I'm sure we have it figured out, just not communicating our intentions or possibly strategy.

Wow, Coach Deion Sanders shaking up the college football world. Previously, he signed his highly regarded QB son. Now...

ESPN: "Cornerback Travis Hunter, the No. 2-ranked recruit in the country, flipped his commitment from Florida State to Jackson State on Wednesday to become the first five-star high school football prospect to sign with an FCS team since ESPN started its rankings in 2006."

Hunter partly wants to partake in the rich history if HBCUs.

At least at some level this is a failure. While we didn’t offer that many, I suspect there is no strategy where you don’t want a few freshmen to accept a scholarship offer.

I gotta agree with river here. I doubt the plan was to have 1 official signee today. You wanna get these guys locked in early. It'll be interesting to see what Hawk has to say about it... If it even gets covered by the news that is.

What bugs me about this is that the Aggie fan base has been kept in the dark. The early signing day for football is a big deal for Aggie fans each year and it generates a lot of anticipation and excitement for all of us who follow the Ags closely. It's a big mistake, IMO, for the coaches and the Athletics Department to not be saying anything about what's happening and leaving Aggie fans uniformed and speculating.

Agreed. If you weren't a Twitter user and just looked at the athletics page you wouldn't even know it was NLI day. Maybe they did that on purpose though. Tough to put a lot of fanfare into landing 1 or 2 guys.

And I'm not putting down our new Aggies by any means. I'm always stoked to add new guys to the roster. Here's to hoping they become impact players for us!

What's the roster limit? We have a huge RFrosh group, as big as Hawks first group.

15 - Freshmen
36 - Redshirt Freshmen*
23 - Sophs
17 - Juniors
<91>
13 - Seniors / Grads

I count at least 17 Redshirt Frosh as contributing. Not sure how many of the 91 are walk on, 5-10? I'm OK w key signees.

I'm fine with whatever the coaches feel is best for recruiting and building a team that competes with the best in the FCS. I wish they'd just keep the fan base informed about NLI signing day....the silence just keeps us wondering about what's happening...

Sam Houston State swooped in last minute with an offer to LB Sincere Jackson and he commits and signs

Only two signees? Something's going on here...

Tim Plough & Keane are active at Boise State.

And only 1 of the 2 was even announced as a signing. This signing period goes through the 17th, but typically the kids who are going to sign in this period do it day 1. JUCO kids can sign through mid January and then we have the February signing date as well. I have to agree though that this is highly unusual for Hawkins and company. They've prided themselves on recruiting in the past and that has been backed up by success in the December signing period.

Sac has announced 11 signees and, according to a post on the Hornets Forum, 5 are rated 3 stars and 3 are rated 2 stars. The forum poster also said that the coaching staff had done a great job of addressing their biggest needs. It sounds like TroyTaylor is continuing to build the program into an FCS power.

CLASS BREAKDOWN
OFFENSE (2): 1 running back, 1 tight end
DEFENSE (9): 1 defensive lineman, 4 linebackers; 4 defensive backs
SPECIALISTS (0): None

CALIFORNIA (11): 4 Sacramento Area, 5 Central Valley, 1 Bay Area

SIGNEES

Name Pos. Ht. Wt. Hometown/High School
Zeke Burnett RB 5-10 205 Sacramento, Calif./Elk Grove HS
Tyler Henry DL 6-3 275 Vallejo, Calif./De La Salle HS
Riley Hernandez LB 6-2 235 Bakersfield, Calif./Liberty HS
Nakian Jackson LB 6-1 230 Stockton, Calif./Edison HS
Lamont Johnson Burrell DB 6-3 175 Sacramento, Calif./Sacramento HS
Coleman Kuntz TE 6-3 230 Beaumont, Calif./Etiwanda HS
Brock Mather LB 6-0 220 Ridgecrest, Calif./Bakersfield JC
Elias Mullican DB 6-1 170 Rocklin, Calif./Rocklin HS
Caleb Nelson DB 6-1 185 Roseville, Calif./North Dakota
Alex Rocha LB 6-2 200 Bakersfield, Calif./Bakersfield HS
Zelmar Vedder DB 6-3 175 Manteca, Calif./Modesto JC

https://www.hornetsports.com/sports/fball/2021-22/releases/202112151v8jin

Every year until now there's activity on the athletic department website, lots of videos, tweets, etc. This year, crickets? I'm just a former player turned fan and of course defer to Coach in how to run the program, but this is unsettling to a fan.

I agree 100%!

Yeah BGA and I were talking about that too. Looking at the athletic website you wouldn't even know that today was NLI day. That being said, it could have been intentional because there just wasn't much to report.

That may be true but, the question that lingers, is why?

I wish I knew haha! I'm totally with you on this one. I was expecting a relatively normal NLI day. I wasn't expecting a huge class just based on the information that was out there, but usually there's at least a couple surprise signings. I never would have guessed we've have 1 announced signing and radio silence from athletics.

Do we (fans) even know how many scholarships we have available? With the partials that are handed out, it seems like the actual number available would be impossible to know without an insiders perspective.

The roster lists almost everyone in HS school classes of 19 and 20 as redshirt freshmen. So almost half of those “redshirt” players have been on campus for three years. Next year the class of 19 may be sophomores in terms of eligibility but seniors in terms of academic class. Many aren’t going to hang around and play for three more years.
There’s usually quite a lot of attrition when after three years players realize they aren’t playing.

Since the postponed 20 season, they haven’t produced as much content about the football team on the official site. No position previews for example. They had hired a downsized Enterprise reporter to produce that stuff in ‘19 & ’20

When the announcement comes it will either be very disappointing or excellent, i the perineal optimist think it will be the later. Hawk is an excellent recruiter. Do not be pessimistic. . . I hope.

Blake Cotton
6’3” WR from N. Hollywood

https://fb.watch/9WoHmZZH5f/
https://www.hudl.com/video/3/11379274/6164fce85b3d4a04b4e1c4b4

Looks like at the beginning of the announcement vid we snagged him to play DB. Good size for a CB at 6'3 and looks fast. I couldn't find much information on him in regards to potential other offers and whatnot.

Thanks for embedding the video. I wasnt sure how to do it. I was looking for his 40 but couldnt find it. I did see on twitter that Hawk had been following him. We need a tall guy with speed as a deep threat.

Yep we need fast guys with size on the perimeter for both sides of the ball. A true number 1 WR and a lockdown corner especially now that Perryman is gone. Hopefully King will be healthy next season.

Its a little weird that the first announcement came around 7 AM, the second at 7 PM.

I'm really disappointed in how this whole day has gone. I guess we just thought there would be something done like it always has been done on NLI day and, instead, we gotten practically nothing in the way of announcements or any information really. The silence has been deafening and nobody knows why?

they announced the first signing on the web page. Looks odd