Yost talks Tiger recruiting

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On Tuesday afternoon, PowerMizzou.com had the chance to sit down with Missouri offensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator David Yost. We talked with Yost about changes in Missouri's recruiting territories and approach as the Tigers move to the Southeastern Conference. The following is a complete transcript of our interview:

Q: More and more kids have been telling us that their position coaches have been involved in their recruiting. Is that something you guys have been doing for a while or is that a recent change?

Yost: "We've always kind of done it, it's probably just happening earlier now than it used to just because all recruiting is happening earlier and it constantly speeds up. What we used to do is kind of in December or January when you went out, the position coaches went to see the guy a couple of times and help build it. There were some times, especially with junior college guys, when the position coach kind of took over the recruiting. There were times when coach Ford might be recruiting Blaine Gabbert, but I was going to make the phone call to him a lot of times. I think it's probably just become more apparent and it's just kind of showing up because it's happening earlier on. The other thing we're doing is we've adjusted kind of, outside of our normal recruiting regions and we've kind of shrunk our recruiting regions down even a little bit. What's happening is more position coaches are recruiting outside of their regions. We have local, we have regional, then we have national is kind of how we split it. It's a little different philosophy in trying to get guys because what we've seen in recruiting some of the national guys we've recruited, like Evan Boehm, every other guy that was recruiting him that was coming in was an O-Line coach. When we're recruiting Dorial Green-Beckham, other than Arkansas, who recruits Springfield, and Missouri, who recruits Springfield-they had their running back coach and we had our quarterback coach, myself-everybody else that came in was a receiver coach. So we said, okay, that's why coach Hill became such a big part. Arkansas did the same thing. Their receivers coach was there just as much as I saw coach Horton. Understanding that and we've heard that, recruits have heard that as a sales pitch, 'Well, the position coach isn't even recruiting you. You're not even going to play for the guy that's recruiting you.' We don't want to ever have that as a reason why a kid chooses not to come to Missouri. Coach Hill's still going to recruit Kansas City like crazy, but if it's a quarterback, if it's a running back, if it's an O-lineman, the other coach is going to be as involved. So that really changes, it's two guys recruiting, if it's an O-lineman, it's three guys recruiting because coach Walker and coach Henson will both really push."

Q: Does that make twice as much work for you guys? Because now, for example, Cornell Ford will be recruiting St. Louis, but he's also recruiting cornerbacks all over the country.

Yost: "Right. You have more numbers, but when you get into that national list, you might have 25 to recruit of those guys, or sometimes even 50, but those guys disappear pretty quick with early commitments. You've got to find out and what we're looking for, those national guys, guys outside our region, is there some connection that gives them Missouri interest. A family relative that lives in Kansas City or St. Louis or they grew up at one point in Missouri or do they have a grandmother or do they have an aunt that went to the University of Missouri? Trying to find a connection because if there is one, you have a chance to get them here for something, get them enthusiastic about it. If there is no connection, your chances drop off considerably. We're trying to get our name and get Mizzou in front of more people than maybe what we had before and I think we have a name to sell, a brand to see. We have the SEC brand to sell which, the SEC is probably a more national-type brand when you see it, as opposed to what the Big 12 was. Not that the Big 12 wasn't great as a selling point, but when you say SEC, eyes light up on a lot of kids in a lot of parts of the country. That's a big deal and one that kind of transcends a lot of areas as opposed to the Big 12. When you say Big 12 to a lot of kids in Texas, they saw it as that was the conference. You say PAC-10 or PAC-12 in California, that's the conference. You SEC, everybody kind of goes, 'Oh!' It kind of piques some interest, so we're going to try to use that as best as we can."

Q: With you guys seeing so many more schools, does it help that if you've got two or three coaches on a kid, then the coach at that school knows two or three of your coaches as opposed to just the one?

Yost: "Oh, yeah. What you're getting is you're getting more face time with them. And recruiting has earlied up like it never has, which it does that every year. I mean, every year they talk about trying to slow it down. They took away written offers, they take away this or that, but it doesn't slow down. We have more commitments right now than we've probably had at any year at this point. And next year, we might have even more. It just continues. We're looking at 2014 right now. When we look at what we call spring recruiting, we're really going out to recruit the guys we like and are evaluating for 2014. That's just what it's become right now. It used to be you were kind of doing 2014 in the December, January time, now you're doing it the year before. Now you're doing it all the way the spring before. It just keeps cranking up, cranking up, cranking up. So it's getting that evaluated, having the support people we have to help us with lists, culling video and get that video in front of us. We've been able to be more efficient with stuff so it's giving us the chance to get in front of more kids and get involved with more kids and then the lines of communication have changed. It used to be you'd call a coach to get a hold of a kid and guess what? There was 30 college coaches calling that high school coach to try to get a hold of that kid. That's not easy to do. The high school coach in some places, he's teaching class all day, then he's got weights afterward. So your chances of really getting them, it was hard to do. Now with Twitter and Facebook and email, I mean, you can communicate with kids whenever you want to. I mean, I sat around today and sent out 17 Twitter or Facebook messages and got responses from 15. And, I mean, they're all in school. I'm not the only guy doing that. I know they're communicating with a lot of people. So you've got to be in front of them, and you have the ability to communicate with a lot of kids. Kids are coming earlier now to see your school. It used to be during the summer they came. Now it's in spring ball they're coming. It's getting to the point now, there's a lot of January, February of their junior year, a lot of kids are getting out to check because they want to make decisions and know what they're doing. It constantly speeds up the process."

Q: You talked about the SEC kind of being a national selling point. You're doing these coaches' caravans in Atlanta and Chicago. Is that the next step to make Missouri into more of a national program?

Yost: "I don't know if we're ever; it takes a long time to become a national program. But what we have now is we have a national brand attached to us, which is going to give you a chance to do some things that maybe we haven't had before. Now we're trying to market ourselves with high schools and high school coaches, we're trying to market ourselves as best we can, as much as we can, so we're constantly working on that to get ourselves in front of them. The more stuff they see, the more they hear about us, naturally, I found out over time, the more stuff they believe. You send them enough stuff, they start to, 'Hey, there's something to Missouri.' They see it all the time and it starts to validate you that way. We've got all these billboards around. We're getting talked about more because it's a big deal that we moved, that A&M moved so we're getting face time on the college football shows. It's going to be a big deal through the year. ESPN is going to be talking about it. ESPN has always covered the SEC well, it just gives them another story. We're going to get face time that way. We've got to go out and produce and win football games and kind of keep that going. We're willing to recruit a guy anywhere there is, but we don't really see where we're going to blanket the whole United States and just hand-pick and select guys. Still, Missouri's going to be a huge focus for us and Texas is always going to be. What we've got now is more of Dallas, Houston, Waco, San Antonio, Austin, spots where there's just more schools. We'll recruit anybody in the state and we have connections and we're going to continue to do that, but we won't be as, kind of giant net going through there and combing it as much just because you've got to take three coaches down there and it's just manpower. So now, Atlanta, we're going to be on half of Atlanta as hard as we can. Coach Grinch is going to be down there. We're going to be in the panhandle and Jacksonville and Orlando and Tampa with coach Jones and coach Henson. We're going to be in that area very thoroughly. Are we going to go to Miami? We will, but we don't see that as being one of our regional areas right now. As we get this and as you establish yourself, we're in a bunch of new schools and we have coaches going back into schools they haven't been in in a while. Coach Walker's area went from this many schools to a larger number of schools. He's got a lot more people to carry. It's just the process of doing it. Then as much evaluation as you can get done ahead of time, it's good. You always know there are guys that come on as seniors. We've seen it. Some of the best players we've had here have come on as senior prospects, really, really good players. We don't want to give up and stop that process. I don't know if we'll get to the point where we have 25 commitments before the start of their senior year unless there's 25 kids in Missouri that we see that way. It's just the process has sped up and we're trying to put ourselves in good position and understand we have to be ahead of the curve, not waiting and saying, 'Oh, we should have done this, we should have done that.'"

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