The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

College Sports

September 7, 2012

WVU coaches are out recruiting

By Mickey Furfari For The Register-Herald

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s football coaches will be beating the bushes Friday and Saturday for new talent.

They are able to do that — obviously — with the open date on the 11th-ranked Mountaineers’ schedule. WVU (1-0) resumes play next Saturday against underdog James Madison (1-0) at Landover, Md.

It will be “Sam Huff Day” in honor of one of WVU’s all-time greatest players. He’s a Hall of Fame legend in professional as well as collegiate circles.

Head coach Dana Holgorsen said WVU coaches would have gone recruiting on Monday this week were it not an official holiday. But they will be out on Mondays on occasion during the season.

“Later in the year we’ll go out Monday, and it will be to local areas,” Holgorsen explained.

“We’ll hit West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and parts of Maryland, and Virginia.

“When we have a couple of days, we can go to Texas and get to Florida. We’ll probably send four coaches to Texas and send three to Florida.

“I think Steve Dunlap is going to stay local. Other than that, everybody is going to be on an airplane going somewhere.”

He said the coaches like to see players already committed to West Virginia playing high school games. So such visits are planned. Holgorsen believes that’s tremendous from a support standpoint.

“Fall is just evaluation,” he continued. “We can’t go talk to parents; we can’t go talk to the kids.”

Basically, coaches can just go to high schools and to the high school coaches, he explained. He’s going to Houston himself to watch his nephew perform in a high school game.

West Virginia already has some players from Texas, knowing that it was going to be competing in the Big 12 Conference. And most of the new coaches here have ties to that state.

Whether WVU continues to take fewer recruits from its own state, Pennsylvania and Maryland remains to be seen.

Hopefully, Florida will continue to be a rich contributor to the West Virginia football arsenal. The Florida connection was developed and nurtured during the Don Nehlen regime in the early 1980s.

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