Wisconsin football recruiting: NCAA extends dead period for college football recruiting

On Wednesday evening, the NCAA announced that the college football recruiting dead period would extend from May 31st to June 30th. Originally put into effect on March 13th due to the international coronavirus pandemic, the NCAA will reevaluate the dead period dates on May 27th and see if they are going to extend it further.

For those not as in tune with the NCAA’s recruiting jargon, a “dead period” is defined by the NCAA’s website as, “During a dead period a college coach may not have face-to-face contact with college-bound student-athletes or their parents, and may not watch student-athletes compete or visit their high schools. Coaches may write and telephone student-athletes or their parents during a dead period.”

For the Wisconsin Badgers specifically, the spring evaluation period had been a time where the secured a number of verbal commitments. There are few places in the country more inviting than The Terrace on a May or June afternoon and it had proven to be a pretty effective closer for Paul Chryst and co.

A number of Wisconsin targets had visits to Madison scheduled for June including 4-star TE Terrance Ferguson (June 12), 3-star DE Darryl Peterson (June 12) and 3-star CB RJ Regan (June 5). Now these visits will have to be rescheduled and some prospects may be forced into making a decision earlier than they’d like.

Per the NCAA’s FBS recruiting calendar, the only remaining evaluation time for teams would be from July 25th to July 31st and that is only a “quiet period,” defined as: “During a quiet period, a college coach may only have face-to-face contact with college-bound student-athletes or their parents on the college’s campus. A coach may not watch student-athletes compete (unless a competition occurs on the college’s campus) or visit their high schools. Coaches may write or telephone college-bound student-athletes or their parents during this time.”

While this primarily affects the 2021 class, the 2022 class will also be behind the eight ball since this spring/summer would have been used to get them in front of more college coaches. Josh Helmholdt at Rivals has a lot more information and insight into this if you are interested in reading more.