Morris more open to early signing period now

Arkansas head coach Chad Morris speaks during the NCAA college football Southeastern Conference media days at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, Tuesday, July 17, 2018. (AP Photo/John Amis)

— Last year’s inaugural early signing period presented some challenges for Arkansas head coach Chad Morris.

Morris arrived from SMU on Dec. 7 - 13 days before college football's first ever early signing period began.

Although Morris flipped Ashdown cornerback Ladarrius Bishop from Mississippi State and landed Fordyce defensive tackle Billy Ferrell away from Alabama and others during those 13 days, his first Razorback recruiting class ended up being ranked 51st nationally, according to ESPN.

Speaking at SEC Media Days in Atlanta, Morris said he would have liked the early signing period to have started in 2018, instead of 2017.

“A year from now and being able to address that question, I think I am going to be very much in favor of it,” Morris said. “But …being one of the six coaches (in the SEC) that were in the transition of a change and coming into a new place and signing a class on Dec. 20, it was awful. I mean it was hard.”

Morris, who has one four-star and eight three-star recruits, per ESPN, among his nine-member 2019 recruiting class, noted his resistance to the early signing period last year had to do with the limited amount of time that he got to spend with recruits during December.

“You are trying to build a two-year relationship in 20 minutes, and usually that player that you had to wind up pulling out of a review where maybe he is getting ready for his final exam, or you are going into an in-home visit where a young man is preparing for a final exam,” Morris said, “and you are trying to give your whole spiel in 20 minutes at a dinner table and you didn’t have the luxury of building that true relationship.

“That was tough and I am not going to pull any punches about it; that was very difficult from a coaching change. But I look forward as we develop into our next class to having those relationships sound and solid and be able to sign a great class.”