South Carolina lost a critical tool in the recruiting process. What fills in the gap
June will be quiet at South Carolina’s football facility.
Usually, the parking lot is full of buses and cars, with kids, parents and the like coming in and out of the program’s indoor facility. Gamecocks players are coaching. The coaches are working with high school players, and staffers are herding players around the building, running them though drills, taking down measurements and occasionally letting players compete head-to-head.
Much of the data gathered from the interactions inform recruiting decisions the staff makes. They regularly spot players in younger classes at those events, or see a player deliver the final proof to earn an offer.
But those camps were canceled with the coronavirus pandemic and won’t be happening. And that takes away a tool USC coach Will Muschamp calls “crucial.”
“So many guys, you watch on tape, you might be worried about of level of competition,” Muschamp said on an interview with a Tennessee radio station. “You don’t know truly how fast a player may be. And you verify all those things. You don’t know about their work ethic. You don’t know about their level of intelligence, their football intelligence. All of those things that you find out in a camp setting, when you’re able to coach a young man, when you’re able to put him through some adversity.”
The camps regularly bring 100 to more than 300 young players to campus. Most are not prospects, but high school players of various talent levels.
Muschamp said at times he’ll see a recruit on film and dub the player “a camp guy,” meaning someone with the baseline talent to earn an offer when he proves it in person.
All of this looms a little larger because the Gamecocks don’t have much of their 2021 class assembled just yet. Their total of six commits puts them 11th among conference schools.
That number often picks up in early summer, when players get bigger offers and pull the trigger, or finally end their process ahead of senior seasons.
In lieu of camp, Muschamp said extra focus on film becomes key. He has a recruiting operation, led by Drew Hughes, that does much of the leg work in sifting through film and getting the most crucial things to coaches, and their work looms larger with how things stand.
“I keep hearing coaches say, ‘Well we need to work him out in camp, coach,’ ” Muschamp said. “Guys, there are not going to be any camps. So let’s understand that part and we’ve got to do a better job of diving in and doing our due diligence, watch more tape. Don’t just watch point-of-attack tape. Watch more game tape so we can see as much as we can on these prospects.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 6:11 PM with the headline "South Carolina lost a critical tool in the recruiting process. What fills in the gap."
