In recent years with the move to the Big Ten, Rutgers football has expanded its recruiting footprint into the Midwest. But this year, Rutgers is expanding its recruiting into non-traditional areas, including one state that the program has seemingly not recruited in recent history.
The 2024 recruiting class for Rutgers football has clearly expanded geographically, with just five commits from this current class of 22 verbals coming from New Jersey and New York.
And most interesting, there are as many commits from North Carolina as there are from New Jersey…but why?
The answer, according to head coach [autotag]Greg Schiano[/autotag], is multiple, varied and….welll…a bit nuanced.
Location, however, is one point that Schiano said factored into landing three players from North Carolina, an area that Rutgers has traditionally not recruited heavily. Rutgers is easily accessible which makes recruiting easy and is a selling point for families to come visit the program.
“We go to look (and) find the guys that fit. So they’re good enough, as I said, athletes, and then there is a cultural fit,” Schiano said in a recent interview with ‘Eye on Piscataway.’
“And you know, sometimes it’s when you change who’s recruiting the area. Sometimes it’s when it’s just the way that it goes by the year there are more athletes there that fit your makeup, but for whatever reason it’s worked that way. And I think again, you know, Charlotte, so many flights into New York, we have an international airport right here and then two others that are surrounding – three others us that are surrounding us within an hour .So you know, there’s plenty of opportunity to get here.”
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The interview with Schiano was conducted by Piscataway mayor Brian Wahler.
According to 247Sports, Rutgers currently has the No. 31 class in the nation. The three recruits from North Carolina are:
- Wide receiver Ben Black (Mallard Creek, NC; offers from Boston College, Duke, Georgia Tech, Liberty and Temple among others)
- Athlete Isaiah Crumpler (Greenville, NC; offers from Duke, East Carolina and James Madison among others)
- Athlete Noah Shaw (Asheville, NC; offers from UConn, Duke, Liberty, Missouri, Tulane and Vanderbilt among others).
All three North Carolina commits are ranked as three-star recruits per 247Sports.
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