Whether you are looking for more space to host those game day parties or looking to upgrade, Stein & Summers is your #1 fan in helping you find the home of your dreams! We have over 100 licensed agents servicing Kansas City, St. Joseph, and surrounding areas - including Kansas! Interest rates are at a record low while homes sales prices are at a record high! Contact us today to get started.
1) As of this morning, college football recruiting is back in a dead period. It comes after probably the wildest month of recruiting since actual rules were instituted (or at least since Eric Dickerson was being recruited). Missouri hosted 11 official visitors, but also had eight camps, two invite only recruiting events and unofficial visitors and on-campus evaluations too multiple to count. We posted more than 50 recruiting stories on 2022/23 football and basketball recruiting in the month of June.
I've seen a lot of people ask the question: "After having 16 months without recruiting, why are they already going back to a dead period?" The truth is, people need a break. The coaches do. They've worked ridiculously long days for a month straight now (I'm not saying you should feel sorry for them, they're well compensated, but everybody deserves some time off). But more than that, the kids do. Luther Burden had been out of town every weekend and multiple days during the week in June when I talked to him last week. 2023 prospect Kadyn Proctor visited Notre Dame, Alabama, Iowa and Missouri just this week. He sounded flat out exhausted when I talked to him last night. Both the coaches and the kids are about a month away from starting fall camp in preparation for the season. They need a break after packing 16 months of recruiting into four weeks.
On Wednesday, our staff is planning to record a special summer edition of the 573 Report recapping all the big news and recruiting chatter from June. Look for that on the site Wednesday afternoon.
2) Very shortly, our attention here will turn to previewing the season and getting you all set for the return to (mostly) normalcy of college football. SEC Media Days is a little more than three weeks away and Mitchell Forde will be there for us to cover Mizzou's appearance, which leads off the final day. We will have opponent previews, schedule breakdowns and position previews for the Tigers headed into what I think is fair to say the most anticipated Tiger season since 2014. I'd actually say this is the most excited I've seen the fanbase since 2008. That was the year Mizzou started the season No. 4 in the preseason polls with national title or bust aspirations. While 2013 was incredibly exciting, very few really saw it coming. Yes, the fanbase was excited entering 2014, but the Tigers had lost a fair amount--including the starting quarterback--off that 2013 team and realistically most didn't expect them to make a repeat run to Atlanta. You could argue that the level of excitement was this high in 2012 and you're probably right, but that had as much or more to do with the fact that it was the first year in the SEC as it did with the actual football team. The level of anticipation for year two under Eli Drinkwitz is as high as I've seen it around here in a long time. And truthfully, that has as much to do with the way he's been recruiting as it does anything that has happened or might happen on the field.
3) So about all that recruiting, what's going to happen next after this wild month for Mizzou? Deshawn Woods is making his announcement on Saturday and we feel very good about Missouri's chances. Jalen Marshall could make his choice at any time and we'd put Missouri right up there with him too. It's more a question of when, not if, Ahmad Robinson commits to Mizzou. Let's set the over/under on July commitments at 4.5.
The most excitement this month has surrounded Burden and Kevin Coleman. We don't see either one of them deciding anything any time soon. I think the best way to look at the Burden/Coleman situation is either, neither or both. In other words, is Missouri going to get one of them, neither of them or both of them. I'd handicap it at getting neither 50%, getting either 40% and getting both 10% (and I would have handicapped it similarly even before talk surfaced last week that they don't get along and they won't play together in college).
I know the reaction to that will be negative, but the truth is, Drinkwitz has Missouri with about a 40% chance to get one of the top two receivers in America. That's not bad. With Burden, I think it's Oklahoma, Alabama or Mizzou. I wouldn't completely write off Georgia, but I think it will be one of those three. Two weeks ago, I might have put Oklahoma third in that race, but now I think that might have been a misread. He's still committed to the Sooners and if you look at his social media, he posts far more about OU than any other school he visits. I think Missouri definitely has a shot, but the Tigers are going up against a team he's been committed to for months and the best program in college football. With Coleman, I think the interest is genuine and Missouri is very much back in the mix. But I still think it's an uphill battle for a kid who had made his mind up three months ago that he wanted no part of staying in state.
4) I'll just say this: It's fun covering recruiting when Missouri is involved with the level of talent it currently is. I've never covered recruiting like this. Gary Pinkel was great at identifying talent, but his M.O. was more taking guys other schools didn't think were great and making them great. On paper, Pinkel wasn't a great recruiter at Mizzou. We all know how the Barry Odom years went. Obviously it has to turn into wins on the field, but on paper, Drinkwitz is recruiting like nobody has at Missouri since covering recruiting became a thing (quick wet blanket reminder that a lot of these kids haven't actually committed to Missouri yet so the final product might look a little bit different than the idealistic projections right now). We like writing about things that get you guys excited to read. It's also not bad for business. Put me in the group that would love to see Drinkwitz recruit like this at Mizzou for many, many years to come.
