Gene Chizik Talks Recruiting

AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State head football coach Gene Chizik sat down to talk recruiting. Signing day is Feb. 6.

Q: Recruiting is a round-the-clock, all-the-time experience. Could you describe that process?

“It's different depending on who you are recruiting. We've got guys who we are still working with to get a commitment; still trying to convince them that this is the right place for them. We have got others who have already made that commitment and we're hanging with them, hoping that nothing changes in the next month. January is a very hectic month. This is a month where there are a lot of minds changed. There are a lot of people that have lost recruits to other schools and then they come back on your recruits. And now, you are not only trying to finalize the ones you don't have, but you're also trying to hold onto the ones you do have.”

Q: In basketball, there are freshmen in high school who are verbally committing. That does not happen as much in football. But at what age do you start looking at guys?

“Typically we are not going to look at anyone specifically until their junior year. They might come across the radar as a sophomore, and you make a note. You keep it in the back of your mind that next year the kid is going to be a highly-recruited guy. We start typically with juniors unless we run across a freakish-type athlete that happens to be a sophomore. But I think it's unfair to the high school coaches when you start talking about recruiting a kid when he's a sophomore. I don't think it's fair to the kid because all of the sudden, at 15 years old, he thinks he is in the NFL. We try to steer away from that, but we have working knowledge of these young men, and we certainly acknowledge the fact that we do know about them.”

Q: Can you describe the recruiting portion of assistant coach Scott Fountain's job?

“It's a huge part of his job. He does a phenomenal job of communicating with high school coaches, parents and the recruits themselves. He does a lot of mailings. It's a communication process. He is always coming up with ways to inform them about where we are with football, recruiting and the state of the football program. His job is very, very time consuming to keep everybody always informed. And to keep them informed at both their schools and their homes about Iowa State. The more they see it the more it comes across their mind.”

Q: The recruiting arena is covered like a game. How has the web affected recruiting?

“It has really affected it more than anybody really knows. It used to be that you could have commitments and recruits that nobody knows are coming to your school until signing day. Sometimes you are able to keep really good players under the radar. What you find now is that it is out there, public knowledge for everybody. Somebody loses somebody or somebody wants to add an extra guy because somebody dropped out of school and it's in the 11th hour. They can just plug your list and go down it and try to steal who you have. Its changed recruiting, and that's why it's 24/7 now. Its changed the information so that every school has info on every other school; everybody is so much more informed. Internet recruiting services make their money putting it out there for everybody to be informed. They have competition between themselves, so there are never any secrets out there. It's totally changed recruiting.”

Q: Do you enjoy the recruiting process?

“Absolutely, I think it's really neat because you get to choose and battle for the best player you can get. The best athlete, the best character, but you also get to choose how you want to drive your program. And it's these young guys. Competition. It's like game-day. You have to go into people's living rooms and convince them that their 18-year-old son is going to be better off at your place rather than school X, Y, or Z. It goes along with competing.”

Q: What do you do when you go into a home?

“When I go visit a home, I try to get a “lay-of-the-land” so to speak, with their environment with mom and dad, or whoever the guardians are. I try to make a statement that if his or her son comes to spend four to five years at Iowa State that our main objective is to make sure they get a degree, that their son will be well taken care of in terms of the needs that an 18-, 19- or 20-year-old will have in college. In my business, it is not necessarily going in to inform them about the school because, nine times out of 10, they already know all of that. My intent on the visit is to give them a security blanket, so to speak, that if their son attends our school, he is in good hands.

Q: What have you felt our biggest needs are this year?

“I think we need very athletic people up front, both on the offensive and defensive line. We have to get a much greater element of speed in our receiving corps, our tailbacks, our secondary. The speed element is very important and critical here in the next two to three years. We have got to upgrade tremendously in that category.

Q: You have said previously that this class will not be as intensely junior college as last year. Is that true?

“Absolutely, while there will be a junior college guy or two that we end up latching on to, we are not building it with junior college transfers. Obviously, if we go after a junior college guy then there are immediate needs that need to be met, that we are very concerned about. There are needs everywhere on our football team, but the preference for building this football program the way that I envision it down the road will be with four- and five-year guys.

Q: Last year we did have the junior college transfers, but a lot of them were the type of “Allen Bell” or the “Michael Bibbs,” guys that had three years left. The fans saw most of these guys play. How important is that?

“That is one of the huge things that we did last year. Some of those guys they saw play last year; some we redshirted and they have four years to play three. Collin Franklin would be a good example of that. They are going to see him this year. We had to get him out of junior college, sign him, redshirt him, and he still has three years left. Those are some things as we look into a junior college young man; the fact that he has three years left is huge to us.”

Players Mentioned

Allen Bell

Allen Bell

Michael Bibbs

Michael Bibbs

Collin Franklin

Collin Franklin

Sponsors

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