Mississippi State Recruitng Will Be Interesting
We have about 4 and a 1/2 weeks until National Signing Day and the Bulldogs have had one of their most successful years to date as of this writing. Their class is ranked 17th according to the 247 Sports composite ranking. While that is great, we are guaranteed to get some surprises one way or another.
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- The Wednesday Wrap: Maybe Mississippi State Football Coach Zach Arnett shouldn’t do it his way
- Mississippi State football history vs. South Carolina: Records, streaks, and more
- Mississippi State football bowl projections after Bulldogs crushed by LSU
According to signing rules, Mississippi State is only allowed to sign 25 players every recruiting year. The exception to this rule is if you have any JUCO players sign in December. If you did not use all of your allotments from the previous year, then you can count some of your early enrollments to the prior year. Mississippi State had 5 players enroll early, three from Junior College and two high school players. The Bulldogs have 26 commitments, and none of them will be counted toward the 2014 class. So that means we have one too many. The coaching staff will have to find a way to make that work. The team took some unnecessary heat in my opinion when they changed their offer to Chason Virgil from a regular scholarship offer in 2015 to a gray shirt offer. He refused and the offer was pulled. He has since enrolled early at Fresno State. There could be something like that again on the horizon, or they could be less than convinced that one of the current players committed will actually sign. Coaching staffs have to have contingency plans in place if something like Tee Shepard happens again this year.
The Bulldogs are also pursuing other players still. They haven’t given up on Leo Lewis. There are also a few players out of Alabama they’d like to sign as well. They are doing all this while working under the 25 signings rule. How they make it work, I don’t know. I do know they will find a way to do so though.
January is going to be crazy, as it always is when it comes to recruiting. There will be lots of rumors and wild speculation. This may be one of the calmer Januarys for the Bulldogs with most of their recruiting work already done, but it will still have its share of surprises. With the success of this year’s team, I think those surprises will be mostly good this year.