Friday, May 30, 2008
Cavanaugh undergoes Poseidon adventure
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.
Find his College Notebook from The Roanoke Times in Thursday's college sports section
Miss the Insider column? Check out the Insiders blog
See Doug and Randy talk sports every week with the Sports edition of the TimesCast
Recent columns
Proponents of an early signing period for football don’t have a prayer of getting that kind of legislation passed. Or do they?
Virginia Tech recruiting coordinator Jim Cavanaugh thinks there is a decent possibility.
Cavanaugh, featured guest Friday at the weekly SEC Roundtable, has been in the business long enough to remember when there was an early signing period for football.
When he was still relatively new to the profession, Cavanaugh said, players could sign a conference letter of intent in December.
“Of course, they could come back one week and sign another letter-of-intent with a team from another conference,” he said. “They could sign as many letters-of-intent as there were conferences.”
For close to 25 years, there has been one national signing day, on the first Wednesday of February, although many schools have received double-digit commitments by the previous summer.
Cavanaugh, between bites of a Poseidon at Tattler’s Pizza and Subs west of Salem, said he knows there is some sentiment for an early signing day in August but thinks that Dec. 1 is a more likely date.
“If you do it in August, then that becomes even more of a problem if a coach loses his job by the end of the season,” Cavanaugh said.
Just this week, the Southeastern Conference football coaches agreed to make a proposal for a national signing day on the Monday before Dec. 1, but would you expect the coaches not to be in favor of such a plan?
Opposition to a late November or December signing date for football comes from people who claim that it would only speed up a process that already has gotten somewhat insane, requiring college assistants to evaluate players as sophomores or freshmen.
IF ONE OF VIRGINIA’S purposes was to mend fences by offering scholarships to Perry Jones from Oscar Smith and LoVante' Battle from Phoebus, it was mission accomplished.
Phoebus coach Bill Dee, who has not had a player sign with Virginia since Phillip Brown in 2003, said that UVa head coach Al Groh visited Phoebus this spring and seemed intent on strengthening Virginia relations in the 757 area code.
“Some kids are a good fit for Virginia Tech; some kids are a good fit for Virginia,” Dee said. “The Battle kid is an excellent student who already had been on campus [in Charlottesville]. I think he has one ‘C’ on his transcript.
“If you watch this kid on tape, he can really fly. I think coach Groh was ahead of the curve on this one. I think it was a smart move on their part. There was a lot of interest in LoVante'. I think he would have ended up with a bunch of offers.”
Dee is also familiar with Jones, who had 25 tackles for loss as a junior, but could never remain at linebacker and play at the Division I-A level. The Cavaliers are hoping that he can play safety.
“He’s [Jones] a helluva player,” Dee said. “You know, they’ve got another linebacker at Oscar Smith, [Jerod] Askew, who has a ton more offers. I know I’m speaking from a high-school coach’s viewpoint, but do a couple of inches make that much difference?”
WHEN APPRISED OF Dee’s comparison of Askew and Jones, Oscar Smith coach Richard Morgan said Friday, “They’re really the same player. Perry is a little faster and Jerrod, at 6 feet and 230 pounds, is a little bigger. That right there is the difference between five or six offers and 20 offers.”
Morgan said that Askew has narrowed his list to Alabama, Michigan, Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia Tech. A third Oscar Smith prospect, wide receiver Tim Smith, has Virginia on a list of 12-15 Division I-A schools from which he has received offers.
“I’m going up there on the 14th of June and we’ll sit down with the coaches to talk about their situation at quarterback and what they have planned for the passing game,” Morgan said. “As you can tell from schools like Louisville, South Carolina and West Virginia, he wants to go somewhere where they emphasize the passing.
“Tim and Perry are very good friends, so that certainly won’t hurt Virginia. To be honest with you, we’ve had 10 Division I-A signees in the past four years and none of them have gone to Virginia. I’m not sure when Oscar Smith has had a kid go to UVa.
“This gives them an inroad into our school and the 757 area code that maybe they haven’t had before. And they got it with the right kid. Perry Jones could have gotten 150 offers and he still would have gone to Virginia.”
CAVANAUGH, A BIG hit Friday with a crowd that included Ole Miss grad and newly named SEC Roundtable Medical Director Bill Ward, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Tech institute a junior day for football recruits during the basketball season.
Past reluctance has had little to do with the relative strength of Tech’s men’s basketball or the atmosphere at Cassell Coliseum. It has more to do with the number of hours that Tech targets can realistically be expected to spend on the road.
If a prospect is going to make a seven-hour round trip from Richmond or an 11-hour trip from Tidewater, Tech would much rather it coincided with the spring game in April or one of the one-day junior camps the Hokies stage throughout the summer. Also, a February trip to Blacksburg can be dicey weather-wise.
CAVANAUGH AGREED with the premise that the number of Division I-A signees out of Virginia could top 50 for the first time this year.
The reason?
“Population,” Cavanaugh said.
He didn’t provide any numbers and I didn’t ask for any, although I suspect that Virginia’s status as the 12th most populous state in the country remains unchanged.
What I have noticed is the new high schools springing up to the west of Washington, D.C., in Loudoun County, and to the south in the counties surrounding Fredericksburg. Given the demographics, it makes sense – as Cavanaugh contends – that the academic profile of college prospects has improved, too.
