Advertisement
Published Oct 14, 2020
Q&A: Recruiting coordinator Josh Eargle
circle avatar
Jon Kirby  •  JayhawkSlant
Publisher- Football Editor
Twitter
@jayhawkslant

Tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator Josh Eargle met with the media to discuss recruiting and was asked about getting the team prepared without Les Miles.

Basically anyone can come back and keep their eligibility. How has that changed, maybe, the numbers you guys will look at taking, or has it changed that recruiting board approach?

Eargle: Well, first of all, I think it's the right thing to do. The NCAA is about student-athletes and about helping those young men and giving them the best quality student athlete experience they could possibly have. And so I think that's a great rule for those guys, it obviously helps the Jayhawks, because we don't want to see those guys go.

We love our seniors and we love those guys, we want them to have the best senior season they could possibly have without interruptions and hopefully us as a people and as a country and as a nation, we can find a way to get through COVID and continue to attack that.

I’m proud of those guys, I think numbers wise, it's not really changing our numbers because of the rules. The NCAA allows us to bring those guys back and give them that waivered year and we can continue to add to our numbers. And so our recruiting class, our 2021 class, really we haven't changed our philosophy or who we're trying to bring in or the numbers.

Will it affect specifically 2022 though? I know some people have said that that class may end up having to be smaller at some places.

Eargle: Well, that's exactly right. That's where you've got to be smart and look at our numbers, because that's when the 85 rule comes back into effect. Our roster obviously is really, really young. We're trying to infuse big classes of high school student athletes and Coach Miles has done a phenomenal job of recruiting high caliber, young kids to come in here.

And you can see that on Saturday's because there's a lot of them playing and so we're excited about those groups. It may affect that group, that group may be smaller than usual. They won't be the normal 25, I know that. But it's going to come down to our 85 number and where we fit and how many we can put into that class, but it will naturally be smaller.

Advertisement

With what you guys have done in 2021, how close is that to being, hey, the focus is now just keeping guys rather than going out and adding new guys?

Eargle: Yeah, really, really proud of our recruiting staff, the recruiting department, Dave, and Will Redmond do a great job over there in our recruiting department. And just following the lead of Coach Miles he's been an awesome stud of recruiting for a long period of time and he's doing a great job. And so these assistant coaches are pulling alongside and really trying to attack that 21 class when we were really quarantined and really that's what we put our hands to, and that's how that class grew so big so fast.


Hanging on to the 2021 recruiting class:

Eargle: So we obviously want to hang on to every one of our commitments. We love those guys, we've grown to create a great relationship. We can't wait to get that class on campus. We think it's going to be a game changer class for us. We're really, really excited about those who are in that class. There's very few pieces to be added. You may see one, two, three guys here and there to be added to that class. But man, we are ecstatic about getting the 2021 class on campus, just because of the type of people they are, the athletic ability they're going to bring and what they're going to bring to Lawrence and to the University of Kansas.


How has it been trying to recruit and adjust doing everything virtually and not having recruits on campus:

Eargle: It's definitely been a lot different. I would say that's the number one obstacle that we've all tried to overcome is not getting those guys on campus, man, you miss the official visits, you miss going out and seeing the coaches and the student athletes in their high schools and seeing them in their natural surroundings and around their current teammates. And that's the difficult thing, but we're all in the same boat trying to overcome that obstacle.

I think that our recruiting department's done a great job. I think that our assistant coaches have worked extremely hard getting those guys on virtual visits and trying to show them everything that we can show them on a Zoom call or on a FaceTime and just show them the unbelievable facilities. When they get on campus we already know they're going to love Lawrence. They're going to love the University of Kansas. They're going to love the facilities. I believe our relationships will only grow being in person. I think people are relational and they want to see each other and be around each other. But through technology, man, we've been able to really get a lot of face time, a lot of one-on-one time with their families and with each one of these recruits through technology. But I just think that we recruited pretty good and excited about where we're going with that class.

Okay. What's been different around the offices the past few days, just with Les not being there?

Eargle: Well yeah, you obviously miss Coach Miles, you miss his presence. I'll say this, I'll say that unfortunately we've gotten used to Zoom through the quarantine. And so him running the show from a Zoom call, he's getting everything done, he's still on top of everything and keeping us all in line and making sure we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. But he's rocking and rolling and he's going about his day.

He's just doing it virtually over Zoom. He's got us lined up and he's got us all trained up. We know our responsibilities and we're all digging at those to the best of our ability. But we do miss him here. We miss him in the building, we can't wait to see him again on game day at West Virginia.