Entering the 2025 Recruiting Dead Period

The FBS calendar entered the recruiting Dead Period on Monday. Now what?

This edition of Bite-Sized Bison was written June 25. Recruiting news will continue unfolding after the publishing of this newsletter.

Bite-Sized Bison has been in recruiting analysis mode recently, which means there have been many more posts in the BSB Chat than there have been data-based newsletters as of late, but those will return very soon!

This week, though, began the Dead Period that lasts from June 23 through August, preventing any visiting between recruits and coaches, save for a short window for teams to host prospects for games played during the Dead Period. This period eases up in September, when recruits will start visiting for games, but overall, the bulk of a team’s 2026 recruiting class – if not the entire class – will be committed by the beginning of the season.

Indiana has 19 commitments and is ranked No. 32 in the nation, as I write this.

At this moment, uncommitted (and some committed) recruits are talking with their camps, working on decisions. They’ll be in contact with coaches over the phone, they’ll put out top-schools graphics (usually just the schools they took official visits to), and some will set dates to announce their commitments.

This is also when the most covert communication happens between programs and recruits, resulting in some surprises. For example, I covered Bijan Robinson’s recruitment for Eleven Warriors, and his commitment to Texas was a surprising change during the Dead Period (read more about it in my reporting here). What was thought to be a lock for OSU developed into a bit of a RB crisis for the Buckeyes in that 2020 recruiting class. They settled for in-state RB Miyan Williams, a top-700 RB without high-tier interest but flipped from Iowa State to Ohio State when the Buckeyes called. Of course, he would run for 800+ yards in 2022, and Ohio State brought in grad transfer RB Trey Sermon from Oklahoma for that 2020 season. But the point is that there is a flurry of activity during these recruitments around this time, even if they aren’t making visits. Tom Herman did some distant work at Texas to flip Robinson in a very short amount of time.

Programs will try to keep these developments under the radar, as we’ve already seen from Indiana, with 5-10 Penn State slot WR commit Lavar Keys visiting Bloomington. That was news the public learned through Davion Chandler's Instagram account, but the post was taken down, meaning news of that visit wasn’t supposed to get out.

I do not envy college football coaches attempting to keep eager teenagers grounded in their commitments or focused on their messaging solely over the phone, but this is why relationships still matter in recruiting.

Below, I offer some BSB resources and point to particular pieces of recruiting analysis from the BSB Chat, in case you missed them or aren’t active in the Chat. I also answer several recruiting questions I’ve received recently.

Scholarship Chart

Linked below is Indiana’s 2025 scholarship chart, as I understand it. Scholarship charts are helpful resources for recruiting discussions because they show position-specific and class-specific scholarship numbers, allowing us to see possible recruiting strategies at each position and possible class sizes for each cycle. Teams use their own versions of these internally too.

[Indiana 2025 Scholarship Chart]

Don’t forget about BSB Free Resources, all linked here. I have been working to update these documents and plan to write a newsletter around one of them very soon.

Analysis from the Chat

These notes are in chronological order from oldest to newest.

• First, I want to point to how quickly this class began coming together. I wrote about Indiana’s spring commitments back in May and the momentum the program was showing, in relation to how many previous classes were spinning their wheels at that point. [READ HERE]

• In-state DL Blake Smythe had committed to Indiana in early-May, so I wrote a bit of analysis on him as a prospect but focused on Indiana’s growing effort to make its home state a priority. [READ HERE]

• After Indiana earned its 10th commitment in the form of OT Kenton Mondeau, I discussed what a commitment means in CFB recruiting and how that relates to Indiana’s class heading into June. [READ HERE]

• After TE PJ MacFarlane and WR Kortez Rupert committed, I took a look at each of them and linked to the BSB scholarship chart. [READ HERE]

• When LB Ja’Dyn Williams committed out of Massillon, Ohio, I pulled from my recruiting reporting experience to explain how those types of commitments from a program like Massillon Washington shows something about the perception of Indiana as a program. [READ HERE]

• When DL Kevontay Hugan flipped from Louisville to Indiana, I discussed how this is becoming a trend for Indiana, how it relates to a former IU player and assistant, and how IU is loading up at DL with this staff. [READ HERE]

• Two in-state prospects, TE Parker Elmore and IOL CJ Scifres, committed to Indiana as lower-rated recruits, so I discussed accepting commitments and why a program might need to do that, as well as how recruitments are affected by missing junior seasons. [READ HERE]

• I provided an update on what I was hearing on Fort Wayne WR Jerquaden Guilford following his Ohio State summer camp visit. OSU folks believe he’s a lock for Ohio State and anticipate his commitment coming with a corresponding de-commitment from one of the four WRs they have currently committed. I’ve seen similar efforts from OSU, and it rarely results in the prospect going elsewhere. [READ HERE]

• After California QB Cash Herrera committed recently, I wrote a bit about the QB recruiting situation with him and Luke Fahey (more on this below too). [READ HERE]

Frequently Asked Questions

I’ve received questions and seen questions in other spaces about this recruiting class and wanted to offer an analytical perspective around them.