Should we worry about Division I extending the recruiting dead period?

The Division I Council Coordination Committee met this week, extending the recruiting dead period all the way until June 30, perfectly aligning with the previous dead period that was set to run July 1 to July 24.

That means for Division I programs across the country, that they won’t be able to visit recruits in person nor will recruits be able to officially visit campuses until at the very earliest the last week of July.

For football programs, that becomes increasingly tight to start to apply pressure for sought after recruits. You have to now hope and trust in the process already put in place when the committee extended the dead period to May 31 back in April.

For California Golden Bears head coach Justin Wilcox, there’s a mixture of good and bad in this news. Wilcox and his staff have received three commitments, of seven total for the class of 2021, since the original extension of the dead period. They’ve also been rumored to be in the top lists for multiple big-name recruits.

However, they’re also rumored to be in the top lists for a lot of out-of-state recruits, meaning it’s even more difficult to communicate with them or for those recruits to do an unofficial visit on their own time to Berkeley.

Wilcox currently has the Pac-12’s third-ranked recruiting class and 37th-ranked nationally. That was, however, good enough for top 25 just a week ago. They haven’t received a new commitment since April 23 while schools like Stanford don’t typically apply a ton of pressure in the summer and USC down south has received seven new commitments since April’s dead period extension.

The committee said they’ll review the current extension on May 27 to see if they need to alter it at all. That includes whether or not free up time in July to make up for the missed time this summer.