LSU Football Coach Ed Orgeron Proud of Leadership 2021 Recruiting Class Showed in Recent Visit
Ed Orgeron could only follow social media to see how this weekend's visit to Baton Rouge went for the 2021 class. He could only talk to the 14 prospects who assembled for a weekend of checking out the campus and surrounding restaurants and venues with family members after the visit was over.
The impressions coming out of this weekend's visit have been overwhelmingly positive as committed and uncommitted players alike said it was a productive weekend that was an important experience.
"It was real cool, I was able to get a feel for how college really is with some of those guys and it was just a fun atmosphere, a fun group to hang with," safety Sage Ryan said. "It was real fun, we got to do a lot of stuff around campus and it's kinda like we took over that campus this weekend and LSU didn't even know."
Among the committed prospects who helped set up the visit were quarterback Garrett Nussmeier and linebacker Raesjon Davis. Probably the two most out spoken 2021 commits to this point, both have exemplified great leadership skills at an early stage.
The leadership shown by this class is something Orgeron pointed to first when asked about his impression of the player-led visit to Baton Rouge.
"We have some great leaders that are already committed to us and we have some outstanding players that are thinking about coming here," Orgeron said. "I guess they got tired of waiting."
Prospects who have still yet to choose a college home who made the trip included Korey Foreman, Maason Smith, Sage Ryan, Brian Thomas, Michael Trigg, Tristan Leigh and Savion Byrd.
"They wanted to come to Baton Rouge and they arranged it on their own and from what I'm hearing they had a tremendous weekend," Orgeron said. "They did a lot of things together and I think it brings our recruiting class closer."
Obviously Orgeron and the coaching staff could have no direct contact with the players or their families while they were in Baton Rouge. With other recruiting classes like Georgia and Oklahoma setting up similar player-led visits, LSU's class decided to follow suit.
Because of the current recruiting restrictions due to COVID-19, official recruiting visits aren't allowed at this time. Orgeron is hoping those rules change before the signing period in December so players could actually tour the facilities and have more in person interaction with the coaching staff.
"I thought it was very beneficial from what I'm hearing but it's not like an official visit where they get to meet the academics, where they get to come to a game get to meet with the coaches so there's still a little work to do," Orgeron said.
The Tigers kick off in less than three weeks against Mississippi State and would love nothing more than to be able to host their uncommitted and committed prospects for games and official visits. Fan capacity in Tiger Stadium has yet to be released but there's a good chance it won't exceed 30%, which is not the rowdy crowd that recruits are used to when in Baton Rouge on a Saturday afternoon or night.
It's a double edged sword as some of the top recruits have yet to see the Tigers play in Death Valley but the team has yet to seem them play at their respective high schools as well.
"Hopefully they let them come to our games," Orgeron said. "We don't know that yet, we haven't been told that. We have 18 commitments now, seven more to go and hopefully most of them to decide to sign in December. Some of them we haven't seen play and hopefully we can do that. It's a different year, we have to trust our evaluation off of tape and trust that they see enough in the university to sign in December if they can't come visit.
