Identifying how schools will adapt to changing landscape of recruiting

The game has changed. Teams can’t simply expect to win with homegrown talent anymore. They must focus on the transfer portal, NIL, and high school recruits all at once. Not to mention, they have to focus on winning the games in front of them.

Change is no longer on the horizon. It’s moments away from having a head-on collision with college football. In a conversation with On3’s Andy Staples, On3 national scout Cody Bellaire revealed how teams must adjust to the incoming landscape changes.

“You’ll see [change] with the blue bloods. Specifically, the teams that have the funding, and they have all the resources in the world,” Bellaire said. “Everything that we just talked about, in terms of separate entities and all that stuff, those guys are going to do it in less than five years.

“In my my humble opinion, I think you’ll see every one of those blue-blood programs, they’ll split their operations. They’ll have a college side, they’ll have a high school side, they’ll have an advanced scouting side — they’ll have all of these bells and whistles to essentially cover themselves in every area of need.”

Not every program is playing catch-up. Teams like Ole Miss have adjusted their recruiting staff and strategies to excel in the modern era.

In turn, the Rebels boast the No. 2 spot in On3’s Transfer Portal Team Rankings, hauling in highly-coveted transfers such as Walter Nolen and Key Lawrence. Further, Ole Miss has fostered one of the most lucrative NIL efforts in the country with the Grove Collective.

Group of Five programs on the back foot in recruiting efforts

While Bellaire believes other schools will eventually be up-to-date in their recruiting strategies, he worries some won’t have the ability due to funding. Specifically, Bellaire claimed Group of Five schools may face more recruiting struggles than ever in the modern system.

“The schools that have an extremely hard time with this are the Group of Fives,” Bellaire said. “They already don’t have resources. They already are struggling in terms of high school recruiting, and they have to play behind everyone else, right?

“There’s some Group of Five schools that genuinely don’t start the recruiting process for kids until like that first signing day is over because they don’t want to commit time to practice recruiting and wasting all these resources for kids that end up not going there.”

SMU is the only Group of Five program in the top 50 of On3’s Transfer Portal Team Rankings this offseason. Further, no Group of Five team has a top-30 recruiting class in the 2024 cycle.