Written by: TJ Inman (@TJHoosierHuddle)

The Coronavirus pandemic has impacted every facet of American life in one form or another. While college football recruiting has nowhere near the importance of other areas of daily life, student-athletes cannot visit the schools that are recruiting them, coaches cannot meet with potential recruits face-to-face and the recruits cannot have the same experience they would have envisioned as they became targets for high-major football programs. Those hurdles did not stop IU’s 2021 recruiting class from finding ways to connect and bond as a group before arriving in Bloomington to begin their collegiate careers.

“I will tell you what,” Tom Allen told the media in his National Signing Day press conference, “there is one thing about this group that really, and they did it on their own, which is maybe more impressive, was they really connected together. They formed a group text, that was on their own. They stayed here when they came to visit, a big core of them, and as guys would commit, they would connect them to the group, and they really did a great job. I think that helped bond them to where they, hey, we are all in this together. We are coming here together to do this and help build Indiana Football.”

Prospects have decommitted from their school of choice at a very high rate. However, that has not been an issue for the Indiana Hoosiers. Tom Allen attributes that to being honest with recruits and their families and then having his message delivered on the field during the season.

“The success we had here during the season, that really just kind of proved everything. As I was messaging them and I would get them on the phone I would say, hey we are doing everything we say we are going to do and it gave it a chance just to solidify everything that we had talked about to the families when they came to visit,” Allen said.

Having a smaller class, IU added only 13 high school prospects and one transfer, also aided in the group’s ability to connect with each other and stay together. The Hoosiers are not expecting many departures from the current roster so a smaller recruiting class was always planned for 2021. The complications of the pandemic and the on-field success and growing appeal of playing for Tom Allen sets up a very important 2022 recruiting cycle.

“I do feel like the 2022 class for us, we kind of said this all along, is going to be a big class,” Allen told the media. “We expect it to be a large class numerically and we have been planning for that and building for that and that is where I really see the true benefit of the change and what we are able to do, and who attract here based on on-field performance.”

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2021 Recruiting Class Stays Together in Difficult Circumstances

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