On Monday night, 2016 3-Star Cornerback Monquavion Brinson decommitted from Syracuse. He is the eighth player to rescind his commitment since the Orange made the coaching change from Scott Shafer to Dino Babers.
Syracuse is now left with only 11 players in its 2016 recruiting class and there is only three weeks until National Signing Day. Babers will certainly have a tough time flushing out his recruiting class so late in the process. However, this cannot and should not come as a surprise to Syracuse fans.
When making the decision to fire a head coach in college football, a program has to understand that there are no guarantees about the recruiting process. Often, commits commit just as much to the coach as they do to the program. Now, there is a new coach on campus and players who made the decision to come to Syracuse because of something that Shafer or one of his assistants said to them are likely to reconsider their options.
It is likely that even those who have reaffirmed their commitment to the Orange at least considered their options when the coaching change was made. This is just how college football works and the fact that the Orange have lost eight members of the class of 2016 is not an indictment of Babers.
Babers has to be given time to implement his ideas into the recruiting process.Though Babers took over during the recruiting process, this is not really his class, though he is trying to make an impact. The players who are coming to the Hill in the fall were, for the most part, Shafer’s guys.
The way to judge Babers in the 2016 season will be how he handles the in-game situations. Sahfer’s poor clock management and decision-making cost him his job. Shafer did bring in talent that has shown they can be important players for the coming years.
In 2016, Babers has the chance to build on what Shafer started with some of Syracuse’s young talent and in the coming years, he will have the chance to bring in some of his own players. The spree of decommits may seem like a bad omen but it is just part of the process.
