Kentucky football recruiting is on a heater. The new coaching staff is burning and turning to assemble a Top 25 class, but they’ll do it in a much different fashion than their predecessors.
The first Wednesday of February was once a holiday. Freddie Maggard was among the many college football fans who took the day off work to track all of the happenings on National Signing Day. College decisions were announced as a buzz filled the air.
Do you remember the sound of that buzz? It was the shrieking sound of perforated paper sliding through a fax machine as commitments became official signings. The fax machine was the unofficial mascot of high school football recruiting. Unfortunately, it’s defining days are done.
“I think if you polled our football team and asked them what a fax machine was, you would get zero out of 111 or whatever we have,” Kentucky offensive coordinator Joe Sloan revealed on Thursday’s edition of KSR.
“It is a little e-sign, you know, just like everything else in the world. One click, and you’re in. Let’s go.”
The world of college football has changed drastically over the last decade. Let us briefly mourn the loss of our beloved fax machine before turning to the future, where Sloan and Co. are hard at work to make sure only the best of the best are e-signing plans to play for Kentucky.
Will Stein has been in Lexington for only about six months, yet he’s assembled a Top 10 transfer portal class and now has a Top 25 high school recruiting class. The latter includes a commitment from Jake Nawrot, the No. 2 passer in the country, and pledges from five other four-star talents.
So what’s the secret to the new sauce in Lexington? Some folks in Louisville are insisting that this new Kentucky coaching staff is overpaying for players. That’s not the case.
“I think it starts with Coach Stein’s energy and how he sets up the program, so when guys come on campus, they feel it, they see it. They see how our players are really taking to the culture and how they’re bouncing around with energy, they see what’s getting done, the work that’s getting done, the development. So I think that’s number one, because it has to start inside our building, and then when they come see it, they got to envision themselves in that environment,” said Sloan.
Kentucky’s doors were open throughout spring practice for talented unofficial visitors. The Wildcats opened the summer with more than a dozen official visitors, and they’re running it back this weekend with even more to help seal the deal.
“[Stein’s] done a really good job of showing the energy that we’re going to play with, that we’re going to carry ourselves with, and I think young guys are attracted to that,” added Sloan.
“Coach Stein put together a great staff of a lot of guys who can really communicate effectively and are hard workers, and that’s what recruiting is. Can you communicate? Can you meet those players where they are, and can you give them the vision of who they’re going to be within our program? And then you just got to be relentless in what we’re doing.”
Kentucky is pushing all of the right buttons on the recruiting trail. They just won’t be pushing any fax machine buttons.