The Sports Arsenal

National Signing Day has come and gone. Naturally, most of the attention around the country was focused on the recruits who signed with schools in the power five conferences. However, there is still plenty of interest in the recruiting hijinks taking place in other leagues, including the Southern Conference.

This is just a short post to make a few observations about the SoCon’s 2015 football signees.

First, here is a list of the league’s recruits: Link

I decided to make the list a bit more visual, and created a map with placemarks for every 2015 signee. I’ve embedded it below:

You can check and uncheck each school’s recruits if you want to make different comparisons, etc. Each placemark includes the player’s name, position, and hometown.

Last January, I wrote about an article in the analytics website Mode that featured an interactive map showing the hometowns of every Division I (FBS and FCS) football player. I thought it was interesting to compare that with the geographical distribution of this year’s recruits.

There has been quite a bit of “transition” in the SoCon, of course, with three football schools leaving (Appalachian State, Elon, and Georgia Southern). They have been replaced by East Tennessee State, Mercer, and VMI, and it’s not surprising that the recruiting territory for the conference has possibly changed as a result.

There have also been some coaching changes among the schools that remained in the league (including Samford this year and The Citadel last season), and that has probably had an effect as well.

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Odds and ends about a few of the SoCon’s newest football players:

– More 2015 recruits hail from Knoxville, Tennessee (13) than any other city. Ten of those players signed with East Tennessee State.

– There were ten other cities that provided three or more SoCon recruits: Nashville, TN (6); Columbia, SC (5); Cincinnati, OH (3); Chattanooga, TN (3); Greenville, SC (3); Atlanta, GA (3); Murfreesboro, TN (3); Spartanburg, SC (3); Charlotte, NC (3); and Salem, VA (3).

– Those three recruits from Salem, Virginia? They all went to Salem High School, and all three signed with VMI.

Hardin Valley Academy in Knoxville, Tennessee, also had three SoCon signees. All three of those recruits inked with East Tennessee State.

– ETSU had 45 signees, by far the most among SoCon schools. Wofford had 24; Mercer, 21; The Citadel, 17; Samford, 16; Chattanooga, 15; Western Carolina, 14; Furman, 14; and VMI, 13.

– Eleven of VMI’s thirteen recruits are from the state of Virginia, with the other two signees coming from much farther away — Maryland. By any measure, VMI’s recruiting class was the most compact in the league, at least in terms of geography.

– It appears there are nine transfers in the various classes, including seven from FBS schools. Four of those seven are from the now-extinguished UAB program.

Chattanooga picked up two former Blazers; Samford and ETSU each signed one. The UAB transfer who may have the most immediate impact in the SoCon is offensive lineman Hayden Naumann (now of Samford), who started twelve games at right tackle last season for the Blazers.

Several other transfers not listed among Wednesday’s signees will eventually appear on various league rosters. One of them is Ellis Pace, a running back who began his college career at East Carolina. Pace is transferring to Wofford.

– The “northernmost” 2015 SoCon recruit is Brandon Zamary, a defensive lineman from Aurora, Ohio, who signed with Wofford. The “westernmost” signee is running back Justin Curry, a native of Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Curry will play for Samford.

The “southernmost” recruit is from way down under. Mercer signed Australian punter Matt Shiel, a transfer from Auburn.

– Speaking of punters from southern regions, Samford inked George Grimwade of Miami, Florida, who is a dual-threat player — but not your typical dual threat. Grimwade is a 6’6″, 280 lb. offensive lineman who averaged 47 yards per punt for his high school (where he also plays basketball).

Grimwade and fellow Samford signee Vaquan Small (a wide receiver) are the two southernmost SoCon recruits from the continental United States.

– None of Furman’s 14 signees are from the state of South Carolina, so the Paladins are basically the bizarro version of VMI in terms of 2015 football recruiting. Furman’s press release included this interesting line:

Tight end Riley Gessner (Atlanta, Ga./Dunwoody H.S.) was Furman’s most heralded recruit, choosing the Paladins after receiving scholarship offers from 13 schools.

It struck me as a bit unusual that a school release would say a signee was its “most heralded recruit”.

– I usually disregard the blurbs about a player being “also recruited by” or “chose [our school] over [other schools]”. The reason I don’t pay attention to them is because they are often (if not always) bogus.

That said, I thought it was curious that two different schools in the SoCon (Mercer and Western Carolina) signed placekickers who were “also recruited by/chose us instead of” Penn State. Congratulations for whipping James Franklin on the recruiting trail, I guess.

Incidentally, Penn State did not sign any kickers on Wednesday.

– Miles Brown, a defensive lineman who signed with Wofford, is a student at Sidwell Friends, a well-known private school in Washington, DC. Sidwell Friends is perhaps better known for educating the children of well-known public figures than it is for football (both of President Obama’s daughters go there, as did Chelsea Clinton, Tricia Nixon, and Archie Roosevelt).

– The Citadel signed two brothers, Jalon and Jordan Williams, from Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. Jordan Williams is one of three players with the first name “Jordan” to sign with The Citadel, along with Jordan Black and Jordan Thomas. It is, to be sure, a name associated in recent years with winning.

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Now that the dust has settled, we’ll get to find out just how good these players are. Of course, September is still too far away…

Filed under: Football | Tagged: Chattanooga, East Tennessee State, Furman, Mercer, Samford, SoCon, The Citadel, VMI, Western Carolina, Wofford |