Boulder – Forget hitting the ground running. At the start of January, new Colorado football coach Dan Hawkins and his staff hit the ground in full sprint, Carl Lewis-style.
The official returns will be tabulated Wednesday, which is signing day. But the craziest recruiting period in Hawkins’ career ended with his return to Boulder on Monday after having finished last week traveling through 10 airports in five dizzying days.
“Well, when you jump onboard with three weeks left in recruiting, you just have to go like heck to make that up as much as you can,” he said. “But when you go through a whole year-long process and coaches and players and parents have much more familiarity with you, that’s a much easier deal.”
That comes next year. What Hawkins has assembled this season probably will be ranked last in the Big 12 by recruiting services – but it has intriguing parts.
Perhaps the most intriguing is one of the Buffs’ most recent commitments – San Diego’s Demetrius Sumler, a 5-foot-10, 220-pound running back who ran for 5,650 yards and 67 touchdowns at Cathedral Catholic. As senior, he rushed for 2,467 yards and 31 touchdowns. For his career accomplishments, Sumler was honored last weekend at the San Diego Hall of Champions.
CU also received a recent commitment from Texas offensive lineman Justin Drescher, whose primary claim to fame is being a deft long snapper. Drescher is one of two commitments from Texas.
Hawkins bristled at recent reports highlighting CU’s lack of more recruits from Texas, a state former Buffaloes coach Gary Barnett made a focal point.
“You have to go where you know guys,” Hawkins said. “I think there’s been some awfully good players at Colorado from California. So, rather than choose ‘the drought in Texas,’ how about ‘the surge in California?”‘
Seven of CU’s 18 known oral commitments are from California, and San Diego wide receiver Michael Clarke could make it eight. Clarke withdrew his pledge to CU when Barnett was fired, but kept CU on his list. He has met with current CU coaches, and one Southern California- area recruiting list has his name as a CU commitment.
CU is set to sign players from Hawaii to New Jersey. Hawkins’ assistant coaches haven’t had set-in-stone recruiting regions because of the short time frame to recruit, but Hawkins said the staff has “a general idea of what we want to do.”
Now, at least for a moment, he can sit back and exhale.
“I think we’ve done a good job,” Hawkins said. “Still, things can happen between now and then. I always think this whole process is very interesting because on signing day everybody does back flips about the guys that they’ve signed. And certainly we wouldn’t sign those guys if we didn’t feel very good about them. But the more appropriate stance ought to be three years down the road; you see who’s left and see who’s really playing and see who’s really contributing and who’s doing well in school and all those kinds of things. But I like what we’ve done. I do.”
Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-820-5455 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
