Commonwealth Will Be Key To UMass Rebuild

Joe Harasymiak will surely go anywhere to find the right players, but the more right players he can find close to home, the better.

After decades of being in and around high school and college football in New England and beyond, the Minuteman Command staff has developed relationships with a wealth of sources who have agreed to offer insight when asked regarding this new era of UMass Football.

Sometimes we’ll quote those sources by name and other times - whether our decision or theirs - we will not.

But you can be sure we have enough contacts - on campus and off - that we will only lean on people for information who we know for a fact are in a position to know or have enough relevant experience for us to value their opinions and believe you should too.

This week, we caught up with a source who probably has more experience in the modern-era recruiting than just about anybody in New England. The same source has paid close attention to UMass recruiting for years and has been in contact with the new staff since their arrival.

Since the Contact Period opened earlier this month, the UMass staff has seemed to cover every corner of the Commonwealth where there could be talent.

“I think they know the state is pretty important,” this source told Minuteman Command this week. “I think they also know it's important to get their name out there and to make sure that the kids know that if they're good enough, they’re going to get recruited by UMass and have an opportunity to go there.”

In today’s world of College Football, this off-campus source, noted that UMass’ approach is likely “three-pronged.”

Obviously, the staff is looking to add talented high school prospects to the program and there are many who will be interested off the rip. These prospects are likely to take multiple visits to Amherst during their high school careers and should be among the earliest to announce their verbal commitments.

There will be another group of in-state targets who either already have high-major offers or are expecting to earn interest from national powers before the end of the process. It will be vital for the Minutemen to stay in the right amount of contact with these prospects; enough to let them know they’re valued without bugging them. Because as the process winds down, many of these players will realize they don’t have all the options they once expected.

“It's important,” the source said. “Obviously the way the transfer portal is now, it's not like the be-all, end-all, but a lot of these Group of Five schools, when they're at their best or when they're bowl teams, they have a core group of guys who are within a 100-mile radius.

“That’s not to say that they're going to have double-digit starters from within 100 miles, but it's not surprising that these schools in the MAC or anywhere else that are doing really well, they at least have a core group of guys who are impact players who are local.

“I know UMass in the past, when they've been really good, they've had really good local kids. You look at UConn right now, they've had a couple good years in a row and not all their kids, but they have some core kids who are within 150 miles who are pretty big playmakers for them and getting on the field.”

And then, there will be a third group of prospects.

These kids are virtually no-doubt high-Power 4 kids. They will land big-time offers early in their high school careers and not only will their options not shrink, they will actually continue to grow throughout the process. New England - and Massachusetts, specifically - has far more of these types of players than ever before thanks to the emergence of trainers and facilities that allow them to work on their craft year-round.

Landing many - or any - of these players on National Signing Day is unlikely, but that doesn’t mean the Minutemen should ignore them.

“A lot of these Group of Five schools are going to be recruiting these Power 4 kids hard, especially local ones because - and we've seen it with kids like Tyler Martin and some other guys, Tyler Rudolph - sometimes they're not recruiting for high school, but for the transfer portal one, two, three years later,” our source commented.

“I think those relationships are super important for schools like UMass and a lot of those Group of Five schools with kids who are within a 100-mile radius. The kids know that they're super interested in them and they want them at the University.”

Our source didn’t mention this, but there’s actually a fourth group of players the UMass staff is likely to be in contact with even if only under the radar.

Go to any high school football game in the region with serious college prospects and it won’t take long before you notice something; the top college prospects aren’t always the best high school players. For whatever reason, maybe their size or 40-time or whatever, these kids aren’t seen as obvious Division-I players, but as they mature, they very well could prove to be.

A few years back, Minuteman Command found itself in the company of former Boston College head coach Jeff Hafley during a couple high-profile Massachusetts high school games. Hafley was in attendance to see and be seen by multiple national recruiting targets. Yet, Hafley couldn’t stop marveling about an undersized quarterback who would never appear on the Eagles recruiting list.

These are the types of guys worth the UMass staff chatting with and offering advice when possible because just as a significant portion of those high-Power-4 prospects will end up being coveted Portal targets, many of these FCS signees will be too.

UMass may not be in a position to offer these “late-bloomers” out of high school, but establishing relationships will be key to potentially accelerating a true recruitment down the road.

Recruiting is about building for the future.

Of course, for first-year UMass head coach Joe Harasymiak, the future is now, which is why he’s closing in on 30 transfer portal signees in barely a month’s time.

But the future is also the future and Harasymiak knows he needs to build the foundation of a program for years to come and that work requires countless trips up and down 91 and 495 and from one end of the Pike to the other.

It’s work the UMass staff started doing as soon as it was allowed to, which should be very encouraging to the Minutemen faithful.