Paul Rhoads talks recruiting

DALLAS — Depending on whom you ask, Iowa State currently has two or three (Paul Rhoads says two) verbal commitments in its 2016 football recruiting class.

It’s July 23. 

That number seems somewhat small. So is Iowa State’s head coach concerned? 

“Five wins in two years, I’d sort of want to see what Iowa State would do in 2015,” Rhoads said of perspective recruits this week at the Big 12’s media day event in Dallas.

But…

“To be where we are, to know where we are at with the other guys and know where we are on the board with other guys and the relationships that we’ve built at this point, I feel fine with where we are at right now.” 

In the past, Iowa State’s recruiting philosophy has been to fill up at least half of the class early with solid, realistic prospects. These are your two-star guys who with proper development can be legitimate Big 12 players by the time they are juniors and seniors.

By my estimation, Iowa State will only have anywhere from 13 to 15 scholarships (this can obviously change due to attrition and what not) to give in the class of 2016. For football, this will be an incredibly small class and with that, time isn’t that big of a deal. 

Earlier this week, I specifically asked Rhoads how his recruiting philosophy has changed from the day he got to Iowa State to now.

His answer in its entirety:

“There hasn’t been drastic change in what our philosophy is. I think we have added areas into what we are trying to get. Thinking as I speak, I would probably say one area is that we went from leaner offensive linemen and really trying to develop 250 to 260 pound guys to 310 and we are back where we are getting the 280 to 290 already and having that size and reshaping it or developing it or so forth. We were smaller at the receiver position with what we had. We recruited some smaller guys and thought they would be good enough to win with. We have gone back to bigger receivers and partly because we were having so much trouble defending guys like that. We’ve got them ourselves and I think that our opponents would say that we are a challenge to defend at the receiver position. The things that I am looking for from a character, from an academic, from the game being important to them and their commitment to that, we haven’t strayed one inch from that philosophy.”