LOUISVILLE, Ky, (WDRB) -- Every college football coach in the country has been jilted, misled or outright fibbed to during the colossal tug of war known as recruiting.
It stings. Especially at quarterback.
But life goes on. There is no time for pity parties.
I’ll keep the examples local. Gunner Kiel, an in-state four-star quarterback, changed his mind on Indiana. Kevin Wilson plugged in Nate Sudfeld. Nothing to complain about.
Jarren Williams withdrew a pair of commitments from Kentucky to play for Miami. Mark Stoops somehow made his way with Lynn Bowden Jr. running his team.
On Wednesday, it was Scott Satterfield’s turn to get a limp handshake from a kid who had insisted that his grip was rock solid for six months. About 75 minutes before Satterfield met the media to discus his first complete signing class, he apparently received a phone call from Chubba Purdy, a 4-star quarterback from suburban Phoenix who had verbally committed to Louisville on June 22.
I said “apparently,” because Satterfield cannot talk about players who did not sign with Louisville, and the coach preferred to focus on the 24 guys who did submit their letters of intent.
Purdy was not one of those guys. He signed with Florida State, a school that started recruiting him less than two weeks ago and took a commitment from another quarterback last weekend.
Like goal line stands, recruiting is a contact sport.
Satterfield said he received all the bad news personally, not via social media. He also said that Louisville has another quarterback (Tee Webb of Cartersville, Georgia) coming who will embrace competition, not flinch from it.
“There are a lot of guys that you try to create great relationships with across the way,” Satterfield said. “You know what? It is what it is when those type things happen.
“There’s a lot of colleges out there and a lot of guys who are out there recruiting and doing the things they have to do to get these players. We’re going to do what we do to get them. We’re going to focus on the ones that we get.”
Disappointed? Had to be.
Perturbed? Who wouldn’t be?
Motivated? That’s the only way to deal with this, especially when the Purdy’s perplexing decommitment came from a quarterback who will play for a program in the same division (Atlantic) of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“We always focus on the ones who want to be a part of our program,” Satterfield said. “I never worry about the ones who want to be a part of someone else’s program. I think you can drive yourself insane when you do that.
“For us, we care about our players. We care about our players who are on our football team right now. We care about this group that is going to be joining this football team and their families.”
Right answer. So is this:
Tune in again in three or four or even five years.
That is when we’ll discover how much Purdy’s decision will affect the success and momentum of Satterfield’s program.
Signing day is always a day for overreaction. Recruiting evaluations and rankings are generally a reasonable guideline for the quality of the overall talent collected by a program.
Inside the tumultuous football recruiting world, they say that 247Sports does the best overall job of ranking recruiting classes.
At 4 p.m. Wednesday, Louisville’s class ranked No. 38 in the nation and sixth in the ACC. The national ranking dropped five spots with the loss of Purdy, who would have been Louisville’s only four-star signee, according by 247.
But I’ll write something that I write every time somebody starts hyperventilating about college football recruiting:
There are often wild gaps in the projection and the performances of individual players.
Lamar Jackson did not come to Louisville projected to be in the discussion to win the Heisman Trophy.
At 247, Jackson was ranked as a three-star get, the fourth-best player in Louisville’s 2015 signing class, the No. 409 player in the nation, the No. 12 dual-threat quarterback and the 60th best player from the state of Florida.
I could rest my case, but I will give you another reminder:
Joe Jacoby, Otis Wilson, Mark Clayton, Eric Wood, Bilal Powell, Sheldon Rankins, Lorenzo Mauldin and Preston Brown are just a starter set of guys who were decent recruits who transformed into impact players and pros at Louisville.
I could also supply you a list of four-stars whose names you have already forgotten.
Louisville’s most important recruit is the guy that Vince Tyra signed to run the program a year ago: Scott Satterfield.
“One thing we want to pride ourselves on is player development,” Satterfield said.
His second class is considerably better than his first. His third is likely to be considerably better than his second. Player identification and development are Satterfield strengths that helped him build sustained success at Appalachian State.
Louisville has 25 football recruits signed for next season and could add three more.
He made certain to mention that the average grade-point average of the group was better than 3.0. At least 15 have committed to arrive next month to start preparations for 2020.
There will be impact players in the group of 24 guys who signed Wednesday. There will also be flops and transfers, just the way there were recruiting flips in the final days of putting together this class.
“We met the needs that we felt that we had to meet, essentially filling basically every spot on our team, except for running back,” Satterfield said.
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