The crystal ball is completely silent on our top 2026 targets right now and it's driving me nuts. We need that momentum from a major OV weekend to get a key flip or a silent commit to go public. Hearing noise that a couple Mountain East rivals are making late pushes on our priority croots, and we can't afford to lose this battle in the dead period. The staff needs to get those bags ready and close.
Stop pretending the early signing period is some sacred, fan-friendly event that gives us clarity. It's a complete farce that only benefits the big dogs and leaves programs like ours scrambling in the dark. Everyone gets hyped for December, thinking they've locked down their class, only to watch half of it get poached by Power Four schools who come in with bigger NIL bags after their seasons end. What good is a "signed" letter of intent when the kid can still hit the portal a month later if a better offer comes along? It creates a false sense of security.
For us at the FCS level, it's a nightmare. We spend months building relationships with croots, get a soft commit, maybe even a signature in December, and then we have to sweat it out until February anyway because some Mountain East rival or a desperate G5 program starts whispering in their ear during the dead period. The early signing period was supposed to calm the chaos, but it just moved the chaos earlier and made the winter window even more brutal. Our staff has to operate like every commit is a silent commit until the fax actually comes through on the traditional signing day.
The real story nobody talks about is how it kills development time. Instead of our coaches focusing on spring ball and installing schemes with the guys who are actually here, they're stuck on the phone 24/7 doing damage control, trying to hold onto December signees and flipping other guys who got left out in the cold. We need that crystal ball to be right in December, not have it shatter in January. The whole system needs to be one signing period, after all the coaching carousel and portal madness settles. This two-phase nonsense just extends the anxiety for everyone.
Why is the entire recruiting world aleep on the biggest story of the spring, which is the absolute ticking time bomb of decommitments that’s about to go off? We’re sitting here in mid-April, the dead period is a distant memory, spring games have wrapped, and every single one of those elite 2026 commits who pledged during the emotional high of a junior day or a big visit weekend is now getting bombarded. Their phones are blowing up. The bagmen from the SEC and Big Ten schools that finished second are making their final, desperate pushes. For a program like ours, this isn’t just national noise, this is an existential threat to our entire class structure. We’ve built a solid group of commits, the kind that gets us a nice bump in the Mountain East rankings, but every single one of them is a target for a Power Four program with a late scholarship to burn.
I’m hearing the noise, and it’s not good. When you see a school like Oklahoma State bring in fifty portal guys, what does that tell the high school kid they promised a spot to last summer? It tells him he’s expendable. That chaos creates a ripple effect. A kid decommits from a Big 12 school, they immediately go poach a kid committed to a Group of Five school, and that school comes looking at our guys. It’s a food chain, and we are not at the top. The new reality of the single winter portal window means all this roster churn happened months ago, and now the coaching staffs have a crystal-clear picture of their needs. They know exactly which positions they missed on in the portal, and they are turning that full-court press onto the high school ranks to fill it. That “soft commit” we’ve been celebrating since February? He’s taking an unofficial visit this weekend to a school that just had a transfer enter the portal at his position. I guarantee it.
Look at the sheer volume of movement. Colorado with 43 transfers. Alabama rebuilding their line through the portal. Indiana hunting for replacements after their title run. These aren’t programs sitting pat. They are aggressive, and their 2026 high school commits are not safe. If Notre Dame’s coach is out there calling a guy the best he’s ever coached, you think other p...
The biggest position of need for any Mountain East contender this spring is a true lockdown corner, and the portal is the only place to find one. Watching the big schools load up on five-star DBs while we're fighting for three-star projects is brutal, but the new winter-only window means we have to be perfect in our evals. Our secondary got exposed on deep balls last year, and you can't win the conference giving up those explosive plays. We need a portal kid with at least two years of eligibility who can come in and be a day-one starter, a guy who can erase the other team's top receiver. If we don't land a proven cover guy from the portal by the time summmer workouts start, our 2026 ceiling is a seven-win season, period. The staff knows it, which is why they're burning up the phone lines right now. This isn't about development, it's about immediate survival.
Why is the 247 composite so obsessed with the top 25 when our class ranking just got a major bump from those three silent commits? That's how you build a program.
Why is nobody talking about how a major OV weekend can completely flip a class? Alabama just landed a key in-state guy off their A-Day, and that's the blueprint. We need to be locking down our top Mountain East targets on their official visits this spring, not just showing them the facilities. A silent commit during an OV is worth more than ten crystal ball predictions in June.
Calling it now, the new NIL revenue sharing cap is going to create more chaos than parity, and the schools with the biggest booster collectives will just find new ways to move money. That $20.5 million per school number is a mirage. Hearing noise that the real battle is in the third-party endorsement deals that aren't counted toward the cap, and that's where the Pioneers get left behind every single time. Our collective can't compete when a Mountain East recruit gets a six-figure offer from a Sun Belt program's bagmen for a car dealership spot.
We're sitting here trying to lock down three-star croots for our offensive line, and the second a kid gets a P4 offer, the NIL pitch comes in and it's game over. It's not even about the school anymore, it's about which program's boosters can structure the most creative "marketing" deal during the dead period. How are we supposed to flip a kid when the competition can promise a fully guaranteed paackage that our entire athletic budget couldn't match?
The system was supposed to level the playing field, but all it did was add another layer where the rich get richer. We need to be smarter, finding diamonds in the rough who value early playing time and development over a quick bag, because the bidding wars are only going to get worse. Until our NIL operation finds a sustainable model beyond just fan donations, we're just feeding croots into the machine for other programs to poach later. This isn't recruiting, it's free agency with teenagers.
The entire national conversation about top recruits is broken. We're sitting here in April of 2026, and the only names getting buzz are the five-stars committing to Oregon and Georgia. Meanwhile, the real game-changers for programs like ours are the three-star diamonds in the rough who get developed into all-conference monsters. The 247 composite is a guide, not a gospel. I'm hearing more noise than ever about kids in our region who are flying under the radar because they don't have a blue-blood offer sheet. That's our bread and butter.
everybody's obsessed with the portal circus at Colorado and Oklahoma State, thinking that's the only way to build. It's a shortcut, not a foundation. The foundation is identifying the kid with the right frame and the right attitude during the dead period, getting him on an OV, and locking him down before the big schools even notice. That's how you win the Mountain East. You out-work everybody on the trail for the guys who fit your culture, not just chase stars. Our bagman game has to be about securing those crucial local pieces that the so-called "power" programs overlook.
The future of our program isn't in some five-star's crystal ball predictiion to an SEC school. It's in the silent commits we're cultivating right now, the guys who will buy in for four years and become legends here. While everybody else is focused on the top of the rankings, we need to be focused on the guys we can realistically bump up and develop. That's the path. The flashy portal classes at those other places are a house of cards. We're building a program, brick by brick, with croots who want to be Pioneers.
Watching that Alabama spring game with Keelon Russell balling out just shows you the new reality. EVERY program, even the elites, is a QB competition now. For us, it means the portal window closing early forces us to lock down our guy before the dead period. Can't afford to miss on a developmental arm when the big boys are flipping five-stars daily.
