Geep Wade won’t relax today until every football player who has committed to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga faxes in his signed letter of intent. The Mocs’ recruiting coordinator has reason to worry after losing a commitment Monday night.
Alcoa High School defensive end Darrell Warren, the Class AA Mr. Football lineman of the year, accepted an offer from Kentucky after committing to UTC in December.
Until the other 20 commitments have signed, Wade and the rest of the UTC coaching staff will worry that some of their commitments will be lured away by other programs. It’s the nature of recruiting, even in the Football Championship Subdivision.
“When someone commits, you either feel really good or you still worry about it, and that always depends on the kid’s personality,” Wade said. “You have a kid committed and he doesn’t answer the phone for a day, you worry. It’s happened to me: You call a kid a bunch of times [without him answering] and you get worried. It’s like chasing a girlfriend.”
The Mocs faced a lot of recruiting competition during the past couple of months as they went after some of the top FCS-level talent in the Southeast. Much of it was the same talent that some of the best programs in the FCS were pursuing.
Of the 20 players expected to sign this morning, many had offers or strong interest from other Southern Conference teams, or from the likes of Jacksonville State, Delaware or Bowl Subdivision teams such as UAB or Middle Tennessee State.
“We’ve been battling,” Wade said.
UTC got two commitments from Alabama — Hoover High School offensive lineman Brandon Morgan and Buckhorn High defensive back Sema’je Kendal — who picked the Mocs over Jacksonville State.
Wide receiver Ron Moore Jr. from Seminole High in Sanford, Fla., chose UTC over Delaware, which played for the 2010 national championship.
“I fell in love with it,” Moore said of UTC. “I liked it a lot better than Delaware.”
Mocs coach Russ Huesman’s son Jacob, who led Baylor to the Division II-AA state championship game and was the state’s Mr. Football D-II Back of the Year, turned down an offer from Georgia Tech after he had committed to UTC.
Except for a few calls, Jacob said his phone stopped ringing once he committed. Alcoa fullback Taharin Tyson said the same thing, but that wasn’t the case for Warren and some other UTC commitments.
Northwest Whitfield offensive lineman Synjen Herren said when he committed that his only offers were from UTC and Western Carolina. But interest picked up once he committed to the Mocs.
“I’ve heard from a few more people, but it’s no big deal,” Herren said. “There’s been a few coaches that got a little upset about it after I made my decision. I told them I loved everything they’d done for me and I loved talking to them, but it’s about my future and UTC is the place for me.”
Coach Huesman said UTC won’t go after players who have committed elsewhere. It’s less about leaving the recruit alone once he’s declared his intentions, Huesman admitted, than it is a Michael Corleone-like shunning of those who would take sides against the family.
“Once a kid commits to somebody, I’m washing my hands of him,” Huesman said. “I don’t care if he calls us tomorrow, we’re not taking him.”
Like Wade, Huesman said he’s hoping to exhale today once all the faxes have arrived. Until then, he’ll remain anxious and hopeful that he won’t have to wash his hands of anyone.
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