Q&A with recruiting coordinator Casey Woods
Local media had a chance to talk with all ten Mizzou assistant coaches on Monday afternoon. Over the next few days PowerMizzou.com will have multiple stories from our discussion with the Tiger assistants. Today, we start with a Q&A session with Casey Woods, who is the recruiting coordinator in addition to coaching tight ends. For this story, we've limited the questions and answers to Woods' role in charge of the Tigers' recruiting efforts
As recruiting coordinator are there any positions that you are really trying to add before the late signing day?
CW: "You know, we're really, really excited about our signing class right now. I thought we scored big with the ten guys we got in December. We're looking at another seven to nine range here again. We're always working towards those NCAA maximums and we've got sort of a perfect numbers situation where we've got to have so many linebackers and so many receivers and so many linemen. We're always trying to balance those numbers out as best we can."
How unique is it to be the recruiting coordinator and coach a position? How do you balance those duties?
CW: "Well it's been fun. I've been fortunate to be a part of it for about 12 years and I'm telling you, about three quarters of my recruiting manual comes from Curtis Luper. He was our recruiting coordinator at Auburn. Did a fantastic job. I've learned as much from him as anybody in this business about recruiting and organization. He does a great job in front of people, he does a great job mentoring young coaches. It's a blessing to be able to come back and work for him and underneath him. A lot of the stuff that he's seen before, we're just regenerating and doing. The balance of it is a lot of fun. I think it's a unique experience because I don't think there's another sales job on earth like selling an 18 year old boy to come play football. But it's fun. It's fun. It's a challenge just like anything and you've got to balance it. We've got a great recruiting support staff here. I think, all told, by the time we get to the maximum amount we'll have nine or ten guys that are working full time in recruiting, which is exciting. We've got Jake Breske and Jared Russell and Tori Schoonover and Evan Norman and all those guys and girls have done a tremendous job here jumping in. They didn't give us much incubation time. We had to jump in and we had to host visitors, not only host 2020 visitors, but 21 visitors. Everybody's really invested in that. We've got guys pulling in the same direction right now, which I think is the vision that Coach Drinkwitz had and real excited about that."
What discussions have you had about recruiting in the state and what priority that will be?
CW: "It's got to be the number one priority. We've got to recruit Missouri better than it's ever been recruited before and I think we have a good plan in place to do that. We're going to have all ten coaches in the state somewhere and we are really excited about that opportunity. We've done some research and I'm sure you all will fact check me on this, but I believe that 26 of the last 41 drafted players from the University of Missouri have come from the state of Missouri. That's over half, then certainly we've got to make an investment here in our borders. That includes greater Kansas City, greater St. Louis, of course. We've got to start here. We're going to start with a tank of gas. We're going to recruit within that tank of gas. They've got to be able to drive here and if they come here, we've got a shot. You see this facility and everything that we've got here. We've got magnificent stuff. If we get them on campus we've got a shot. We've got to start at home here with these guys that are hungry. We've got a whole state full of little boys that grow up being Missouri fans. We've got a bunch of them on our team right now and we plan on having a bunch more in the future."
Are all those areas and roles defined yet or is that something you're still working on?
CW: "We're still finalizing. We're still in the latter stages of finalizing it. Most coaches have an awareness of what's going on and we're certainly gonna make it the most efficient we can. We can't sign all 25 guys from in this state, but we're going to evaluate players in this state like they've never been evaluated and make sure that, I don't know that that necessarily means we take one more or one less, but we're going to know about every one of them and we're gonna give due diligence to every single one. To answer your question, we're not finalized on exactly where everybody's going to be."
How much attention do you have to pay to the restrictions on recruiting with the scholarship numbers this year?
CW: "You always have to have a plan just like anything. One of the things that I learned at UAB was roster management. When I showed up on their campus and we had zero scholarship players, we had to build it to 85. Then those 85 we won 29 games and two championships. I do think that I have some experience and some insight into that. We've got to go in and we've got to be able to manage what it is the NCAA, we've got to fulfill what it is that we're obliged to them and therein lies the plan too next year when we move back to that 85, we've got to have a plan for that too. We do have a plan, we're working towards those numbers just like everything. We are doing the best we can right now."
Coach Drinkwitz told us a few weeks ago there was a proposal about what you want to do with visits and those restrictions with the calendar with the NCAA. How involved are you in that and is that plan finalized or accepted?
CW: "I know that our compliance department handles all that with Coach Drinkwitz. I've been given the instructions that I've been told, the parameters that I've got to work with. But as far as the final verdict on everything, I know coach will handle that."