Just over four weeks later, the CU football program boasts thirteen commitments, the latest being Kaiwi Crabb, an offensive lineman from Hawaii who's rated a three-star recruit. Not that assistant sports information director Curtis Snyder can talk about that.
NCAA rules are strict about schools discussing recruits or recruiting prior to February 4, national signing day. As a result, the only impending arrival Snyder can confirm is a junior college transfer: Eric Richter, an O-lineman from Saddleback College in SoCal. Otherwise, he sticks to quoting Hawkins.
"Coach hasn't been on record about that for the past couple of weeks," Snyder says. "But the last time he did comment, he said it really hasn't had much effect. He didn't say no effect, but certainly not much.
"We came out and said he was coming back for sure before the end of the season," he continues. "I don't want to say we did that in part to help this situation, but it did put to rest any rumors that were circulating otherwise."
Of course, thirteen commitments isn't huge for a big-time college football program. Take the University of Texas, which reportedly had 22 commitments by January 2. But it's not horrendously awful from a volume standpoint.
As for quality, that remains to be seen. But Snyder is as optimistic as he can be without violating regulations.
"We can't comment on anything regarding recruiting other than to say we're 100 percent behind Coach Hawkins," he maintains. "And if he's saying everything's going fine and it's not really affecting kids, that's how we feel about it, too."
Got to figure, though, that Hawkins and company are hungry for a serving of Crabb.
