Chants confident in 2016 recruiting class heading into National Signing Day

Sitting in his office last Friday afternoon, Coastal Carolina football recruiting coordinator Cory Bailey was feeling as at ease and confident as any college coach can less than a week before National Signing Day.

He said then that the Chanticleers had 20 solid commitments and two or three spots they were still holding for post-signing day options or junior college considerations.

But nothing is certain until the National Letters of Intent come rolling in Wednesday.

Coastal Carolina is set to formally announce its 2016 recruiting class in a 2 p.m. news conference, and Bailey said there has been a noticeable difference in the response on the recruiting trail since the university announced it was moving to the Sun Belt Conference and moving up to the FBS level.

“Just being able to say you’re FBS opens a lot of doors, especially in different parts. Down south, from what I’ve seen, the further south you go, the more those kids want to hear ‘We’re [FBS],’” Bailey said. “As soon as you can say that, you get in the mix. But if you can’t say that, they’re not interested. There’s a bunch of examples of that.”

Most of this recruiting class was already put together before that Sun Belt announcement in September, but what that news did was give the coaches some extra room on the roster as the Chants will be adding 22 scholarships over the next couple years to move from the FCS maximum of 63 to the FBS limit of 85.

“We still have a few spots we’re working on. It’s definitely been a little different process,” Bailey said. “Last year we only had three official visit weekends and we we’re done. We were done with this year’s class pretty much in July, and then the Sun Belt announcement came and we all of a sudden have 12 more scholarships. So that part’s been different.

“I think the 12 on top of the 13 we had are guys who really had some serious crossover. The whole staff has been out babysitting. [Other programs] have been chasing down our guys. I was in Jacksonville [last week], and Idaho, New Mexico, Louisville were all going into see guys who were currently committed. That end of things has changed.”

Coastal Carolina faces a two-year transition process as part of its move up to the FBS, during which the Chants won’t be eligible for any postseason play. They will play an FCS schedule next fall with no eligibility for the playoffs and then will debut in the Sun Belt in 2017 while not being bowl-eligible until the following year.

But that hasn’t hindered any recruiting efforts, Bailey said.

“No, not really. One of the things that we’ve been selling is the thought of being the first group that goes to a bowl game,” he said. “I think they’re excited about that, they’re excited about what’s happening. The ’16 group, we’re really pretty much done with that, so now it’s the ’17 group and they’ll be full-fledged Sun Belt guys.”

All the while, the Coastal Carolina coaches are finding far more options as they look to 2017 and beyond.

“I’m not sure that the player that we’re looking for has changed, but I think what’s changed is the player we’ll actually be able to get,” Bailey said. “There were a lot of kids we’d say, ‘OK, let’s offer him,’ and all of a sudden he has five or six other offers from mid-majors. A Wake Forest or something like that. We’d like to think we could beat those guys and maybe we could one in seven or eight times, but now we’ll have a much deeper pool of guys that we really like. Whereas before if we started with 20 kids, you’d probably eliminate 10 or 15 right away and in the end we’d end up taking a kid that we wouldn’t take moving forward.”

This story was originally published February 2, 2016 at 10:02 PM with the headline "Chants confident in 2016 recruiting class heading into National Signing Day."