Between The Eers: Why Even Commit?
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 Good Thursday morning everybody, Skylar Callen here.
00:12 It is another episode of Between the Ears.
00:14 Today we're gonna go a little shorter.
00:15 We're gonna go in reverse order, as usually we do Fast Friday.
00:21 But today we're gonna do that because of the way our schedule worked out.
00:24 And I think we're gonna go more in depth on the 2023 football season tomorrow.
00:29 So quicker episode today.
00:31 If you haven't seen earlier this week, Old Dominion Safety Taj Rael
00:37 committed to West Virginia and then within 24 hours,
00:41 rescinded that and is now back out on the market.
00:45 So what happened there and why does it hurt West Virginia?
00:50 Well, you guessed it, other schools got in the mix late in the process,
00:57 opened up the mind of Rael and that's pretty much that.
01:04 Business is business as he had put in his post on Instagram,
01:10 take that for what you will.
01:13 I'm not here to second guess that, I'm not here to try and
01:18 criticize the kid's decision.
01:20 Because at the end of the day, if he thinks going somewhere else is a better
01:25 decision for him, then that's what he needs to do.
01:29 And I've seen a lot of people on social media get upset about this.
01:34 And I understand, especially when the kid makes this happen all within 24 hours.
01:40 I get it.
01:41 But look, my standpoint on it is,
01:43 that's not the kid you want in your locker room anyway.
01:47 And that's not a character concern, that's not any of that.
01:51 It's more of just, if you're gonna find out that at some point,
01:57 that he doesn't wanna be in Morgantown,
02:00 then you better find out now before you sign him, is what I'm meaning by that.
02:07 You don't wanna get to the spring period, then all of a sudden,
02:11 some other teams start contacting him even though they're not allowed to.
02:16 And then all of a sudden, yeah,
02:18 he's back in the portal again because you can do that.
02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]
02:23 So there's a lot of different ways you can look at it.
02:30 The way I'm looking at it is, this sucks more than anything for
02:35 West Virginia because you burned a visit on a kid.
02:40 Now, it's different if you have the kid in and
02:44 you feel like you had a good visit, you don't end up landing.
02:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]
02:52 Okay, you move on, that happens more often than not, right?
02:58 You're not gonna bat a thousand on these kids that come in and visit.
03:01 You're not going to get the majority of these kids to commit when they visit.
03:07 But it stings a little bit more because now you know
03:14 there's no chance of him playing at West Virginia.
03:18 The staff's not gonna take him back.
03:20 And there'd be no reason for him to have decommitted if he thought this is where
03:27 he would be, and now you burned a visit.
03:30 Well, the problem is, West Virginia's only got a handful of these left.
03:36 Before the clock resets here, I don't have the exact number.
03:43 I've been trying to work on a confirmation for this, but
03:45 it's been a hard number to get tracked.
03:47 There's a handful left that they have that they could hand out
03:53 in terms of official visits.
03:56 The window resets here in a little while.
04:02 I think it resets in the spring, I think in March.
04:09 But that's what hurts West Virginia the most, because now if you wanna take
04:14 a couple look at some portal guys, you gotta be very selective.
04:20 You can't just bring in ten kids and hope you land two or three of them.
04:25 You've gotta make sure you feel pretty damn good about your chances
04:29 before they even get on campus.
04:31 So that's what stings more.
04:34 And again, I know it's only one visit, but it's one you could have had.
04:39 It's one you basically wasted, and it's not on the staff.
04:42 This is, I mean, I hate to put this much on the kid, but I mean,
04:48 this is on him, right?
04:49 I mean, you can't come in, take a visit, commit, decommit.
04:55 And then all of a sudden, you burn that school's visit, you wasted their visit.
05:00 The school gets penalized for this, or
05:04 the football team gets penalized for this.
05:07 Cuz they have one less visit.
05:08 He can go and take other visits elsewhere.
05:13 They don't get that visit back.
05:15 So that's the hard thing for me.
05:17 And again, I think too with these transfers,
05:20 there's gotta be a better way for this to happen.
05:25 Because it's not only just the number of transfers that you get, or
05:29 the number of transfer visits that you get.
05:33 But the signing and how that all works, because you don't necessarily,
05:39 and it's just like the high school route, right?
05:44 If you have a high school kid that commits, that doesn't mean crap until he signs.
05:49 Well, for a transfer, it's a little different,
05:52 because he's not necessarily signing.
05:54 He'll sign a grant in aid or whatever other
06:02 transfer thing that they will sign.
06:04 And more often than not, it doesn't even matter until the kid is in class.
06:12 Once he's enrolled and has started his classes,
06:16 then that's when you know, okay, he's here.
06:20 So just because they sign their grant in aid or sign whatever,
06:28 that doesn't really mean anything.
06:29 They can back out of those types of things.
06:32 They can get back in the portal.
06:34 Until they are sitting in the classroom, that's when you can start to feel
06:40 comfortable, because that's when you can have that sigh of relief,
06:44 with the transfers, that is.
06:46 So this is the perfect example of that.
06:50 You had them committed, you felt like you're probably gonna sign them relatively
06:54 soon, because there's some time periods to all this.
06:59 But he decommits and all of a sudden, you're out of a visit and
07:04 you're back in the mix for more guys in the portal.
07:08 So that's the thing that stings about all this.
07:12 What's next for West Virginia in the portal?
07:15 Well, they're gonna look still, I think, at another defensive lineman.
07:19 They're gonna look again, obviously, for another defensive back.
07:21 Whether they get one or not, I don't know.
07:24 I would assume that those two are probably gonna be still high on their
07:28 priority list come the spring window when the portal reopens in April.
07:33 They will probably be done on the offensive line.
07:41 They'll more than likely not do anything at running back.
07:45 They will take a look at receiver.
07:52 They bring in Jade and Bray.
07:53 They have all these young cats coming back.
07:56 They've got some new guys coming in through the high school ranks.
08:02 But I think if the right guy emerges in the portal,
08:05 they'll take a look at bringing them in.
08:09 Tight end, I think, is somewhere that they definitely still wanna add.
08:13 Because Cole Taylor is as good as he is,
08:15 they need to have a succession plan behind him.
08:18 And they wanna have that already on campus.
08:21 And plus, it would be nice for
08:22 them to have two receiving threats at tight end, right?
08:25 I mean, Treland Davis, he's made progress, but
08:29 he's your hand in the ground attachment to the offensive line.
08:35 That's more of what he is.
08:38 And it's not to say he can't be a weapon in the passing game, but
08:41 that they understand and he understands what his role is.
08:45 Defensively, going back to that side of the ball,
08:49 they're gonna try and add another defensive back and defensive linebacker.
08:53 I think, again, it's about being picky and
09:00 choosy here because you're over scholarship limits.
09:03 So again, it's more like the wider super position.
09:07 If something stands out, I think they'll go after it.
09:09 But if not, there's no real reason for them to do so.
09:14 I think they're okay, at least at this point in time.
09:17 So we'll see what happens.
09:20 We will update the transfer tracker on Mountaineers now.
09:25 We'll also have a lot going on this weekend because there's a host of people.
09:31 Not people, I should say, recruits coming in from the 25 class,
09:37 a few 26 class kids, a long, long list.
09:42 Like I'll try and pull it up here if I have it.
09:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]
09:52 This long list of kids that I have.
09:55 So we will get that list together officially, hopefully by the end of today.
10:01 Maybe sometime tomorrow we'll put it up on the site so
10:04 you can know who is coming into town, who to watch for and stuff like that.
10:08 And any updates that we get, we will put those up as well.
10:12 So one more episode coming this week here on the show.
10:16 That'll be tomorrow here on Between the Ears.
10:18 Make sure you hit the subscribe button on YouTube about Mountaineers now.
10:21 Hit that like button, follow us on X at Mountaineers now as well.
10:25 If you have any questions in regards to recruiting,
10:28 make sure you hit that comment section up on YouTube.
10:31 And I'll also put up my weekly tweet on X about the mailbag being open.
10:37 So if you have any questions regarding recruiting, football, basketball,
10:42 tech, even baseball, anything you got for us, shoot it my way and
10:46 I'll make sure to include it in this weekend's mailbag.
10:48 So thank you guys for watching.
10:50 This has been another episode of Between the Ears on Mountaineers.
10:52 Now, we'll see you back here tomorrow morning.
10:54 [MUSIC]