Whether you follow recruiting or not, it’s likely that you’ve heard of the saga of high school linebacker Roquan Smith. On National Signing Day (NSD), Smith announced live on ESPNU that he was going to sign with UCLA. Then, before he had a chance to send in his National Letter of Intent (NLI), he heard rumblings that the man who recruiting him (defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich) was taking a job with the Atlanta Falcons.
Smith decided to rescind his verbal commitment and re-open his recruiting pursuit. There has been a lot of conjecture on what is going through Smith’s mind, but we will finally find out when Smith makes his decision on Friday. UCLA is apparently still in the mix as are Georgia, Michigan and Texas A&M.
One of the more talked about aspects of Smith’s recruiting is that he no longer wishes to sign a NLI and instead will only sign the grant-in-aid with the school he chooses. This gives Smith some flexibility until he enrolls in classes. Signing an NLI is somewhat of a rite of passage in college football recruiting, so it will be interesting to see if other recruits take this approach next season, especially with the amount of coaching changes we’ve seen since NSD at many schools.
Here’s what Smith had to say about his journey:
“I wasn’t trying to start anything at all,” Smith said. “I was just trying to do what was best for me at that time.”
And this time, he is “100 percent” sure that wherever he commits will be the school he shows up at this summer.
