2026 recruiting

My guess is that potential 4 star plus will hold off on committing to Utah until they see us play this year… if we continue our streak the last couple years, we will never see those players. If we get back to our brand of football, we will start seeing much better results in recruiting

It’s hard to paint college football coaches in a sympathetic light given how well compensated they are these days, but I absolutely feel for them when it comes to recruiting. It was a tough gig before NIL, transfer portals, conference realignment, growing player entitlement, etc. It has got to be near impossible though now for these coaches to know what to say to the player vs the parents vs the high school coach vs the kid’s agent. You throw in the fact that Utah is a non-elite program that hasn’t responded particularly well to the NIL era in a state with little to no sex appeal to a high school kid outside of Utah.

I don’t see how they couldn’t go back hard to the “diamond in the rough mentality”. Even that approach seems like it would be harder than ever given how much exposure most of these athletes get even in high school. There are going to be so few of them that could realistically make a meaningful impact your program, but go under the radar. I keep trying to convince myself that this is all going to be just fine, but it’s a tricky sell these days.

The last time I posted on UteHub I speculated that, in the age of NIL with a team like the Utes that has finite resources, it might make more sense to dedicate funds to the portal rather than recruiting. The Big12/ACC teams that are the most creative with NIL in the football landscape will be the most successful. With the Utes positioned above the G5 teams but below the SEC/B1G (financially), there is only a few possible results of paying an incoming true freshman a large “salary”:

1. They overperform and you must pay them more to keep them.
2. They overperform and some other school pays them more to steal them.
3. They underperform and you have wasted your money.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for coaches to put so much time and energy (physical and emotional) into the developing players, essentially, for other schools. I would much rather poach than be poached. Transfers are known quantities.

That being said, recruiting still seems important and it still seems bad for us to be at the bottom of the B12. Of course, the Utes usually start slow with recruiting and finish strong, but many of our better classes were attained after high-performing seasons. As such, this appears to be an incredibly important year for our program. Naturally, if we show some resiliency and perform well, it will help us with both recruiting and transfers.

“Show me the money” will rule college FB and BB until the courts or congress (haha) intervene and put some guidelines on this madness. As previously mentioned above coaches are in a no win situation. Culture and player development only sets you up for failure. It only works if you have the money to keep your developed players.

It won’t be long until we start seeing a preseason NIL collective ranking instead of a team ranking. Maybe a donors all-American team? How about a program with the most NIL gets the automatic playoff spots reguardless of record.