NCAA Football Dead Period 2023 and Recruiting Calendar

NCAA Dead Period is one of the highly restrictive recruiting rules among all other NCAA football recruiting rules.

This rule rigidly limits college coaches from making any in-person contact anywhere whether it be athletic camps, colleges, recruit’s schools, or even at the supermarkets. 

Simply put, during the dead period, the coaches are not allowed to talk to their recruits physically. In a broader sense, it is the time span throughout which coaches are prohibited from watching the competition of the athletes, visiting their high school, making any face-to-face contact with them and their parents, and passing them any official or unofficial visits. 

The dead period for 2023 recruiting commenced on the 27th of June and will end on the 24th of July.

What Coaches Can Do During Dead Period?

Coaches can still make soft contacts including writing emails to their recruit and making a telephone call. There are a lot of mythical opinions regarding the Dead Period with “the recruiting coaches should make no progress in the recruiting process” as the most common. 

But this is not the case. The recruiting process is not actually “dead” during the dead period. The college coaches can perform various tasks during this time including:

• Writing a letter or an email to the recruit
• Making a telephone call 
• Reaching the athletes and recruits on their social media platforms
• Sending direct messages
• Sending non-recruiting materials to the recruits which involve questionnaires, camp brochures, non-athletic institutional publications, and educational materials published by NCAA. 
• offering scholarships via phone or email

What Coaches Can’t Do During Dead Period?

• They can’t make any face-to-face contact with their recruits including their family members at any place. 
• They can’t visit the campus of the recruits and can’t invite them or visit them off campus
• They can’t watch the recruits compete. 

What Athletes Can Do During Dead Period?

Dead Period is not only for the college coaches but also for the athletes and recruits as well. It is a break period for both sides. During this time the athletes can do the following things:

• Can work on updating your profile
• Can weigh the available options that best fit your academic goals and athletic capabilities
• Can manage the list of your projected competitions and share it with the anticipated coaches. 
• Can work on uplifting your strength and stability
• Can build relationships with the coaches
• Can receive scholarship offers by phone or via email

What Athletes Can’t Do During Dead Period?

• You can’t make any in-person contact with your college coaches
• You can’t utilize any of the high school facilities
• You can’t talk to coaches at any events
• You can’t invite coaches to watch you compete
• Can’t pass any official or unofficial visit to college coaches

The NCAA Football recruiting rules are drawn to control the amount of communication that takes place between the recruiting coaches and the student-athletes. 

This provides them with enough time to reconsider and make conscious decisions regarding which college to move forward with. According to the NCAA, “the rules have been adopted to create an equitable recruiting environment that promotes student-athletes well being.” 

The rules extensively describe who can participate in the recruiting process, the time of recruiting, and the strict conditions for conducting recruiting process. 

Below is the simplified form of the NCAA rule book for recruiting:

Non-recruiting Materials: College coaches can send non-recruiting materials such as questionnaires, camp brochures, NCAA educational materials, and institutional materials at any time of the year.

Verbal Offers: Coaches can propose verbal offers to student-athletes at any time.

Private Communication: Coaches and athletes can perform any form of private communication including sending recruiting materials, communication over the phone or via emails, sending direct messages on social media, and more from September 1 of Junior year.

Official Visits: Athletes can go on up to five official visits throughout their high school enrollment as long as it doesn’t coincide with their participation in college camps or clinics. This can begin on April 1 and through Sunday before the Last Wednesday in June of the junior year. 

Off-Campus Contacts: Coaches can contact the athletes off campus from July 1 onwards going into the senior year. 

Athlete Official Visit: Athletes are permitted to take a total of five official visits from September 1 of their senior year. 

Coach-athletes Phone Contact: The college coaches can call the student-athletes once a week from September 1 of their senior year but are allowed to make unlimited phone calls after the start of the contact period. 

During Athlete’s Senior Year Coaches Can: 

•  make off-campus contacts with the student-athletes and their parents/guardians up to six times.
• can evaluate each recruit once in September, October, and November.
• can conduct evaluation two times per athlete; first to check the athletic capabilities and second to establish the academic qualification.

NCAA Football Program Official Scholarship Offer: Member schools of the NCAA games can make official scholarship offers to the student-athletes from June 15 after their sophomore year or after September 1 of their junior year. 

Other Recruiting Rules Include: 

• A player May not accept any kind of payment from any club
• The recruits should not consider any financial aid outside of guaranteed by the formal scholarship opportunities
• Recruitment must be done by a member of the institution’s academic and athletic staff only. 

Other Terms Related to NCAA RuleBook

Contact: It is the activity of pulling out a conversation during an in-person meeting with the student-athletes or their parents. 

Contact Period: In this period the college coaches are allowed to make face-to-face contact, write or telephone the student-athletes, and their parents, watch the athletes compete, and visit their high school. 

Quiet Period: During a quiet period the coaches may only have in-person contact with the athlete students and their parents within the college and may write or telephone them or their parents. The coaches are not allowed to watch the athlete compete or visit their high school. 

Evaluation Period: The coaches may watch the prospected student-athletes compete, visit their high school, and make calls or write even to their parents. They can not have face-to-face communication with the athletes or their parents off-campus during this period. 

National Letter of Intent: It is actually an agreement letter signed by student-athletes when they agree to attend a Division I or II university or college for one academic year. The NLI includes a commitment from the participating institutions to provide financial aid to the athletes as long as they are eligible.

NCAA schools have already started recruiting student-athlete for the 2024 class and are still in the recruitment process. NCAA football transfer and recruiting news are all over the globe.

Following are some NCAA football recruiting and their recruits list:

Penn State Football

There are 20 total commits with the Penn State Football team among which 12 players are rated 4 stars and 8 are with 3 stars but do not contain any 5-star players so far. Let’s Look at the list:

Nebraska Cornhusker

Nebraska Cornhusker has 21 commits so far which include four 4-star rated players and 17 3-star rated. Let’s take a glimpse at a total number of recruits to date: 

Ohio State Football Recruiting

There are in total 16 commits with the Ohio State Football team with 2  five-star, 12 four-star, and 2 three-star rated athletes so far. Let’s have a look: 

Notre Dame Recruits

Notre Dame currently possesses 21 total commits comprising 14 four-stars, 7 three-stars, and null five-star players. Let’s go through them and their ratings: 

Michigan State Recruiting

Michigan State Football Team has received 24 commits among which 15 commits are from 4 stars-rated players and the remaining 9 from three-stars. It doesn’t have any 5-star players so far. 

Texas Longhorns

Texas Longhorns have got only 8 commits with 6 commitments from four-star rated athletes and 2 from three-star rated players. Let’s look at it in the table below:

South Carolina Gamecocks Football Recruiting

South Carolina Gamecocks have been able to bring 13 commits to date. The team has 8 four-star and 5 three-star players on the list. 

Several commits are on the way and being updated. The above list is the details of a few teams and their committed players’ names. For a full list please visit NCAA Football Recruiting News.