West Virginia football has plans in place for live evaluation, camps

Neal Brown can’t see the future and he isn’t going to try to.

But what the West Virginia head coach can do is prepare for what could come next in all aspects during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That is true with recruiting as well and what could unfold with live evaluations both during the spring and in the summer during camp season.

Live evaluations are one of the unbreakable pillars that recruiting classes are built upon either by coaches watching prospects in the spring, hosting them for camps or traveling to see them at satellite events. The goal is to see if the player’s in-person performance matches up to what is on tape and determine if they can indeed fill a role at West Virginia.

Look at it as if you’re buying something for yourself, you want to test drive it to see if it indeed lives up to the reputation which coaches can do by eyeballing prospects in-person.

Brown believes that adjusting the evaluation period, which is currently set to begin April 15, could provide some logistical challenges for several reasons.

One is that the period itself is built around the prospects being in school and with doors shut nationwide for the foreseeable future that makes things difficult for coaches to hit the road and eyeball targets.

Could that happen in May? Sure, but until there is resolution on how long measures will need to be in place it is simply guesswork when things could resume as normal. But Brown doesn’t anticipate the current recruiting calendar being overhauled to where that period would be open in the summer.

“I’m guessing here but it’s very doubtful we’ll have a spring evaluation period. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb on that,” he said. “Will they move those things to the summer? I don’t think so.”

So, if there is the possibility of no spring evaluation, which undoubtedly looks likely, what about summer camps? West Virginia has one-day events set for June 2, 5, 7, 10 and 18. The Mountaineers are also set to host their annual 7-on-7 and big man event June 19-20 as well wrapping up the scheduled events.

For now, the plan is approach those are if they are still going to be in place.

“We are moving forward as if we are going to have camps. Moving forward with every bit of an understanding that the NCAA could say at any time, “we’re not having camps,” or the university could say we’re not having camps,” Brown said.

Such is the reality in these unsure times, but Brown wants the football program and his coaching staff to prepare as if they are in place so there won’t be any adjustment needed. If things are shut down, the plan will be to revisit those then and go from there.

Still, with the limitations that could possibly be in place for in-person, live evaluations it punts a cloud over how the process will proceed.

The good news is that all schools are on an equal footing here but it’s just another piece of data that could potentially not be available to help coaches sort out the process.

“Most college football teams at this level make their decisions on live evals,” Brown said.

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