Lane Kiffin Elaborates on Significant Difficulties of 'Virtual' Recruiting

There's so much uncertainty in college football right now. From a recruiting side, players are unable to take visits and many have never met this new Ole Miss staff. Here's what head coach Lane Kiffin is saying about the difficulties of recruiting during this time.

There's so much uncertainty in college football right now. From a recruiting side, players are unable to take visits and many have never met this new Ole Miss staff.

Everyone around the nation is dealing with the same virtual recruiting issues that inherently pose the same questions. But new coaching staffs seem to be hit much harder. 

And these issues recruiting ... they may not be exactly what you're imagining. 

“This has been very difficult, not difficult to recruit the kids. I think we’ve done a good job of that. A lot of zoom. A lot of communication. A lot of new ideas that we’ve come up with," said Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin on Wednesday. "The issue is the evaluation. The issue is you’re taking kids you’ve never seen."

In a normal calendar year, Ole Miss would have been on the road quite a bit over the past few months. High school recruiting camps, where top prospects gather for evaluation, would have gathered many Rebel coaches, among others nationally.

They would have been out at schools for spring practices or had players in their own summer camps. That in-person evaluation has taken a huge hit this offseason, and for the most part, just about everything has to be done on tape. 

"We watch recruiting film every day and say, ‘I don’t know. How do I decide on this?’ Kiffin said. "This is a tweener guy that we’d normally say this is a camp guy, meaning we really like him. But we don’t want to go all-in until we see him in camp. Now we have none of that. It’s a big guessing game."

As of now, the recruiting dead period is extended until July 31. The NCAA Division I Council Coordination Committee had prior extended that dead period through June, before pushing it back another month about two weeks ago. 

For football, this means there can be no visits and essentially no face-to-face interaction with recruits. 

Will the NCAA extend that deadline again? At this point making any prediction like that seems futile. If they do, the consequences may be even more dire. 

"Wait and see how hard it’d be if they shut down the fall and said we aren’t going to do on-campus visits and aren’t going to let you off campus to go watch games," Kiffin said. "Now we’re going to sign kids that we’ve never met. You’d never want to do that in your own business.”

Not only are coaches offering scholarships to some kids they've never talked to in person, the student-athletes are often committing to schools they've never taken official or even unofficial visits to. 

There's been speculation that these recruiting issues and difficulties may lead to a change in the fall recruiting calendar or even less stable commitments. 

Like much in our nation over the past months, most of this is heresy and there's no real way to know what will happen until it happens. But we do know coaches are pushing for a little more time with these high school kids over coming months. 

“I don’t know (if they'll change the early window). I don’t think anybody knows that until we figure out what’s going to happen," Kiffin said. "Nobody can predict what will happen with the coronavirus. We’ve mentioned, hopefully they give us more evaluation time where we can put more coaches on the road on Fridays during the season.”

Regardless what, if anything, happens as far as increased recruiting time to make up for lost time, this 2021 recruiting class is just going to be quite strange. Strange doesn't really mean better and it does't mean worse. It's just an adjustment for all involved. 

More from The Grove Report:

Highlights and Breakdown: Ole Miss' Newest Commit Demarko Williams

Ole Miss Football Intends to Have Full-Capacity Crowds at Games This Fall

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