Early Signing Period Helps OSU Fend off Poachers

Poachers are not a new thing in college football recruiting.

In fact, OSU has been the victim of programs raiding its recruiting class for years — the latest example coming on Tuesday when Colorado plucked in-state defensive tackle Israel Antwine from OSU’s commitment list.

Given the new recruiting timeline and an early signing period, however, poaching has quickly evolved — and Mike Gundy says that’s been a positive change he’s noticed this cycle.

“It’s easier for us to recruit every year,” said Gundy on Wednesday. “It’s interesting, with the early signing period we had some poachers — not as many as in the past — but we had a few poachers. The majority of them failed, and I thought that was interesting.”

Gundy called the early signing period the best thing to happen to college football, talked about his future QB1 fishing with success on his ranch, and opened up about Zac Robinson’s program-changing talent he witnessed when he arrived as a freshman in his signing day press conference Wednesday. You think he’s not thrilled about the legislation changes the NCAA mandated?

There is no one, perhaps, that has benefited more from the new early period than Gundy. He signed 22 recruits on Wednesday, and despite losing one to Colorado on Tuesday, he held on to the majority of his class through signing day and can enter bowl preparation as carefree as his mullet suggests he is.

It’s a new, no B.S. process, for a no B.S. program.

“For the most part, we don’t have to continue to pull along young men who’ve been recruited for months and months to our program,” he said. “Let’s get ‘em signed up, let’s move down the road and get rid of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes. It’s going to help clean this game up.”