Mike Vukovcan Despite the current day image of college athletics, the business of college recruiting does come with rules and regulations.
One of the many recruiting rules that most teams (not all) follow is that college coaches are not permitted to initiate contact with high school freshman and sophomores.
No texting or phone calls are permitted unless the communication is started by the athlete.
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However, when high school athletes officially become a junior, those rules no longer apply, and the communication can flow freely.
On the NCAA calendar, June 15th is the date when the calendar changes are high school students are moved ahead to the next grade.
All is this means, Hopewell 4-star quarterback James Armstrong is now a junior which meant that his phone would be blowing up yesterday, which is what happened.
Starting at midnight, Armstrong received text messages and phone calls later in the day from a large number of college football programs. Most of the text messages included graphics that the teams recruiting departments put together, letting Armstrong know how much they want him.
Here were the 23 college football programs that communicated with Armstrong in some fashion on Monday: Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Pitt, Penn State, Syracuse, Virginia, Auburn, Florida State, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia Tech, Michigan State, Boston College, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Duke, NC State, UCLA, West Virginia, Maryland, UConn, Miami of Ohio and Toledo.
In case you were wondering, North Carolina was the first team right after midnight to reach out to Armstrong.
It’s fair to say that Armstrong’s recruitment hit a different level on June 15th.
“It was great,” Armstrong tells Vikings Sports Now. “I loved all the love I was receiving and I’m ready to start these new connections with everyone.”
“It now feels a lot more real than before. The clocks officially started and I’m excited to start this journey.”
Speaking of journeys, Armstrong will make a few more trip to visit colleges starting today as he will be visiting Michigan State, Virginia and Kentucky this week.
