Cal Sports Report

Cal Football: Bears Appear to Be Efficient in Their Recruiting Effort

Only a few of the Power 5 conference schools have made fewer scholarship offers than Cal

Jake Curtis

Cal Football: Bears Appear to Be Efficient in Their Recruiting Effort
Cal Football: Bears Appear to Be Efficient in Their Recruiting Effort /

It seems Justin Wilcox and his Cal football staff are making efficient use of their scholarship offers.

The Bears already have seven commitments for their 2021 class that is ranked as the 19th-best class in the country by ESPN.com, but Cal has offered only 97 players scholarships, according to a tweet by Blair Sanderson of Rivals.com, using the Rivals database.

That ranks among the fewest scholarship offers among schools in the Power Five FBS conferences. Assuming the database is close to accurate this suggests Cal only goes after recruits it thinks it can sign.

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Three other things are noticeable from that list:

1. Pac-12 schools generally have not made as many scholarship offers as schools from other major conferences. No Pac-12 school ranks among the top 17 in number of scholarship offers, and five of the nine fewest scholarship offers are from Pac-12 schools. 

2. Clemson has made the second-fewest scholarship offers, yet the Tigers have 10 commitments for 2021, and their recruiting class ranks as the fourth-best in the country, according to ESPN.com. Perhaps that means that Clemson generally gets the players it targets.

3. Stanford has made the fewest scholarship offers--just 42--although that does not come as a huge surprise.

The California Golden Blogs website notes that Cal made scholarship offers to 12 other football players in April, including five to members of the 2022 recruiting class.

More importantly, the 247Sports site reports that 17 Cal recruiting targets have listed Cal among the schools they are still considering. That still leaves them several steps from committing to any college, but it gives the Bears hope of landing some of them.

And five of the 17 are ranked among the top 200 recruits in the nation by 247Sports. Those five are athlete Julien Simon (ranked No. 99 by 247Sports), wide receiver J. Michael Sturdivant (149), defensive end T.J. Bollers (142), tight end Brock Bowers (101), wide receiver Cristian Dixon (171).

ESPN.com ranks Sturdivant as the No. 105 prospect in the class, with Simon at 141, Dixon 143rd, Bollers 200th and Bowers at 210.

***Justin Wilcox tells stories about the recruiting trail while landing 2020 class:

(ESPN takes a look at USC's recruiting task.)

Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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