Big change with how official visits are tallied stands to help programs better manage numbers for each cycle.
Legislation passed by the NCAA on Wednesday changes the way the recruiting calendar works and sets up college football programs to have its full allotment of official visits available each spring. The change is immediate and starts with the 2021 cycle.
Previously, institutions received its 56 official visits in August, and those visits would count both toward the current cycle, but also any remaining ones unused could go toward the future cycle with official visits that start in the spring and go through the summer, up to the reset date.
Now programs are receive all 56 visits in April and they’re available through March of the following year, before it resets again, containing it all to one recruiting cycle.
The move was pitched by the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences last July and made effective and immediate this past Wednesday.
This was the rationale given to the Football Oversight Committee:
“Adjusting the window to run from April 1 through March 31 will allow institutions to manage the allotment of official visits by aligning the limit with one recruiting class at a time. Finally, an immediate effective date would allow an institution to have up to 56 visits (or up to 62 with unused visits from the previous year) through March 31, 2020. Then, visits would reset to the new calendar (April 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021).”
The original start of the calendar had always been August, as prior to 2018, football programs couldn’t host high school juniors for official visits.
When that was changed for the 2018 season, programs that used up its official visits on the previous cycle, were unable to host juniors during April through July.
It primarily affected programs going through coaching changes, which require programs to use more official visits in December and January, and are less likely to have some leftover for the spring or summer months and the next cycle.
This happened to Nebraska after Scott Frost took over in December 2017. Between Mike Riley’s use of official visits and Nebraska’s new staff’s need to fill up the class, the Huskers were left with only a couple available official visits in 2018. Nebraska chose not to host anyone that first spring or summer.
The subsequent cycle, Nebraska was able to host 2020 official visitors, using the 2019 cycle’s remaining numbers. The Huskers hosted 11 official visitors this past spring and summer before the calendar reset in August. Barring a run of visitors over the final two weeks, Nebraska had left itself more than 15 official visits for the 2021 cycle, which it will no longer need with the change in legislation.
Schools may continue to carry over six visits each cycle, giving a program a maximum of 62 official visits to use each year.
The only schools where this will not change are service academies, who do not subscribe to the National Letter of Intent.
