In-season recruiting for Arkansas coaches is still full steam ahead while also focusing on the task at hand each Saturday.
Sept. 1 was the first day college coaches could contact junior prospects and start making one phone call per week to seniors.
Arkansas director of recruiting Taylor Edwards said coach Chad Morris and staff are aware of the weekly schedule of each prospect on the Hogs’ board.
“I put together a comprehensive game tracker,” Edwards said. “So we take every guy that’s on our recruiting board and we put their high school game schedule as it coincides with our Arkansas game schedule week by week so our coaches have an idea where each guy is playing week to week.”
The coaches are contacting and writing recruits on a regular basis.
“They’re constantly telling them congratulations, good luck week in and week out,” Edwards said. “Our writing campaign becomes very heavily involved. We’re constantly sending out letters to our guys week in and week out. Our coaches are writing every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.”
During the season, offensive and defensive assistants evaluate the video of prospects every Monday evening to determine if the prospect will be forwarded to Morris for approval for an offer.
When Morris completes his weekly Wednesday radio show, he and Edwards will watch film of the recruits the assistants have approved for Morris.
“We’ll watch guys that’s been elevated to him,” Edwards said. “That way we’re constantly evaluating during the fall.”
With coaches focused on the upcoming game, Edwards and the recruiting staff aid them.
“We put an emphasis on our recruiting staff at this point in time to where we’re kind of helping out coaches comb areas and we’re helping push those prospects versus in the spring when the coaches are out on the road and calling us and saying, ‘Hey, get this guy watched, get this guy watched.'”
Staying on the cutting edge of ideas is a must in recruiting, and Morris is a big part of that.
“He’s constantly pushing ideas our way,” Edwards said. “We as a staff kind of comb through Twitter ourselves. We make sure we’re on par with what everybody else is doing.”
“You always look for ideas, whether it be a new R&B album, country music album or whatever the case may be. We’re constantly trying to stay on task. You see what kids post on Twitter, so you see what they’re into and what they like.
"You kind of take it and kind of run with it from there.”