Dave Shumate, Will Redmond give recruiting insight

The recruiting junkies got a good look at the inside of the Kansas program on Wednesday night when Dave Shumate and Will Redmond were guests on Hawk Talk.

We captured some of the topics and comments from Shumate and Redmond below.

Describe what your role is:

I oversee the personnel side, our on-campus side, and our creative side. We've been blessed here. Jeff Long has done a great job of putting in the resources like he was talking about to get this thing caught up to Power Five and I believe when we got here in January 2019, it was 10th in support staff, not just in our recruiting support staff, but analysts as well. Now we're fourth. So we're investing money and we're investing in the staff. That will get us caught up to what a lot of the recruiting staff analysts are coming from to get us competing with our competition on a regular basis.

Talk about the recruiting class you signed and the work you have done in this class and the focus of recruiting mainly high school players:

It's been 10 to 12 years since KU really had any success and everybody else that's been here has gone the JUCO route and we feel like you’ve got to have transfers here and there to plug in holes but for the most part, 90, 95% of your team has to be from the high school ranks. And I just feel like that comes from a development standpoint, physical, mental, and even from a culture standpoint.

Kids are here from their freshman year, they're setting the standard by the time they're juniors and seniors for the next kids coming in. When you bring in junior college prospects, nothing against them but they're here and in one, two years and they're out the door. There's no culture, no foundation being set. So that's what we think it is. After two or three years in the program, being down in the weight room, we'll be ready to go compete with the top teams in the Big 12.

DaJon Terry, Karon Prunty, Lawrence Arnold, Kenny Logan, between them I think they had like 480 snaps this year. And Kenny Logan and DaJon are the oldest two kids as redshirt freshmen. So, we're playing a bunch of young kids. Again, not an excuse, but we are building it through the high school ranks. We continue to ask people to be patient. We're going to get there. It's just that we've got to start somewhere. We’re just building it with the young kids.

How involved Les Miles is in the recruiting process:

We watch recruiting film with him every day. It's funny, even going back to the COVID stories. We're starting in March, we're watching 10 prospects a day, Monday through Friday. We have buddies from other schools that work in personnel their saying, ‘Hey you're already watching film with your head coach?’

Through Zoom we're setting him up. It trickles down to all our staff, do not take any days off in recruiting. We had the virtual visits set up and we're having our nutritionist, strength and conditioning, player development everybody's on. As Coach Miles says everybody in the building recruits.

Coming up with the idea as one of the first staffs to incorporate Zoom calls into an unofficial visit:

I will tell you the story and I'll give Will credit on this. So, me and him, actually we kind of hit when we were on spring break. Me and my wife were flying back here from New Orleans, and me and Will saw everything was shutting down. We were hitting ideas off each other how we would go about this. Because we had a junior day coming up that next weekend, so we had a bunch of kids, some of our top 2021 and 2022 prospects coming into town from all over the country, actually, and just kind of spit balling ideas.

We came up with the virtual junior day where we got everybody on board and our staff did introductory videos. It gave us an all-day 24-hour thing. And that kind of morphed into the Zoom calls we've done with every kid that's committed to us in '21 where they're talking and whole staff introduces themselves. They go through player development. Ed Jones has done a great job. They see the training room, nutritionist, strength and conditioning. So that's a good fit. That's how we kind of got ahead here. And we're even trying to get ahead of how we're going to do stuff with potentially not having in-home visits and how signing day is going to look. I'm blessed to have a creative staff in recruiting and it trickles down all the way through our whole coaching staff.

Talk about the recruiting staff and direction you see:

Like Dave said, Kansas football is built of so many people that do an incredible job for us on a day-to-day basis. And we tell people, we tell kids, and we tell families, we tell coaches that you can go anywhere. You can play for any university. And every where has 45-pound plates in their weight room. Right? But it's the people within the walls that change the dynamic of that place. And we've got great people. And from a recruiting standpoint, we're fortunate to have individuals who are extremely driven, show up to work every day with a great mindset and mentality of trying to make this place better. And you kind of chip away one day at a time, and we've got some things going in the right direction. So, we're really excited about the future of this program.

On recruiting and building a staff that is up to Big 12 standards:

I think it's very important for us to note that our Williams Fund donations that come in were able to build this staff and to build this program to where it is now. So yes, we were able to do some things that were an extreme positive at the time in bringing some of those players, guys who are making big impacts for us now on the football field.

Talk about the progression of recruiting virtually and breakdown of film:

Zoom has been an incredible asset and an incredible tool for us. Dave spoke to it, but meeting with coach (Miles) every day and being able to evaluate film watching eight, nine, 10 evaluation tapes, for us it's not always about the highlight. We want to see plan and play out what a professional player looks like at a professional level. We want to make sure we're finding that kid at the high school level as well.

We're not just evaluating the high school tape, but we're, from a highlight perspective, evaluating the game film in its entirety. And so for us, managing all of that and getting our kids to buy into what we're trying to do, and setting up a plan and a program, a specific plan from a recruiting aspect for that prospect is extremely important. Their families want to know, especially high school student athletes, how are you going to take care of my student athlete? How are we going to get them to the next level after college? Whether that be professional football or life after. KU offers incredible life after opportunities because we all know the NFL stands for not for long.

We want to make sure that our student athletes have an incredible plan moving forward once they're done playing football. And our staff does a great job of doing that. And I think high school student athletes really buy into that and see that because they're seeing their brands come to life through our creative side, with Ashley McCaffrey, just creating incredible graphics that really explain to these kids what's next for them.

How is the staff able to win recruiting battles:

Day in and day out, showing them facilities, having them meet and talk with our staff, having them meet and talk with the strength staff, have them meet and talk from a nutrition standpoint. Even down to our dorm rooms, which are really apartments. You know, most people have a dorm room that's not overly exciting to look at, but when you come to KU, you're staying in an apartment with your own bathroom. That's a difference-maker for student athletes. We're able to sell all of those pieces of our program to student athletes. And obviously, early playing time coming in as a high schooler and being able to put some real game film together early and often is really important to these kids.