Southern Miss made 98 football scholarship offers to defensive linemen in the 2020 recruiting class (247Sports). Stanford made 74 offers. Total.
"Sometimes, it's a little off-putting initially because we tell them how much we like them but we haven't offered," David Shaw said on the Feb. 6 episode of the High Motor podcast. "And sometimes, you're talking to a young person who has 25 offers. And we have to educate them and say, 'We don't think you have 25 offers; you have probably 7-10. And those other people are offering you because they're offering a bunch of people, and they cant take all the people that they're offering.' "
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
Stanford hasn't offered more than 90 prospects in a single class since 2012, Shaw's first full recruiting cycle as head coach. Since then, the Cardinal have consistently ranked among the most-selective college football programs, including the third-most-selective with the 2020 class. Only Northwestern and Rice (both 70 offers) offered fewer recruits.
"We let them know at least our process is an honest process. It's an up-front process," Shaw added. "We offer you when we have a spot for you. If we don't have a spot for you, then we don't offer you, but we continue to recruit you. And like I said, that's off-putting at times in the beginning, but once we talk them through it, they go back sometimes, look at their other offers and say, 'Wow, they offered me but they also said I can't commit, so is that really an offer?' "
As of Monday, Feb. 17, FBS teams have made 30,217 offers to 2020 recruits, most of which (87.5 percent) came before Aug. 1, 2019, the first day teams could make official offers to 2020 recruits. Southern Miss made 1.9 percent of all FBS offers (587), and for the second straight year, the Golden Eagles were the only program with at least 500 offers.
Here's the full list of offers, commitments, and commit rate for FBS teams: