Northwestern University Athletics
Coach Fitzgerald Signing Day News Conference Transcript
2/4/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
Feb. 4, 2011
Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
2011 Signing Day News Conference
Wednesday, Feb. 2
Opening Statement...
"I'm excited about the 17 young men we had join our football family, putting together a recruiting class is a labor of love, it takes a lot of time and effort. The young man who committed to us first in Jarrell (Williams) was last February so you look back at that time period and it's been well over a year we put this class together.
"The credit goes to our players. Every time we bring a young man to campus either for an unofficial or official visit we ask our young men to spend as much time with recruits and their families. If our young men in our locker room don't feel like someone fits with our family and our values, then we're not going to recruit him. We haven't had that happen yet but we have open lines of communication. Our coaches do a great job identifying the right type of young man. Our players do a tremendous job telling our young people what our program is all about.
"I'd like to thank Adam Cushing, our recruiting coordinator, and then Bill Rees and his staff within our office. Then there's Janna Blais, our senior women's administrator and Chris Watson, our admissions director. We would not be able to do this without their support. Margaret Akerstrom, our director of academic services, meets with all of the young men who are interested in being part of our program. Then obviously Jim Phillips and Morton Schapiro take time out of their busy schedules to meet with young men who come to visit our camps. Then our coaches and their families, we spend a lot of time in recruiting, it's not just the six weeks in December and January but the entire year. I'm very appreciative of our coaching staff and their families for their dedication in bringing in what we think is a solid class top to bottom and one that we think is going to lead us to a Big Ten championship."
On what position is strongest in the incoming class...
"Across the board I think it's more the depth of the class than it is any one position specifically. I think there are young men who are going to compete to play for us in every position. It would be a discredit to the other position groups if I just highlighted one. There are some larger numbers in the offensive line and defensive line but I don't know. That's the great thing about recruiting is the great unknown, we'll figure it out as we move forward."
On Jarrell Williams, the first recruit to commit to NU in the 2011 class...
"We're excited to add five young men from the Chicagoland area, that's 30 percent of our class. We're going to always start and end our recruiting here, you've heard me say that a lot, and to add this kind of group is really exciting. Jarrell (Williams), being from one of the most successful high school programs over the last 25 years, is exciting. He's a dynamic athlete. Not only did he play in the secondary for Richards but he also play a little quarterback, wide receiver and he has return abilities. He's a great package. You couple that with the great family he is from, we got to know him quite a bit, he got to know us and I would guess he was on our campus five to 10 times in this recruiting process. So not only him but the other four players from the Chicago area, we're very excited."
On the different times at which players committed...
"It's a process. When I offered Jordan Perkins a week or so ago, I think he knew this is where he wanted to be, we just needed to get to know each other a little bit better. We wanted to have Mark (Szott) in camp but he couldn't make it, but he was able to come in with his team for seven-on-seven and I think of the word `dominant.' He dominated when he was on the field. The guys were just in helmets but he played with a very physical attitude and caught the ball extremely well, effortlessly. That carried over into his senior year and, off his injuries, I thought he played very well."
On quarterback Zack Oliver...
"He's a dual-threat quarterback, he can run the ball physically and has a big-time arm. You can see in the performances he's had in some all-star games he's a very dynamic passer. He's a tremendous leader in the mold of the rest of our quarterbacks and has all the intangibles in place. We're excited to have him in the mix with the group of quarterbacks we have on the roster."
On the height of NU's incoming wide receivers...
"First of all, we had Pierre (Youngblood-Ary) in camp, who had about nine receptions in his career but caught 9,000 balls in camp last summer. He's an explosive athlete and we're going to start him at wide receiver and see if that's where he ends up staying because I think he can do a lot of different things. I watched him on the basketball court this winter where he had one of the most explosive dunks I've seen in traffic. He's got a huge upside. We also had Cam Dickerson in camp, another taller athlete that we thought caught the ball well and could go get it in traffic. He has a skill set that we thought fit some needs we had on offense and is from a great family. C.J. (Christian Jones), his mom is tremendous, I love his brother, he's from one of the top programs in the country in Westfield High School and one of the top 100 players in Texas who unfortunately got dinged up in spring practice. As we have with a number of young men we honored our offer and the injury was just a speed bump. He's going to have a bright future. So I think it's more of a coincidence, two kids that we had in camp that we were able to evaluate firsthand, then Randy Bates was able to go down to Houston and evaluate those guys."
On the number of players who had originally committed to other schools...
"My philosophy hasn't changed, we're not going to recruit committed players. Sometimes things happen, like with coaching changes, where guys are going to open up their recruiting. If we have a pre-existing relationship with a person, we'll typically reach out to their high school coach to see if they have interest in opening up their recruiting to give the high school coach to visit with them. Sometimes they've reached out to us first and we've let them know that they need to inform the school first to let them know they've opened up their recruiting. We do not proactively recruit committed players, I just believe you're talking out of both sides of your mouth when you do that. But if they reach out to us or their high school coach lets us know they're interested in opening up their recruiting, we'll open up the lines of communication again."
On if it has become a bigger challenge to hold on to committed players...
"It hasn't been for us, we usually recruit high-character kids from families, all structured differently, but they value what we value and when we make a commitment to them and they make a commitment to us, we try to honor that. Sometimes it doesn't work but at the end of the day you try to be honest and up front and 99.9 percent of the time it does work. But most of your recruiting work is done off a player's junior year video, you see a lot of them in camp, way before you see them as a senior with the way the process is right now. Most of the evaluation is done off junior video and junior year summer, and I've seen a lot of them in basketball or in the weight room, from December 1 on."
On the issue of oversigning in college football...
"I've never coached in the SEC so I'm not sure what their advantage is. I do know our program so I can speak to that. With 100 percent graduation rate and one of the highest rates of retention in the country, we're not going to have an opportunity to oversign. We had 17 scholarships to give, we gave 17, and we sit at 85 right now. Our kids are not only NCAA qualifiers but they're Northwestern qualifiers academically. I'm not going to go out and sign 32 and hope and pray that a handful of kids don't make their test scores and we'll place them in a junior college. I'm not going to hedge my bet that some of our kids will flunk out in the second semester, that just doesn't happen in our program. I think our retention rates and graduation rates speak for themselves."
On the caliber of athletes NU has signed...
"I can care less about what they're rated. A couple of ways that we go about our evaluation is No. 1 we look at whether they fit our values and the structure of our locker room and program. No. 2, academically if they're a fit and we believe they'll graduate in four years at Northwestern. No. 3, if they're going to help us challenge and win Big Ten championships. Absolutely, I believe that about this class. I don't get caught up in what other people say about our program or about me, our coaches our the young people we recruit. We recruit them for a reason, we believe they're a perfect fit. You've heard me say a lot I still don't understand what a star means and that comes from a zero-star prospect who was a two-time All-American. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."
On the possibility of true freshmen playing in 2011...
"When I visit with each young person, one of the last things I say to them when I'm in their living room or here, is that the only way you'll play as a freshman is if you prepare from today forward like you're going to start for us a year from now. Because I promise you you will not start or play if you feel like you've arrived and you're done with the process - `OK, I have my scholarship, I can sit back and relax.' More importantly, it's just changing from one chapter to another and they have to go to work even harder. It's a great challenge when you sign a scholarship to play in the Big Ten. We've got a very competitive football team right now, we have great talent in our locker room. If those young men want to compete to start they better start working their tails off right now because we've got a pretty good football team and good competitive depth across the board."
On identifying recruiting needs for a given class...
"We're going to fill our needs based not only on what we need this year but a few years out. Anytime we're able to sign the four offensive linemen we were able to sign, we targeted the number three but then were able to go out and get a fourth that we really liked. Same thing at receiver. We were able to get Pierre later, who we thought was really explosive and there's no question he can play receiver, but there's no question he could get on the field even quicker. We got two corners with speed and athleticism, the defensive linemen we were able to get have size, speed and athleticism. (Linebacker) Drew Smith can really run. We signed wo running backs when we targeted one, then maybe two. We were able to sign Mark Szott, who we think is similar to Drake Dunsmore. I wouldn't read too far into numbers here and numbers there, I think we filled our needs and then at the end of the class signed the best athletes possible."
On discussions with recruits about projected positions...
"It's going to start with the position we project them to be in, we're going to talk to them about that. That typically is what they were in in high school. We try to be up front if there's potential for a position change down the road. You can't really crystal ball that but sometimes maybe a defensive end will grow and get bigger into a defensive tackle like Brian Arnfelt a few years ago. We try to be as forthright in our recruiting as we can be."
On the potential of NU's freshmen wide receivers playing in 2011...
"I'll probably be able to answer that question a little better when we come to game week in August but I like what they were able to accomplish. They're big athletes, they run well, they run great routes, they catch the ball well with their hands, they're all physical and I think they all can score when they get the ball. They've got to prepare and come here in great shape and if they do that we'll see where those things fall in August."
On how recent success on the field has impacted recruiting...
"Going to three straight bowl games and being bowl eligible four years in a row, kids want to play for a winner, there's no question about that. There's two sides to that sword though and what I mean is we're brutally honest with kids, we tell them they have to come here ready to compete to play. Some kids don't want to do that. That's fine by us because we're going to move in a different direction. We're taking the next step as a program where some young men, maybe four or five years ago, were looking at us and saying maybe I can go there and start right away, now some kids come here and see they'll have to compete to play. As a head coach that's really exciting to me, because that's how we're going to take the next step is through competition. That's ongoing right now. This is a group of winners, with a 70 percent winning percentage (in high school). It's a bright group average GPA of 3.4. It's a special group. Six of the guys were in camp, 11 were committed before their senior year, so we know them well. The consistent success is what's led to our improvement in recruiting."
On quarterback Zack Oliver...
"Zack was here this summer, we've had a relationship with him for a long time. He's from a great family. Part of the reason we were so attractive to Zack is because we wanted him to be our quarterback. There was no doubt in our mind, no hem and a haw, that he was the young person we wanted to be our quarterback. We're excited to have him and he has a bright, bright future. You look at our numbers, we're at five now, and that's the number you want to have one in each class counting the redshirt class. I think we're in good shape."
On where this group ranks among past classes...
"I don't know. Time will tell. I think as a group this might be our deepest group top to bottom. It's very impressive top to bottom from the success standpoint. I think that's why they bought into our program, they want to win and they want to take the next step, competing for championships year in and year out. It's a little too early to tell."
