Coach Bobby Wilder is scouring the area for the athletes who will kick off the football's return. DELORES JOHNSON | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT FILE PHOTO
By RICH RADFORD, The Virginian-Pilot
? July 1, 2007
Whom do I want to play ODU football?
Signing day for Old Dominion University's first football recruiting class may still be more than seven months away, but one coach who has "been there, done that" offers this bit of advice to Monarchs head coach Bobby Wilder:
"Swing for the fences."
Jim Prince was part of the coaching staff at James Madison University in the late 1970s, as the school was switching from club football to Division II in 1979, then to Division I-AA the following year.
"We signed Gary Clark in our first I-AA recruiting class and Charles Haley shortly after that," said Prince, now the head coach at Ocean Lakes High in Virginia Beach. Haley played on five Super Bowl-winning teams with Dallas and San Francisco. Clark was a long-time Washington Redskins star at wide receiver, playing on two Super Bowl-winning teams.
We had 13 players from our first three recruiting classes play in the NFL," Prince said. "At first we thought we should try to beat the Richmonds and William and Marys for recruits. Then we switched gears and decided we'd try to beat the Dukes and Wake Forests for recruits. And it worked.
"There's no umpire calling strikeouts in recruiting. ODU should go after the best. They might say yes."
Wilder says he intends to do just that, noting that "if we got two players of that caliber I'd be a happy man."
And just as JMU mined the local area - Haley was from Lynchburg and Clark from Radford - Wilder is focusing on ODU's so-called back yard. Four months into the job, he has 5,000 high school players in his recruiting data base and has visited 240 high schools in Virginia alone.
He's so determined to own the Hampton Roads region that he even envisions dubbing his initial recruiting class "The 757 Crew."
"From what I've seen so far, he can do it," said Dealton Cotton, head coach at Norfolk's Maury High. "Those guys at ODU are working as hard as I could ever imagine a staff working that doesn't have any players to coach. Their recruiting coordinator, Chip West? I've seen him everywhere. I applaud their hustle. That type of drive and attitude is going to land some players."
The big question now is how many players will it land? And more importantly, how many does ODU want to land?
Wilder has 63 full scholarships at his disposal. Unlike I-A rules that don't allow partial scholarships, the NCAA allows I-AA schools to slice their 63 grants into as many as 85 packages, offering partial aid to some players.
As Wilder speaks, two numbers are written onto a chalk board hanging beside his desk: 21 and 14. Wilder wants to be somewhere in between with his first class of recruits. His staff has debated the number at length.
At times, Wilder has thought about dolling out the equivalent of 21 full grants, giving his offensive coordinator 10, his defensive coordinator 10, and saving one full grant for a specialist or two.
At other times, the long-haul approach has gained favor in meetings. That would mean using the equivalent of 14 full grants in each of the first four years, leaving seven full scholarships for that fifth recruiting class. Wilder factors in attrition, knowing somebody is bound to transfer or quit.
While he'd love to take the Monarchs to the playoffs within the school's first five years the way Coastal Carolina recently did with its new program, he also doesn't want to have 37 players graduate in one year. That's Coastal Carolina's current plight.
His direction will be largely predicated on the quality of the 2008 class vs. what he sees for 2009.
"We will recruit what the market will bear," Wilder said. "But we'll have to be smart about it."
Wilder said he is focused on "recruiting good kids" to the point that when he has been walking the halls at various high schools, he's often taken time to "ask a janitor, a teacher or even a fellow student" about the integrity of a recruit.
"That first recruiting class will be a huge reflection of his school, his staff and his program," said Richard Morgan, head coach at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake. "These guys will be the standard setters.
"He has to make sure he gets great kids first. If he asks 10 different people about a recruit and all 10 say he's a great kid, then go after him. If nine out of 10 question the kid's character and the only one saying he has good character is his football coach, then he might want to look elsewhere."
According to Wilder, he has yet to offer anyone a scholarship. He'd like to watch the recruiting class ripen first.
"I need to know if we're dealing with a good apple or a bad apple. We don't need bad apples," Wilder said. "It's going to be hard enough for them to have to red-shirt a year without any games on Saturdays in the fall to hype them up.
"I know a lot of people are extremely interested in who our first commitment will be. I hope they have some patience, because we probably won't get one until December or January. I want these kids we are recruiting to focus in on their senior seasons and enjoy it."
