A quick football recruiting update to start the War Room:
• Things are trending well with two-star safety Cecil Powell from Sunrise (Fla.) Piper High. Powell officially visited last week. A return text agreeing to an interview came after our bedtime one night and we have not been able to reach him, but in a watch what they do moment, Powell removed from his Twitter profile that he was committed to Baylor.
Our Baylor insiders on the Rivals network, as of yesterday, felt that Powell is going to stick with the Bears, but we think they are wrong.
As a senior at Sunrise (Fla.) Piper High, Powell had 45 tackles, eight picks, four forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries, 10 total touchdowns and over 1,000 all-purpose yards. He's also a track star, reaching the 4-A state finals in track last year in the 400-meter dash (sixth), long jump (fifth) and triple jump (13th) and helping his 1,600 relay team finish second.
Powell is a better bet at the moment than three-star safety Jamel Starks from Southwest Dekalb High in Decatur, Ga., who seems to be leaning hard towards Louisville. Starks, who was voted his region’s defensive player of the year, visited NC State, Nebraska and West Virginia in the fall. There was hope that new NC State co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach Tony Gibson, coming from West Virginia, would help the Pack in the Starks recruitment, but Starks had gotten along well with the new Louisville staff when they were at Appalachian State.
• NC State searched for junior college offensive linemen but a combination of academics and not being what the Pack was looking for has precluded anything from developing at this point. There was one name hanging out there but for now we do not believe that will happen.
It’s more likely that NC State will see how the grad transfer market unfolds in the spring (which was when Joe Scelfo became a possibility). Thus far the chase for those linemen on the transfer portal has been fierce.
•••
Early indications are that UNC and South Carolina are going to be two schools that NC State will cross in the 2020 class. To that end, the Gamecocks are hosting a junior day this weekend that will include four-star defensive end Myles Murphy from Southwest Guilford High in High Point and Asheville receiver Jhari Patterson from A.C. Reynolds High in Asheville this weekend.
Winston-Salem Prep defensive end Zaire Patterson in the 2021 class will also be there. All three of the prospects have NC State offers, with Jhari Patterson’s coming last weekend at junior day.
•••
This week was a bit of a bombshell when NC State announced that it was hiring Army director of athletics Boo Corrigan to replace Debbie Yow. The process unfolded very quietly, which was apparently exactly how NC State chancellor Randy Woodson wanted it to be.
For weeks there have been questions over whether or not Yow would follow through on plans to retire at the conclusion of her contract. (It now appears rather than work towards contract conclusion Yow will leave earlier than planned, when Corrigan takes over May 1.) We had multiple sources tell us that Yow was open to a potential one- or two-year extension, but ultimately Woodson was ready to proceed with the transition.
Indeed, to that end it would not stun us if Yow would be receptive to a “fixer upper” tenure at a school for a couple of years should an opportunity like that be presented.
We do not know much yet about the process that brought Corrigan to NC State, other than the Parker search firm pushed him hard, just like that search firm pushed Yow hard when she got hired by NC State. From what we gather, Corrigan quickly rose to the top of Woodson’s wish list and the process may have extradited quicker than some of the perspective candidates may have expected. Corrigan was believed to be under heavy consideration for the Vanderbilt AD position. He was also a strong contender for the Virginia AD job when it opened in recent years.
Prior to the Corrigan announcement, we had picked up a sense that former NC State football player and current Georgia State AD Charlie Cobb was the sentimental favorite among some around NC State. Some held out hope for South Carolina AD and former NC State baseball coach Ray Tanner but few expected that would materialize for various reasons.
We do believe Cobb was interested in the job. He has been at Georgia State for five years after serving as AD at Appalachian State for nine years. Whether or not Cobb was among the seven finalists Woodson talked to we do not know.
• Things are trending well with two-star safety Cecil Powell from Sunrise (Fla.) Piper High. Powell officially visited last week. A return text agreeing to an interview came after our bedtime one night and we have not been able to reach him, but in a watch what they do moment, Powell removed from his Twitter profile that he was committed to Baylor.
Our Baylor insiders on the Rivals network, as of yesterday, felt that Powell is going to stick with the Bears, but we think they are wrong.
As a senior at Sunrise (Fla.) Piper High, Powell had 45 tackles, eight picks, four forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries, 10 total touchdowns and over 1,000 all-purpose yards. He's also a track star, reaching the 4-A state finals in track last year in the 400-meter dash (sixth), long jump (fifth) and triple jump (13th) and helping his 1,600 relay team finish second.
Powell is a better bet at the moment than three-star safety Jamel Starks from Southwest Dekalb High in Decatur, Ga., who seems to be leaning hard towards Louisville. Starks, who was voted his region’s defensive player of the year, visited NC State, Nebraska and West Virginia in the fall. There was hope that new NC State co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach Tony Gibson, coming from West Virginia, would help the Pack in the Starks recruitment, but Starks had gotten along well with the new Louisville staff when they were at Appalachian State.
• NC State searched for junior college offensive linemen but a combination of academics and not being what the Pack was looking for has precluded anything from developing at this point. There was one name hanging out there but for now we do not believe that will happen.
It’s more likely that NC State will see how the grad transfer market unfolds in the spring (which was when Joe Scelfo became a possibility). Thus far the chase for those linemen on the transfer portal has been fierce.
•••
Early indications are that UNC and South Carolina are going to be two schools that NC State will cross in the 2020 class. To that end, the Gamecocks are hosting a junior day this weekend that will include four-star defensive end Myles Murphy from Southwest Guilford High in High Point and Asheville receiver Jhari Patterson from A.C. Reynolds High in Asheville this weekend.
Winston-Salem Prep defensive end Zaire Patterson in the 2021 class will also be there. All three of the prospects have NC State offers, with Jhari Patterson’s coming last weekend at junior day.
•••
This week was a bit of a bombshell when NC State announced that it was hiring Army director of athletics Boo Corrigan to replace Debbie Yow. The process unfolded very quietly, which was apparently exactly how NC State chancellor Randy Woodson wanted it to be.
For weeks there have been questions over whether or not Yow would follow through on plans to retire at the conclusion of her contract. (It now appears rather than work towards contract conclusion Yow will leave earlier than planned, when Corrigan takes over May 1.) We had multiple sources tell us that Yow was open to a potential one- or two-year extension, but ultimately Woodson was ready to proceed with the transition.
Indeed, to that end it would not stun us if Yow would be receptive to a “fixer upper” tenure at a school for a couple of years should an opportunity like that be presented.
We do not know much yet about the process that brought Corrigan to NC State, other than the Parker search firm pushed him hard, just like that search firm pushed Yow hard when she got hired by NC State. From what we gather, Corrigan quickly rose to the top of Woodson’s wish list and the process may have extradited quicker than some of the perspective candidates may have expected. Corrigan was believed to be under heavy consideration for the Vanderbilt AD position. He was also a strong contender for the Virginia AD job when it opened in recent years.
Prior to the Corrigan announcement, we had picked up a sense that former NC State football player and current Georgia State AD Charlie Cobb was the sentimental favorite among some around NC State. Some held out hope for South Carolina AD and former NC State baseball coach Ray Tanner but few expected that would materialize for various reasons.
We do believe Cobb was interested in the job. He has been at Georgia State for five years after serving as AD at Appalachian State for nine years. Whether or not Cobb was among the seven finalists Woodson talked to we do not know.
