Pod Fodder with the Godfather (of recruiting)
The recruiting evaluation period, as well as the summer camp season, is beginning to take full force.
Rivals Director of Recruiting, Mike Farrell, joined the Oxford Exxon Podcast to discuss recruiting in general and the potential impact on recruiting that the lingering NCAA response could have on Ole Miss.
“Until the NCAA actually drops the hammer, I don’t think it affects recruiting that much,” Farrell said. “What it does, is give your opponents a more negative recruiting tool box to choose from, and say, ‘Aw, you don’t want to go there. They’re going to get hammered. They’re going to lose all of these scholarships. Their depth chart is going to look awful. Look what’s happened at Penn State. They can’t recover. USC’s not the same.’ So, they can use all of those examples of scholarship reduction and use it as a negative recruiting tool.
“That being said, I still think that kids are interested in Ole Miss. I still think kids are waiting to see what happens. I think if nothing happens between now and next Signing Day, I think that nothing will be affected. The whole thing started to come out – I think that Pat Forde’s article came out sometime in mid-to-late January – and everybody (said), ‘Aw, that’s going to kill this class.’ Well, no, it’s too late. Years and years have been put in, and these kids have already decided where they want to go.”
The question then becomes how much of an impact will the uncertainty surrounding Ole Miss affect the class of 2017.
“The NCAA moves so slow that if you look at the UNC investigation, which magically football and basketball disappeared from that investigation, is six-plus years going on,” Farrell said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, so all of those of schools saying ‘Don’t go to UNC. They’re going to get hammered,’ (are wasted because) well they didn’t.”
Based on his years of experience, Farrell offered his projection of what he believes is the likely outcome for Ole Miss.
“If (the penalty) is USC like, that’s a hammer,” Farrell said. “That is hard to recover from. That takes years to recover from because they lost so many scholarships. Penn State lost (scholarships) but were then given back (scholarships). I think Ole Miss will fall in the middle. If they do get hit, it will be middle of the road stuff, and I don’t think that it will set them back too far honestly.”
So what would a middle-of-the-road penalty look like?
“I think a middling sanction could be discussed with Miami,” Farrell said. “With Miami, that scandal came out, and it looked really, really bad. Then you read every page of it, and you were like, “Oh my gosh, there’s this. There’s that. There’s the other. They’re going to get hammered. Everybody’s going to get fired,’ and death penalty always comes out immediately with everybody, which is ridiculous. I think they got a medium-level sanction. Now did it work out for Al Golden? No, but I don’t think that was because of the loss of scholarships or the self-imposed bowl ban or anything like that.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to Ole Miss. Six months from now, we could be talking about historic sanctions, or we could be talking about nothing. I’m leaning towards middle of the road because I think the NCAA, in hurting USC to the level they did hurt it, hurt themselves, and they are not a group that likes to hurt themselves in the pocketbook.”
While Farrell is choosing to use caution when judging Ole Miss at the present moment, he’s not when he hears condemnation of kids who choose Ole Miss.
“What I hate is all of the dollar signs,” Farrell said. “I hate the disrespect to the kids and the parents. Because listen, I know Greg Little a little bit. I’ve talked to his mom at length numerous times at length, you know, about coming to the Five-Star Challenge (and things like that). I don’t like (people that assume cheating) immediately when a kid commits to a school that’s not Alabama or not Texas or is somewhat off the beaten path to what fans generally think a five-star, No. 1 offensive tackle should go to even though he’s replacing a guy who just went in the first round of the NFL Draft. That stuff bothers me because you’re insulting the kid. You’re insulting the parents and their integrity, and they may have done nothing wrong whatsoever.”
The entirety of Mike Farrell’s interview and more can be heard on the Oxford Exxon Podcast, which can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, and on RebelGrove.
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