Committed Players
FL ATH Chevelle Buie is healthy and ready to join the Rutgers F.A.M.I.L.Y.
Multiple '11 commits attended practice on Thursday.
Uncommitted Players
A Syracuse reporter cornered Coach Schiano at BE media day on recruiting. I recommend listening to the whole thing. He basically blows off the entire Syracuse angle in a very awesomely disparaging way, and then proceeds to rail against recruiting rankings (i.e., last year's Rivals NJ rankings where Rutgers only offered less than half of the supposed top 30 players).
You have to like RU being the first school out of the mouth of NJ WR Miles Shuler-Foster, although I am somewhat surprised by the presence of one program on this list. Clearly, Shuler and his family have different priorities than the average factory-crazed prospect.
“My top choices would be Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Fordham, the University of California, Stanford and Michigan,” he said.
In addition to his visits to college campuses, Shuler-Foster attended a summer football camp at Rutgers University. He had the opportunity to work with P.J. Fleck, the new wide receivers’ coach at Rutgers.
“I learned a lot, and I definitely enjoyed [the camp],” he said.
Florida may be losing top RB prospect James Wilder Jr. to FSU (edit: Georgia?!?!?), so where will Urban Meyer turn?
Huggins is believed to be the top running back on Florida’s board, but a source said Rutgers appears to be his favorite. While Huggins visited Florida earlier this month and gave the school and coaching staff rave reviews, it’s believed that with all the visits he’s made to Rutgers, pulling him away from there could be too hard for any school right now.
Cablevision subscribers can watch this feature on NJ OL Josue Matias.
NY DE Ishaq Williams will narrow down his list soon.
This brief update on NJ WR Damiere Byrd reiterates the weeks-old info about his official visits.
MD OT Donovan "probably going to Penn State" Smith released a top 12 with Rutgers on it. DC DT Kevin McReynolds appears scared away from UNC by the investigation into Marvin Austin. VA OL Jay Whitmire is leaning to UVA. MD LB Conner Crowell's top 3 is PSU, OSU, and Stanford.
Another verbal offer is out to 2012 NY DB Wayne Morgan. Looks like he's going to be a high profile prospect. Same goes for PA TE Colin Thompson.
This update on PA DE Branden Jackson says little-to-nothing.
FL DE Ricardo Williams is a cornerstone for Homestead. FL DE B.J. Dubose doesn't have RU in his top 3. FL DE Curt Maggitt and CB Nick Waisome could announce for UF soon. FL QB Jacoby Brisset isn't looking at RU. Doesn't seem like FL CB Jabari Gorman is either. FL LB Ramik Wilson doesn't have RU in his top five.
Eric LeGrand's high school coach recounts how Rutgers offered LeGrand as a true freshman, and decries new NCAA regulations limiting written offers to seniors.
Yep, Rutgers has lost a few prospects to Pitt this year, although they're still in pretty good shape with the second best recruiting class in the Big East to this point. Gotta do well with the NJ prospects left on the board, and make up that ground out of state.
You may have noticed various site defections to 24/7 Sports over the past few weeks (mostly from ESPN, with a few from the others). The latest is SoFlaFootball, a (presumably formerly) free site that I regularly check. 247sports.com is live now, so I'm going to be checking over the next few days to see how good their tech and content is. A huge development is that they snagged Sean Fitz from Blue White Illustrated on Rivals, which effectively cripples that site from what PSU people tell me.
NJ DE Max Issaka committed to Pitt. That article mentions some of the rumors floating around, but he still faced heavy local pressure to stay home as you would expect with someone who plays right in RU's backyard. Too bad, because RU has lost a couple players to Pitt over the past month, and he would have been a perfect fit for the defense. Fun fact: Pitt has only two commits from Western Pennsylvania this year. Maybe we should try to get in there. They now have three DE commits and could be trying for four. It's just odd considering that RU only has George over the past two years and they have a bunch now, with Issaka saying they use eight (huh?) a game.
NJ TE Ryan Malleck committed to Maryland. That's surprising given the state of their program, but the Terps were on Malleck from the start and he'll be the only TE in their class.
FL QB Phil Ely surprisingly picked Alabama. FL OL Tony Posada verbaled to Michigan.
Watchlist: This is a section of this site's weekly recruiting posts featuring links to players that Rutgers may or may not be showing interest in, but has not yet offered.
Ben Curtis, Matt Giachinta, Christon Gill, Herzel Glashen, Myles Jackson, Kyshoen Jarrett, Timmy Keith, Anthony Natale, Chris Polony, and Nate Smith.