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Scott "Rufio" Feather
With Coach Scheier departing I figured I’d take a quick look back at the impact that he had on recruiting.
Fans will probably remember Coach Scheier for his Twitter account, which he did a good job with. When the Clawson staff took over we thought they would be a dramatic change in social media usage, but it was really only Scheier that ultimately seemed to embrace it.
From what I observed, Scheier’s recruiting impact was limited to his involvement with tight ends and specialists, and his recruiting territory of Washington DC, Baltimore and Northern Virginia. He also seemed to take annual trips up to the Philadelphia-area.
His biggest recruiting haul was the 2015 class when he reeled in Scotty Washington (3 other P5 offers) and Dionte Austin (11 other P5 offers) from the DC/Baltimore area and TE Bo Archibald (13 other P5 offers, including 7 SEC schools). Scheier also narrowly missed on OL Quarvez Boulware in that class.
After 2015, his impact wasn’t quite as significant – at least in terms of recruits with P5 offers.
Scheier definitely deserves recognition for gaining the early commitment of Dom Maggio (1 other P5 offer, but would have had more if he had stayed uncommitted for longer) in the 2016 class. However, Wake didn’t take anyone else from the DC/Baltimore area in that class. The TE commits were Brandon Chapman (2 other P5 offers) and Thomas Cole (no other P5 offers).
Scheier’s commits in the 2017 class are decidedly more under-the-radar types: CB Coby Davis (1 other P5 offer), OL Loic Nya (no other P5 offers) and TE Braden Atkinson (no other P5 offers).
Wake will be losing the connections that he developed in the DC/Baltimore-area. It will be interesting to see if Clawson factors those type of connections into his hiring decision. With Elko and Scheier leaving and Clark Lea rumored to follow Elko to Notre Dame, the following recruiting areas are (or will be) open:
Washington / Baltimore / Northern Virginia
Central Florida (Orlando/Tampa)
Alabama
Tennessee
Western North Carolina (i.e. Asheville)
Clawson could also choose to reconfigure the recruiting areas. I’ve been curious about whether he would give more assistants some responsibility for covering parts of Georgia, which was a state that received a lot of recruiting attention from Wake last cycle.
There is some fertile recruiting ground that is vacant.