Chasing the portal: Recruiting during bowl season challenges BYU resources
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- BYU football coach Kalani Sitake addresses his team during practice for the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024.
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- Members of the BYU football team pose for a photo during Alamo Bowl activities in San Antonio, Texas, on Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024.
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- BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff celebrates a touchdown against Houston at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday Nov. 30, 2024.
When BYU football recruits an athlete out of high school, it can be years of work before a commitment.
The transfer portal era condenses recruiting efforts into days or even hours as teams are preparing for a bowl game.
BYU will play Colorado in the Valero Alamo Bowl on Saturday in San Antonio and the Cougars have been extra busy behind the scenes recruiting the transfer portal. The program has seen success since the portal opened on Dec. 9, bringing in Texas edge rusher Tausili Akana, Utah tight end Carsen Ryan and Michigan offensive tackle Andrew Gentry, among others. Transfer portal rankings differ wildly between websites that track such things, because no one really knows how players will pan out in their new location, or even how long they will stay before leaving for what they think may be a better situation.
BYU Director of Player Personnel Justin Anderson and the recruiting staff are reaching the end of this portal cycle, which closes on Saturday.
“It’s been a whirlwind the past two and-a-half weeks,” Anderson said. “I have an app on my phone that notifies me when a player enters the portal and it feels like it’s been going off every ten seconds. It’s been fast-paced, exciting and stressful. It’s a real adrenaline rush when we get the guys we want. It’s kind of like high school football recruiting all rolled up into two and-a-half weeks.”
With a smaller recruiting staff than most power conference schools, BYU has an “all hands on deck” mentality during portal recruiting.
“Everyone has their own philosophy on portal recruiting,” Anderson said. “Ours is kind of unique in that we try to recruit kids who we had a previous relationship with or kids that have ties to BYU. Building a relationship has already taken place so we’re not starting from ground zero. We think that leads to a little bit more success with how long the kids stay with us. There have been some exceptions, like (wide receivers) Darius Lassiter and Keelan Marion, who we didn’t have previous relationships.”
Anderson said graduate assistants and analysts pitch in to gather information and transcripts — “the tedious stuff,” as Anderson calls it — to give to the coaching staff before they talk to a prospective transfer portal athlete.
When LaVell Edwards was the head coach at BYU, he was nicknamed “The Closer” because of his ability to to convince a recruit to come to Provo. In transfer portal recruiting, the entire coaching staff, from head coach Kalani Sitake to the coordinators and position coaches, have to be closers.
“We need more than one person to make this happen,” Anderson said. “It takes an army. Our coaches do a really good job. They are amazing with recruits and their families.”
Anderson said pre-planning is essential in recruiting from the portal to identify needs and what players might be available.
“It can be overwhelming recruiting from the portal,” Anderson said. “So many kids jump in. You don’t want to be chasing ghosts. It can be exciting talking to ten different guys but those ten guys could be talking to 20 other schools. We need to find out who in the portal we’re interested in and act fast to get the information we need to build the right relationships. This year has been a little different. There’s a two-week window where you can’t go see them, they have to come see you. Once we get the guys on campus, we feel like we’ll have good success with them.”
Former BYU kicker and recruiter Moose Bingham is now the president of Prep WarRoom (a company that creates software to manage recruiting) and hosts the Utah Preps Podcast.
“BYU has one of the smallest recruiting staffs in the Big 12 and probably in the power four,” Bingham said. “That puts more pressure on their resources in portal recruiting, but you’ve got guys like Justin Anderson and Brandon Bradley (BYU’s director of recruiting) that are just balling out. They have a great on-campus coordinator (Annie Barham). BYU is doing a really good job with the resources they have. Justin is doing a phenomenal job assisting and directing the coaches and helping Kalani Sitake secure these great classes.”
Anderson said if he had a wish list it would be for the NCAA to adjust the timing of the portal.
“With just two weeks for them to be in the portal, it seems like there could be a lot of errors taking place,” he said. “If you don’t have a relationship within a day or two, how can you really know these guys? We still think culture is a big deal and kind of the secret sauce in our recruiting. There are amazing kids and coaches but if you bring the wrong couple of people into that culture it could become toxic.
“Ultimately for us, we’re going to live in the high school recruiting world and be smart so we can fill our other needs through the portal. We want to recruit the right high school guys so they will stay in our program. Longevity is important. It’s tough to win in Year 1 of taking a lot of guys in the portal. Can you get them to stick around for Year 2?”
