Time for a Commitment

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Missouri fans are itching for a football commitment right now. It's understandable. Missouri right now has just four. The only other Power Five programs with four or fewer are Stanford, Utah and Kansas State. Florida Atlantic, Akron, Troy, Miami (OH), San Diego State and Tulane round out the ten schools in the top 100 of the Rivals.com team rankings who have fewer than five 2018 commitments.

Not that that means it's time to panic. A recruiting cycle lasts at least 12 months. Most classes cap out at 25. So you're looking at an average of two commitments a month over the course of a year. And commitments seem to run in cycles.

But when are they most common?

We took a look back at more than a decade of Missouri recruiting (2004-2017) to get an idea on the answer. What are the most common times for Mizzou to add to its list?

This graph breaks down the 324 players who have signed with Missouri over those 14 recruiting classes and the month in which each committed (commitment dates were taken from the Rivals.com database).

December is by far the most common commitment month, with 67 total and 24 more than any other month. That's an average of nearly five commitments per class in the month of December. That number topped out at 13 in the 2006 class. The Tigers also had ten December commitments in 2005.

Next on the list is January with 43 commitments.

That means more than a third of all Missouri's commitments over the last 14 classes have come in the months of December and January. Add in 21 who have decided on National Signing Day or in February just prior to Signing Day and you've got 131 players who took their decisions down till the final ten weeks before National Signing Day.

Outside of the later decisions, June and July have been the most fertile months for Mizzou recruiting. That falls in camp and unofficial visit season. Kids aren't in school and are more free to make campus visits, which often can lead to a commitment. July could become a bigger month for Mizzou going forward. The Tigers got five commitments in July in the 2017 class, the first year they held the Night at the Zou camp. The date for that camp this year is July 21st so late July and potentially early August could be the next flurry of pledges for the Tigers.

August and September historically are the slowest time for commitments. That makes sense because prospects are starting their high school seasons. Those who know where they want to go likely have made decisions by July. Once August starts, kids are waiting for official visits so decisions aren't nearly as common for a couple of months. Things pick up gradually in October, then in November before the final flurry starts in December.

Mizzou has had 20 prospects commit approximately a year before National Signing Day. These are almost exclusively either in-state players who know where they want to go or players who committed out of high school, had to go the junior college route and then re-committed for a year or two down the road.

The last question we wanted to use this data for is this: Is Missouri's class behind schedule right now? We looked at the number of commitments on July 1st, August 1st and September 1st over the same 14-year period. Here's what we found:

First off, we aren't 100% sure of the accuracy of the 2004 numbers. The database listed every commit in 2003 and 2002 as committing on July 9, which we know didn't happen. So it's possible the 2004 numbers are off. The rest are very close if not exact.

Anyway, Missouri has had fewer than ten commits entering the start of the season (September 1st) in more than half (8/14) of the seasons we looked at. So if the Tigers add five in July (as they did last year), they're right on par.

The average number of commitments on July 1st is 6.8, so the Tigers are a couple behind that pace. The average on August 1st is 8.5. By September 1st, the average is 9.4.

2014 is the outlier here. Missouri had 18 of its 28 signees committed by the time the season began. That may have to do with the Tigers coming off a 2013 season in which they played for the SEC Championship and finished in the nation's top five. That class finished 34th in the team rankings, which is right about on par with where most of Gary Pinkel's classes were.

Pinkel's first four classes all got off to the slowest starts, with none of them having more than six commitments by the time the season kicked off. Every year since then, other than 2014, the Tigers have been between eight and 13 commitments at the time of their first game.

To get there, the Tigers need to add four to nine players in the next two months. That seems like a reasonable target. So while the spring may have been a bit slower than most years, a quick run following the Night at the Zou should get the 2018 class right about on par with where Missouri has always stood entering the fall.