How COVID-19 has changed college football and basketball recruiting landscapes

To say this has been an unusual year for college coaches would be an understatement. From canceling the NCAA basketball tournament in March to navigating a now-seven-month-long dead period in recruiting, it has been a constant assess-and-adjust strategy because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coaches in football and basketball have adapted to the limitations on the recruiting trail. The dead period means they haven't been able to evaluate prospects in person nor host recruits on official or unofficial visits, but they have found ways to continue the recruiting process and land commitments along the way.

With basketball's signing day on Wednesday and football's a month away, we will start to see how the dead period and obstacles brought on by the pandemic might affect college programs and players in the Class of 2021 and beyond.

How will coaches evaluate recruits they haven't seen in person in over a year? What will recruiting classes and roster sizes look like with potential issues with scholarship allotment? Are there any ramifications on the recruiting trail the longer the restrictions are in place?

We answer those questions and more to show what the immediate future in recruiting could look like for coaches across the country.

What are schools doing differently during the recruiting dead period?

Tom VanHaaren: The dead period for football has affected most of this recruiting cycle, eliminating unofficial visits in the spring and summer, in-person evaluations, college camps and official visits in the spring and fall.

Coaches have had to get creative with how they recruit and how they build relationships without being able to do it in person. Zoom and video calls have become very popular for obvious reasons. A Big Ten assistant coach said video calls are a sufficient substitute for an in-person visit since they give him a more personal opportunity to build a relationship through a visual aid, rather than solely through phone calls and text messages.

"It goes back to relationships and trust and continuing to build. I do feel for these recruits and their families, that they haven't had the experience of coming to visit and see it," Ohio State football coach Ryan Day said in August. "But, again, it's a unique time and everyone's adjusting the best they can, and I'm proud of what we've done. We just need to keep going from there."

"I think the frustrating thing for the recruits is that they haven't been able to visit here in a long, long time. It's been dead here for months and it's almost going to be a calendar year." Ohio State football coach Ryan Day in August

Some schools set up virtual tours of the facilities to simulate a campus experience. Kansas, for example, set an entire itinerary that included a look at campus dining, player development, a facilities tour, nutrition information, academic information, meeting the staff and football coach Les Miles and a look at the town of Lawrence, Kansas, on its virtual tour.

Texas A&M coaches set up an online Madden tournament with the school's recruits. The coaches played against the prospects in a bracket-style format to crown a champion. Not only did it garner attention on social media, but it also allowed the coaches to talk to the recruits while playing the game and use a fun way to build a relationship outside of football.

Players themselves have found unique ways to go about their recruiting process. While the prospects are not allowed to take unofficial or official visits, which are facilitated by the coaching staffs at each program, there are no rules against the individual recruits coming to campus and taking their own visits by themselves.

The prospects are not allowed to interact with the coaches if they do visit campus, but recruits have taken the opportunity to get to know the campus better and spend some time getting to know other commitments in their class. Oklahoma and Ohio State have both had recruits set up these prospect-led visits during which a group of recruits and their families take a tour of campus on their own and build bonds with each other.

Jeff Borzello: Recruiting has looked completely different since the pandemic shut everything down back in March. In a normal year, we would have had two live periods in April when basketball coaches could go watch prospects, two more live periods in June, and then the all-important month of July, when coaches and players would travel around the country for the better part of three weeks.

Obviously, none of that has happened. It has affected the younger classes (as we'll get to later), but it has especially impacted the 2021 class. College coaches have seen most of their targets in person before, but the focus for many programs was on the 2020 class. Instead, coaches have been watching events on livestream or rewatching film from last high school season.

"You still have to watch film on recruits, do Zoom calls with recruits. That part is weird," one high-major coach said. "We're used to going out and watching a kid, getting a feel of what a kid is about. How he moves, how he interacts with teammates, you can't tell that on these videos. You don't have a complete picture. A lot of people are making decisions on that. A lot of people are taking kids they don't know. It's like online dating. I don't know how you get a real read just on video."

Moreover, prospects haven't been able to take visits. The fall is generally filled with huge official visits every weekend, with programs building their entire recruiting calendars around Midnight Madness festivities or a big college football game. A few kids have taken unofficial visits on their own to certain campuses, but for the most part, there have been no campus visits since the spring. There have also been no in-home visits during which coaches get to make their final pitches to a prospect and their parents, nor have there been high school visits when coaches can get even more of a feel for a prospect.

What does that mean? Essentially, there will be plenty of players committing who either haven't stepped foot on the campus of the school to which they're committing or been seen in person by the coach to whom they're committing.

"I think it's turned into this opportunity where guys are making more educated, informed decisions," one coach said. "There's less voices around. It really comes down to what's best for the kid. Through the years, a lot of kids made decisions because someone else had an opinion. Now you're making this decision because of really just the facts."

"I think there's no smoke. There's no taking a kid to a football game to see 80,000 people going nuts," another coach said. "It's, 'Here's what we can offer, here are our facilities.' Kids aren't getting wowed for the wrong reasons. It's becoming more clear, and kids aren't making emotional decisions based off, 'I went there and went out until 3 a.m.' Kids are making more educated decisions instead of basing it off a crazy weekend."

What is the status of the early signing period?

VanHaaren: As of now, college football's early signing period is still on. It's important to note that the body governing the early signing period and national letter of intent doesn't meet until November, when its year ends.

However, there has been nothing to indicate the early signing period would be moved, changed or eliminated. At this point, quite a few coaches have said it would be a disservice to change it so late in the process.

Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly said over the summer that some prospects would still like the opportunity to sign in December and complete their recruitments.

There are currently only 41 ESPN 300 recruits who are uncommitted, and though that doesn't mean every committed prospect will sign during the early signing period, it indicates the majority of these recruits were comfortable enough to make a commitment. We have seen over 70% of FBS prospects sign early in the past few classes, the number increasing each year, and there is no reason to expect a vastly different number to sign next month.

"I think the frustrating thing for the recruits is that they haven't been able to visit here in a long, long time," Day said. "It's been dead here for months and it's almost going to be a calendar year. So that's a challenge, but I don't think you can change the recruiting calendar, I don't think you can change the signing day. I think it has to be what it is so these guys can come in midyear."

The dead period currently lasts through December, and coaches are not confident visits will be allowed in January before the Feb. 3 signing date, meaning the prospect of waiting until February wouldn't do much for the recruit if he can't take visits and coaches can't do in-home visits.

Unless something drastic changes in the landscape, it seems as though the early signing period will go on as usual.

Borzello: Basketball's early signing period is scheduled to start on Wednesday, so I hope it's still proceeding as expected. And despite the lack of visits, lack of in-home visits and lack of in-person evaluations, there has been no slowdown in commitments.

By our count, 79 of the ESPN 100 in the 2020 class were committed at this time a year ago. Heading into this past weekend, exactly 78 of the ESPN 100 in the 2021 class are committed, so nothing has really changed in terms of commitments.

There was a theory back in the spring that the pandemic might slow down recruitments, with prospects hoping things would clear up during the winter and spring of 2021 and players would be allowed to take visits again. But there's no end in sight to the dead period, and players are making commitments along the usual timeline. In fact, the timeline was even faster in the 2021 class, as more than half the ESPN 100 was committed by mid-August, which is more we've seen in the past.

Players who had taken early visits last winter or fall were at an advantage, while the lack of events and tournaments every weekend in the spring and summer allowed players more time to focus on recruitments and building relationships.

"I was fortunate enough to take three official visits this year before corona happened, so I was able to meet with those coaches, see the different campuses and watch practices/games," Villanova commit Trey Patterson told ESPN over the summer. "But because of corona, it gave my parents and I the opportunity to sit down and build relationships with the different schools through Zoom calls. During that time, it was apparent as to which schools made you a priority, by how much they would be in contact with you. It sped up the timeline for my decision, because normally during the spring, I would be traveling for AAU so the recruiting process wouldn't have been as much a priority as it was.

"It would've been nice to go on more visits, but we weren't able to do so, and there came a point in time where, in my heart, I knew where I wanted to go."

What might scholarship allotments and roster sizes look like for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons?

VanHaaren: This is one of the more confusing questions still out there for coaches on how they manage the rosters going forward. The NCAA has said student-athletes are eligible for an extra year of eligibility if they want it, essentially saying this season doesn't count toward eligibility.

Not every football player will take advantage of this -- if there is an athlete who is projected as a high draft pick, if they just want to move on or transfer or another reason -- but some will, which will affect the total scholarship numbers available in the future.

Coaches recruit two, three and four years out, trying to manage their rosters and keep themselves at the 85-scholarship limit for football with no holes at every position in future seasons. They are allowed to sign 25 recruits each year, but with this new eligibility rule, those numbers could be impacted going forward.

"if you go over the 85, non-Power 5s can't afford it," Day said in August.

The NCAA has said any seniors who normally would have been off the roster after the 2020 season and decide to stay for the 2021 season will not count toward the 85-scholarship limit. That will help with the numbers in this class to keep teams at or under that limit, but it also means programs will have to pay for the extra scholarships.

For example, if a team sees 10 seniors, who normally would have left after this season, decide to stay, the team can still sign the number of recruits it would have signed under a normal year, but it would then have 10 extra scholarships that need to be paid for. Those are costly, especially at a time when many programs are facing budget deficits and losses and are cutting other sports programs.

"How are we going to manage the roster, because we would be theoretically at 95?" Kelly said. "So is that up to each institution to decide whether they're going to fund those 10 scholarships? Are you able to carry 95?"

Say a third-year student-athlete decides to take an extra year and a coach was expecting him to come off the roster in two years, but now won't for three. That coach might have to choose between a high school recruit and honoring that player's scholarship.

How many scholarships are allocated and if that affects the high school recruits or the seniors who want to come back are decisions the coaches are going to have to make. Plus, how that affects recruits in the next classes going forward remains to be seen.

The number of recruits a program can take in each class is predicated on staying under the 85-scholarship limit. If a coach was expecting to be able to take 20 recruits in the 2022 class but now has 10 players who want to stay and use their extra year of eligibility, that eats into the total number of recruits a coach can take.

That dynamic is going to be difficult for coaches to manage and figure out going forward if they run into that scenario.

Borzello: This is where things get interesting. There are two pieces of NCAA legislation that will greatly affect the next 18 months of the college basketball landscape. First, the one-time transfer waiver is expected to pass and go into effect for the spring. Second, the NCAA recently granted an additional year of eligibility for all winter student-athletes. The confluence of those two pieces of legislation, on top of a spring in which recruiting could still be impacted by the coronavirus, will make the next couple seasons awfully interesting from a roster-building perspective.

Basketball teams will be able to go over the scholarship limit for 2021-22 but have to get back down to 13 scholarships for the 2022-23 season, so the decisions on which players to take or keep might be more prevalent in the spring of 2022 rather than 2021, but it's certainly a talking point around the country.

"You're going to have to have difficult conversations one way or another," one coach said. "Either the guy coming back, you tell him you've got a high school kid coming in and you lay out, these are the minutes available. Or you gotta call the kid that signed and say, we showed you this depth chart when you committed, but this person wants to come back for another year. Coaches are going to have to have very difficult decisions."

That said, schools haven't made huge adjustments to their recruiting plans just yet. For one thing, not every college senior is going to take advantage of an extra year, especially if they want to head to the NBA or overseas. For another, the transfer waiver means there will be an increase in players leaving, and programs still need contingency plans if a player or two unexpectedly departs.

"When the rule came out there were a lot of questions," a high-major coach said. "We made a commitment to the kid that committed and we made a commitment to the players in our program, but there's an unknown. Nobody knows how this season is gonna turn out. It gives the kid the flexibility. We have to get to that part of the story. We also have to evaluate what's best for that individual. Coming back to college might not be best for some student-athletes. It gives flexibility for the student-athletes, which is what this is all about. It gives them more power, in a time of a lot of unknowns. And that's fine."

What will recruiting the classes of 2022 and 2023 look like?

VanHaaren: The 2022 and 2023 classes are likely where we see more of an impact from the extended dead period and the pandemic restrictions, because coaches wouldn't have been able to go out and evaluate in person. They won't be able to go out to high schools and see some of the younger prospects in practice, and they won't able to bring younger recruits onto their campuses in a college camp setting to put them through drills.

As it stands, there are 47 ESPN Junior 300 prospects who have made their commitment. We will likely see if the process slows down more than usual for the 2022 recruits based on the number of commitments we see from January to April. If there is a smaller number of commitments in that time span, it will indicate a shift, because that's usually when the top recruits start to commit at a higher rate.

Should the dead period not be extended, there is a contact period that runs Jan. 15-30. Since coaches have generally shown they can get far ahead in recruiting, and because of the amount of recruits who do sign in the early period, that time could be used like an evaluation period for the next class.

If the dead period isn't lifted in January, it would potentially slow down the process for younger recruits. Offers are still going out based on game film and videos from independent camps that were put on throughout the summer. Some prospects put together their own combine-like videos as well.

Junior offensive lineman Kiyaunta Goodwin, for example, put together a video with his trainer that showed the length of his hands, his arms, his current height and weight and then showed him running through drills coaches would typically put him through at their camps.

The real impact on these future classes remains to be determined because the dead period doesn't have a finite end date. It's unclear how long coaches and recruits will be restricted from being in person. If it lasts through next summer and into the fall, it could start to make a dramatic difference in the evaluation process.

If that happens, do we see more misses in recruiting evaluations? More transfers because of it? More under-the-radar prospects go without scholarships? All of it is up in the air, and we won't know the answer until we find out when the recruiting calendar can return to normal.

Borzello: Right now, nobody really knows. While sophomores and juniors are rarely the focus of a program's recruiting and basketball prospects tend to commit later in the process than football prospects, they're still being recruited for most of their high school careers. They go on unofficial visits early in the process and they're watched by coaches during high school workouts and grassroots tournaments. Plus, coaches will also see them when they go to watch a priority target in the senior class.

With all of that off the table since March, pretty much everyone is moving a bit slowly when it comes to the younger classes.

"Honestly, we're behind," one coach said. "We finally got our '20s done late, and we were gonna watch all these guys in the summer, 2021 and 2022. But everyone's behind on '22. It's word of mouth. Who do you trust, who do you believe? I think it's gonna be a complete mess."

We have a long way to go with those classes, though. At most recent check, only four of the current ESPN 60 are committed.