Academics, Recruiting Mar Hokie Football Offseason

By Alexander Koma on July 9, 2013

The offseason is supposed to be a time for optimism, but lately, things have been downright depressing for Hokie football fans.

While anticipating a season-opening matchup with defending national champion Alabama would be nerve wracking enough, Virginia Tech has received one piece of bad news after another about incoming recruits, potential signees and current players alike.

The worst immediate news comes in the form of the report that 2013 commit and four-star safety Holland Fisher failed to qualify academically at Tech and will be forced to spend the year with prep school Fork Union Military Academy.

While the Hokies don’t exactly have an immediate need at safety, the worrying part of this news is that Fisher will once again be a recruitable athlete at Fork Union. He’ll have to choose to sign with Tech again in February should he get his grades up.

Fisher might still intend on returning to Blacksburg at the moment, but the Hokies signed the safety in the face of intense competition from the Crimson Tide last year, and it’s impossible to ignore the potential for Nick Saban’s influence to sway Fisher over the course of the next few months.

But Fisher is hardly the only recruit the Hokies have seen head to prep school and face recruiting pressure in the last year.

Running back Drew Harris was forced to enroll at Fork Union last year, and ongoing problems with his transcript have forced him to head to a junior college in Brooklyn this summer.

Florida State has been in hot pursuit of Harris during this whole saga, and considering that Tech traditionally doesn’t accept junior college transfer, it seems a very real possibility that he could end up a Seminole.

In addition to the absence of these two prep players, the team is also faced with pondering the uncertain futures of three other 2013 recruits.

While 14 players officially enrolled with the school for the university’s second summer session, linebacker Andrew Motuapuaka, cornerback Cequan Jefferson, and running back D.J. Reid all remain in limbo.

Motuapuaka and Jefferson are only considered three-star recruits, but Reid is largely regarded as a four-star player, and has the flexibility to play cornerback as well as tailback.

With both Reid and Harris’ status uncertain, the future of the running back position was already in question, but then the news that Michael Holmes won’t be reinstated to the team emerged to truly throw a wrench in the works.

Athletic director Jim Weaver said that Holmes is “permanently separated” from the team after his arrest for assault in late April. The charge was ultimately reduced to a misdemeanor, meaning that the team could’ve reinstated Holmes, but the student judiciary panel ruled that he wouldn’t be able to return to the school.

Yet beyond all the bad news about current recruits and players, the truly depressing news has come on the recruiting front for 2014.

Although the team has been assembling an impressive class over the last few months, Tech was surely hoping to add some in-state five star prospects like Da’Shawn Hand or Andrew Brown.

Instead, both spurned the Hokies in recent weeks.

Many considered Tech the leader in the clubhouse to sign Hand, the nation’s top recruit, for the university’s respected engineering school and proximity to Hand’s home in Northern Virginia.

Yet Hand narrowed his options to Alabama, Michigan, and Florida, claiming that Tech lacked the sports marketing major he was looking for, a departure from his earlier comments indicating he wanted to pursue an engineering degree.

But while losing Hand may have stung, watching Brown sign with hated rival UVa must have truly pained the coaching staff.

The Cavaliers have dominated in-state recruiting recently, adding Brown to fellow top Virginia signees like Quin Blanding and Steven Moss, and while Virginia is famous for recruiting well and not producing results during the season, this has to be disturbing trend for the Hokies.

Despite all this recent doom and gloom, it’s important to keep things in perspective. The 2014 recruiting class already has 14 signees, and many view it as one of the top 25 classes in the nation.

Besides, the team is still in the running for Virginia Beach’s four-star recruit Derrick Nnadi, and signing the prized defensive tackle would make Brown’s loss hurt a little less.

Even Holmes’ absence might not be that meaningful for the team; it’s never great to see players experience legal trouble, but the backfield pecking order is much clearer now that Trey Edmunds and J.C. Coleman are the only truly realistic options on the depth chart.

The national media has even taken notice of Tech’s promise, naming Logan Thomas and James Gayle to the Maxwell and Bednarik award watch lists respectively.

While a big signing or two would definitely buoy spirits in Blacksburg after a rough few weeks, there’s still no true cause for concern, just more and more reasons to count the days until August 31st.

 

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