Recruit signing day turns into a long one

Boy, am I glad this day is over.

Recruiting is always a fun, intense and interesting time of the year. Leading up to signing days, there always seems to be twists and turns, drama and some mystery.

As it ended up, BYU’s signing day ended up very routine, exactly as it looked most of the fall and winter. There were no cliff-hangers, no last-minute additions or subtractions unless you count JC corner Brian Logan, who visited and committed last weekend. The big news was over Kyle Van Noy and his signing but agreement with Bronco Mendenhall to not enroll until January 2010 because of issues he had as a citizen (DUI citation over the weekend).

This is a good, solid class for BYU. It lacks a couple of defensive linemen and, as Bronco Mendenhall pointed out, an inside linebacker. There are enough highly ranked recruits in this class that BYU fans can argue with Utah fans that one or the other had the best recruiting class and both will probably be right.

It is interesting to hear and see much hand-wringing by some BYU fans over BYU not signing Timpview’s Xavier Sua-Filo or Bingham’s L.T. Filiaga. But folks, these players never really were in the BYU camp (as a solid leader) the whole time. Ding, ding, ding… BYU is never going to get all the top LDS athletes. Some simply want to go elsewhere. It’s always been that way, always will.

Manti Teo’s decision is interesting. An education at Notre Dame is very expensive. Graduates are all but lock up jobs from alumni. Students who go there spend about $80,000 a year and few regular folks can afford it. But its football program is in trouble, far from being a BCS bowl player. The coach is on the brink of being fired if he doesn’t turn it around and it won’t be as quick as next season.

Sua-Filo, a big tackle rated as one of the top in the country had narrowed his choices to USC, UCLA, LSU, BYU and Utah. He took LSU off the list two weeks ago and then showed his cards on signing day. What happened is his close friend, Stan Hasiak, a giant lineman from Kapolei High in Hawaii, who had commited to sign at Cal, switched his commitment at the last minute and signed with UCLA. Sua-Filo knew this was coming down the pike and once it happened, he joined his friend in Westwood. Both were sold a great game plan by UCLA’s coaches on how they wanted to build the Bruin offense around them on the line.

I haven’t been able to get to the blog for a while and I apologize. I spend the weekend in St. George where I worked on getting an interview with Adam Hine’, the former Adam Timo. I finally busted through and spoke to his mother and then the athlete himself. His coach resigned after the season and never returned my calls. Then, to complicate my time this week, the paper asked for several broad recruiting stories and then assigned me to do the lead recruiting story for the paper for Thursday, a more specific one centering on BYU and then my regular Thursday column. With the press conferences today, I finally got to the keyboard around 3:30 p.m., to start work on those items. Ordinarily, Jeff Call and I would divide up some of the BYU work but he is on a family vaction to Disneyland this week.

I didn’t even have time to listen to my buddies on local talk radio opine about recruiting, one of them, I hear, called Spanish Fork TE Richard Wilson, “Roger.”

The Van Noy situation is interesting. I thought he was one guy who could help right away and now his entrance, if he can help himself in the eyes of Mendenhall, will be in January, a long time away. I had just spoken to his high school coach on Tuesday night.

Here is what coach Dalton had to say about Van Noy. Because of the events Wednesday, they didn’t make it into my stories that will appear in Thursday’s paper.

“He’s a great athlete and a , tremendous competitor and a very intelligent player. He possesses a second gear and we call it the ‘Van Noy Gear’ where he has that second gear on the field. He just does a great job for three years on the varsity. He’s very rangy and he can really run. He played wide receiver and linebacker for us. He’s a big play guy who plays big in big games.”

Also, since posting a blog about Brian Logan, the JC cornerback, committing to BYU on Super Bowl Sunday, I mentioned that I couldn’t hook up with him because his phone was turned off.

He called me back finally on Tuesday and apologized. He said in all the excitement with the BYU trip, scholarship offer and other recruiting stuff, he’d failed to pay his cell phone bill and it was turned off by the company. He just got it back on this week.

Logan, who has 4.4 speed, played corner at Foothill Community College in California and had committed to San Diego State before Chuck Long was fired. He also tripped to Utah State right before his visit to Provo.

Logan had a whirlwind trip to Utah State, set up and executed just 48 hours after talking to an Aggie assistant. On his trip to Provo, he had a week and a half to prepare and booked a flight for his mother to accompany him on his trip.

“I’m really excited to play at BYU,” he said. “It’s a program that is used to winning championships, two of the last three and I hope I can contribute to win another one. I got my letter of intent in the mail today (Tuesday) and plan on signing it Wednesday and return it in the mail.

“I was impressed with Bronco Mendenhall and how he cares about his players. On my visit, I went to a basketball game and saw how the fans support their players and that got me excited. Andrew Rich took me on my trip and told me about the crowd, the fans and BYU practices. I was so amped up, I was ready to put on pads right then and there.”

I’ll have more opinions on this class in coming days. Look for the quote Wednesday from Lee Aguirre’s coach.

Bronco was asked how he thought the recruiting battle instate went between BYU and Utah.

Here is his response:

“If you go by the numbers of the players head-to-head, they (Utah) probably have more commitments. But after going through the whole process, I think it turned out exactly how it should have. They got the players who wanted their program and we got the players who wanted our program and there is a very clear distinction between the two and that’s what I’m comfortable with.

“Those who chose the University of Utah, I think they made a great choice for them. The ones that chose BYU made a great choice for them. As much information that is out there and as transparent as organizations are, it isn’t hard to tell what direction programs are going and why. So, again I don’t view it as who got the most but who got the right players [for their program] and I’m very comfortable with that.”