FAYETTEVILLE — Fresh off landing the nation’s top 2018 junior college defensive end, Arkansas isn’t wasting any time in getting 2019 standouts on campus with the first of many planned junior prospect days Sunday.
Razorback head coach Chad Morris and his staff already has offered scholarships to over 120 players in the 2019 class. They will meet with unofficial visitors for registration at 1 p.m. with the program getting underway an hour later.
“Our first prospect day will be this Sunday, so we’ll have a group of young men and their families on campus this Sunday at 2 o’clock and you’ll start seeing our prospect days throughout the course of spring,” Morris said. “We’ll probably have seven or eight (days) getting guys on campus. I love where we’re at with ’19s. We have a lot of offers out. We have a lot of momentum right now.”
Mark Smith, one of Arkansas’ secondary coaches and director of off-campus recruiting, is excited to show off the new staff and the Razorback program.
“It is open doors all the time,” Smith said.
The announced prospect days are Feb. 11, March 3 and March 10, but there are others that will be made public later per Smith.
“We are going to do - and this is Coach Morris’ philosophy, too - anytime we can get somebody on campus we want to have them and not just have select days and just shut the door on the other days,” Smith said. “We are going to do a lot of them…this Sunday being a first one and then every Saturday when we are in spring football, those will be prospects days as well and we have a lot of others built in as well.”
Arkansas’ new staff - which has also announced high school coaches are welcome at any spring practice - wants to have prospects on campus as many times as possible, but will also make the most of the first trip.
“Our approach - any time we have a prospect on campus - is that we are going to treat them as if we are never going to have them on campus again so we want to show them everything that we have,” Smith said. "We have two goals really when we have somebody on campus.
“Number one is make sure they leave here with a better understanding of what we have to offer in a short amount of time. And then, number two, is that they have a strong desire to come back because we are all about the relationships.
“We want them to feel comfortable and come back again and again and again and be able to develop that relationship.”
Smith notes that Sunday’s program will be well rounded.
“We will have a program that gives them really a Cliff’s Notes version of what we are all about as a program,” Smith said. “We will take them through academics, through strength and conditioning and obviously through the football on offense, defense and special teams. And then a lot of it is really relational and getting to know the coaching staff and just some time with the family.
“We try and show them everything down from the training room to the equipment room. Again our approach is we treat it like this is the only time we are going to have them on campus so we are going to make sure we maximize that.”