the latest tidbit or rumor to help us try to figure out how the cards will fall, we may already be seeing some impact of the uncertainty that currently envelops the college football landscape.

There was once a time when the college football recruiting calendar was heavily slanted towards the fall. It was common for many players to commit during their senior seasons as they used their final handful of high school contests to showcase their skills to potential suitors. Of course, in those days, high school and JUCO prospects could not sign the national letters of intent until the first week of February meaning that there was no hurry to commit in the summer and early fall.

But with the implementation of the December signing window back in 2017, most of the top high school prospects in the nation make their commitments in the summer. The reasons for that are many.

First of all, classes begin to fill up faster and most college programs ink 90-100% of their entire recruiting class in December. Therefore, recruits now know that they can no longer slow-play programs and drag out the recruiting process.

Additionally, more and more players want to be on campus in the spring for spring football practices. Doing so improves the likelihood that incoming freshmen will be able to earn playing time in their first year on campus by helping them acclimate to their new programs on the field, in the weight room, and in the film room.

We are also seeing that more and more players are wanting the recruiting process to be wrapped up prior to the start of their senior season so that they have that distraction put aside and they can enjoy their last year of prep football. But whatever the reason, the recruiting timeline has shifted and summer has become the primary time when college football programs build their classes.

That’s why the timing of the news that Oklahoma and Texas will be joining the SEC was particularly harmful for the Red Raiders. In fact, it seems to have put out the fire that Matt Wells had built on the recruiting trail over the first half of the summer.

Prior to June, Wells and his staff had not landed even a single player in the class of 2022. That was due in large part to the 15-month in-person recruiting dead period imposed by the NCAA as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While teams were able to communicate with prospects virtually, campus visits were prohibited and that hurt Texas Tech as much as any school in the Big 12 given how important in-person visits are to the Red Raiders due to the fact that most recruits have never been to Lubbock on their own.

What was interesting was that as soon as the moratorium on in-person recruiting was lifted, Matt Wells hit the ground running. From June 17 to July 16, Wells landed seven commitments from players in the class of 2022, all of whom are high schoolers.

But we are now a month removed from the last commitment that Tech has received and we all know what happened right in the middle of the last four weeks…conference realignment Armageddon.

Unfortunately, the fallout of Texas and OU’s move to the SEC will not be fully understood for months, if not years. We aren’t likely to know what Tech’s fate will be until after this football season, which means that the December signing window will pass before any semblance of clarity begins to emerge.

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Therefore, Wells is having to recruit with one arm tied behind his back. How can he go into a recruit’s living room and try to convince them to pledge their future to his program when the future of Texas Tech football is as convoluted as it has been in the last sixty years?

The good news is that many of the programs Wells is recruiting against (Oklahoma State, Baylor, TCU, K-State, Iowa State) are also in the same precarious position. Those programs also have no idea what conference they will call home four or five years from now and that has to make their recruiting efforts difficult as well.

However, Wells appears to be behind the 8-ball when competing with those programs. After all, his current 2022 class is ranked 9th in the Big 12 (ahead of only Kansas) and 76th nationally.

What’s more, some of the aforementioned Big 12 bunkmates have been able to add to their recruiting classes in the midst of this conference free-for-all. For instance, TCU has added three commitments in the month of August while Kansas State and Baylor have each managed to add a commit in the midst of the Big 12’s fight for life.

But there is a silver lining and that is the fact that Wells has proven more than adept at bringing in talent from the transfer portal. In fact, this offseason alone he added 10 transfers to the roster, all but one of which are expected to be part of Tech’s two-deep rotation in 2021.

Transfers might be less concerned about the future of Texas Tech football because most will exhaust their eligibility prior to any conference reshuffling. Therefore, Wells might have no choice but to lean even more heavily on the portal as his primary means of talent acquisition than he already has.

So keep an eye on the recruiting trail as this situation unfolds with the Big 12 and across the NCAA. Times are changing and Texas Tech is at ground zero. How Wells manages to navigate these strange days will be fascinating to monitor as his success on the recruiting trail and in the portal will have a profound impact on the future of this program, even though we don’t know where this program will find itself in said future.