Official visit weekends are the single most overrated recruiting tool in the modern era and programs that rely on them for commitments are setting themselves up for failure. The entire process is a dog and pony show where every school puts on the same geneeric song and dance, the fancy graphics, the locker room tours, the photo shoots. The croots have seen it all a dozen times. What actually matters happens in the dead period, in the DMs, with the bagmen and the NIL collectives long before the OV ever gets scheduled. Hearing noise that our staff has completely pivoted, using OVs purely as a formality to seal deals that were already done with silent commits weeks ago. That's the only way to operate now. If you're waiting for some kid to get wowed by a spring game atmosphere to get his commitment, you've already lost him to a program that handled business in the winter window. Look at the heavy hitters in our own conference, they aren't winning battles on visit weekends, they're winning them by locking down the 247 composite targets early and using the visits just to prevent a flip. The pressure is insane because with no spring portal window, you can't afford a miss. If a kid leaves campus without that commitment, the chances of him signing later are slim. We need to be the program that gets the soft commit before the plane even lands, then uses the weekend to just reinforce it and shut down any other noise. That's how you build a class that gets a permanent bump in the rankings, not by hoping for a magical weekend. tbh