When Sean Stackhouse decided this fall that he was going to leave the University of Kentucky, the 6-foot-4, 265-pound tight end quickly began looking for a new school.
After getting his release from coach Joker Phillips, Stackhouse found himself in a familiar position. He was a highly recruited 3-star player coming out of high school in Jacksonville, Fa., and to some degree that process began again. Only this time he was reaching out to the schools that interested him.
“My mom is a grad of App State, so she knew all about the North Carolina area and Tennessee, and the SoCon,” said Stackhouse, who will start school at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in January. “We sent out some e-mails saying that I was transferring to a couple of schools. I think Elon was one of them, as well as UT-Chattanooga.”
When Stackhouse visited UTC the weekend of the Mocs’ final home game, he was scrutinizing the UTC program just as much as Mocs coach Russ Huesman and his staff was taking a hard look him.
Stackhouse knew he had to make the right decision because he has only two years of eligibility remaining. Huesman and the Mocs, meanwhile, can’t afford to be wrong, either. Not when they’ve been burned a couple of times before and not when they’ve finally pulled themselves out of Academic Progress Rate purgatory.
“Just because we said get a release and we’ll talk to you, does not mean we’re going to take you,” Huesman said. “Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Mid-year transfers from bowl subdivision programs aren’t unusual — Chris Donald (Tennessee) and Nick Davison (UAB) joined the Mocs last January — but Huesman’s phone will ring a lot more often after spring practice.
Last summer Huesman said he received calls regarding as many as 20 players that might be interested in transferring to UTC. This winter that number was just “three or four.”
Regardless of when the calls come, UTC can’t do anything until the player gets a release from his school. After that there are two significant hurdles to clear before Huesman will even consider pursuing the player.
“If there’s no social issues, no academic issues — I mean zero social, zero academic issues — now we’ll go, alright what kind of player was he?” Huesman said. “And we’ll research that and find out effort and talent level, those types of things.”
After a player has been cleared regarding social and academic issues, he still has to sit down and talk with Huesman.
“The interview process for a guy sitting in that seat [opposite Huesman] right now is more of an interrogation than a recruiting spiel,” Huesman said. “So when they sit in that chair, it’s an interrogation; and they either like it or they don’t like it.”
In Huesman’s first season he took transfers Terrance Davis (Mississippi State) and Corey Shields (Western Kentucky). After suspending them a couple of times for violating team rules, Huesman eventually gave them the boot.
Thus, Huesman said, he’s “way more cautious” when it comes to taking transfers.
“We all make mistakes in recruiting, everybody does. You never find out everything — you just don’t,” he said. “With transfers it happens so fast, you’re like ‘oh man, we’ve got to get this guy. Coach so-and-so said he was a good kid. Alright, let’s go.'”
When quarterback B.J. Coleman asked for his release from Tennessee, he looked around a bit before deciding on the Mocs.
Despite being from Chattanooga, despite his father Bryon being a UTC teammate of Huesman’s, Coleman said it was important for him to look around — at least briefly.
Coleman said he spoke with some junior colleges and some other Division I schools, but he didn’t visit anywhere before signing with UTC.
“It is a tough process as a student-athlete with everything that’s going on,” Coleman said. “Once you get that release, now it’s the whole recruiting process all over again.”
The Mocs hit a home run with Coleman, who has thrown for more than 5,300 yards in his two seasons at UTC. But not every transfer works out so well, for the player or the school. All the due diligence in the world won’t make it a foolproof process.
You do as much as you can, Huesman said, and hope for the best.
Follow John Frierson on Twitter by following this link.