This week is known as a “dead period” on the NCAA’s official recruiting calendar.
The same term could apply to the mental, physical and emotional state of new Colorado State football coach Steve Fairchild and his staff.
“We were trying to do what you normally do in over a year process in just over three weeks,” Fairchild said. “Our approach wasn’t as methodical or as deep as you would like, but we fought through.”
CSU’s coaching staff kept all but one of the inherited dozen oral commitments and blended the contacts by the former staff with inroads made by incoming coaches to fill out a full 25-player class today.
The late surge lifted CSU one notch out of last place in the Mountain West Conference rankings on .
Fairchild doesn’t want to hear who is rated how many stars on the recruiting sites.
“What was Alex Smith (former Utah quarterback and the No. 1 pick in the 2005 NFL draft) rated?” Fairchild asked. The answer was two stars.
The Rams’ staff can only hope incoming players do their homework as well as the coaches did in scrambling to find players. Never mind stars; several of the CSU recruits didn’t make the . or . databases.
One such player, 6-foot-8, 245-pound lineman Justin Becker of ThunderRidge, had a good reason to get left out. He never stepped on a football field until his senior year.
“He’s got a huge frame. I talked him into coming out for football,” ThunderRidge coach Joe Johnson said of the basketball player. “If he played as a junior, a lot of schools would have been in to see him.”
He said Becker drew interest from the former CSU staff and another ThunderRidge commitment for the Rams, defensive end Zach Tiedgen, kept telling the new staff about his teammate.
The Rams’ new coaches made immediate inroads in Texas. Dallas Kimball offensive coordinator Tommy Bonds said CSU discovered middle linebacker Chris Gipson last week.
Bonds described Gipson as drawing early interest from Michigan State and Fresno State but that schools had stopped calling.
“Toward the end, he kind of fell off the radar. It was scary. He didn’t know what to do,” Bonds said.
CSU is expected to sign four junior college transfers, twice the Rams’ typical number. CSU has immediate needs at wide receiver and cornerback.
“We went after the best players we could get out there,” Fairchild said.
Natalie Meisler: 303-954-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com
