Visits are back: Big recruiting month ahead for UCF
At long last, in-person recruiting has returned to college campuses.
For more than 15 months, recruiting was exclusively virtual. We went through an entire recruiting cycle of players who weren't able to visit schools or meet coaches face to face.
Today, the floodgates open for what could be the busiest month in the history of recruiting. Summer is always the key time for unofficial visits and obviously camps, but many programs are planning to host dozens of official visits as well.
For UCF, three official visit weekends are being planned for later in the month with the headliner being "Bounce House Weekend." Coach Gus Malzahn talked about recruiting and that event in particular during his recent Oviedo Charge On Tour stop.
"June 1 to June 26 will probably be the most critical 26 days probably in the last two years of college football in just trying to compete to get (recruits) to visit," Malzahn said. "Our coaches have done a super job developing relationships over the phone and over Zoom. You're going to see a lot of big-time players that are going to be checking us out. We've got a weekend we call Bounce House Weekend. That's going to be the 11th, 12th and 13th (of June). We've got some big-timers coming. It's gonna be fun. I think we'll be the focus of college football that weekend."
Before we get to that first weekend of official visits, UCF is expecting plenty of unofficial visits and has an upcoming weekend of camps to look forward to as well.
On this very first day of contact, several top prospects from the Orlando area are expected to be on campus, including Sanford-Seminole linebacker Kam Moore, twin brothers Leyton Nelson and Logan Nelson of Boone High School, Bishop Moore wide receiver C.J. Smith and 2023 offensive lineman T.J. Shanahan of Timber Creek.
Moore, who is the younger brother of former UCF cornerback Brandon Moore, was offered by the staff in April. UCF joins a list of offers that include Louisville, Marshall, ECU and Buffalo.
After this unofficial visit to UCF, Leyton Nelson has a full schedule with four official visits this month including Pittsburgh (June 3), Miami (June 11), Tennessee (June 18) and Louisville (June 25).
Logan Nelson plays tackle in high school, but could project as a tight end in college. He received his first offer from Marshall in April.
C.J. Smith recently released a top five that included Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Ole Miss and Georgia. Alabama is believed to now be in that mix as they offered the following day. A detriment to UCF could be the lack of a track program as Smith is aiming to run track and play football in college.
T.J. Shanahan is among the most coveted players in the 2023 class. He has a busy month ahead. After visiting UCF, Shanahan will be at Florida and then will head out to the West Coast where he will see Oregon, Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Arizona and Arizona State. His father, Tim Shanahan, played at Arizona.
Stay tuned for news on additional visitors throughout the week.