Transfers Now a Big Part of WVU's Success
July 18, 2017 02:39 PM | Football
FRISCO, Texas -The way Dana Holgorsen sees things, his West Virginia University football program is becoming a melting pot of good college football players.
And mixed into this eclectic pot of good football players are a number of two-year and four-year transfers brought into the program with the goal of keeping the Mountaineers near the top of the Big 12 standings.
At the forefront is quarterback Will Grier, recently tabbed “Newcomer of the Year” by the Big 12 media. The one-time North Carolina prep phenom is now ready to resume his college career in Morgantown, West Virginia, this fall after spending two seasons in Gainesville, Florida.
He is easily the most eagerly anticipated quarterback transfer WVU has had since Jeff Hostetler left Penn State to lead the Mountaineers in 1982-83.
“It was critical that we got him when we got him,” Holgorsen said Tuesday morning. “We had Skyler (Howard) coming back for another year, but our quarterback depth was not good. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that he’s a really good player.”
Grier is not the only good transfer player Holgorsen has brought in lately.
Today, there are many, the process really accelerating four years ago following a 4-8 season in 2013. Holgorsen realized he needed immediate help to bridge the talent void created from the Mountaineers’ move from the Big East to the Big 12, and he needed guys who were capable of coming in and playing right away.
That’s why he chose to go the transfer route.
There is one catch, however. Once you hop on that merry go round it’s very hard to get off. So, four years later the ride continues.
“We had some top-end talent, but our depth wasn’t very good,” Holgorsen said of his decision to really start pursuing transfers. “We recruited a lot of high school kids and got our depth better, but we went 4-8 so we needed some more top-end talent.”
Junior college standouts Kevin White and Mark Glowinski, now playing in the NFL, were part of that initial process that today includes four-year transfers.
This summer alone, Holgorsen has already added quarterback Jack Allison and tight end Jovani Haskins from Miami and wide receiver T.J. Simmons from Alabama. These are players coming from prominent college football programs who believe a change of scenery could be the necessary ingredient to reinvigorate their college careers.
Holgorsen has welcomed all of them with open arms.
“We went better than 50 percent transfers last year,” he said. “They’ve just worked out for us.”
During past signing days, Holgorsen said he used to get nervous whenever he missed out on those high school kids who took the recruiting process right down to the wire.
And for many years, West Virginia has typically lost more of those battles than it won. Now, because Holgorsen has developed such a sound plan for evaluating and developing transfers, he doesn’t lose much sleep the night before signing day.
“Not that I don’t care, but it just doesn’t bother me because we can find guys later on,” he explained. “We took three or four transfers here in the last couple months that I think are going to end up making our program better.”
Of course, football programs relying on transfers is nothing new.
Bill Snyder took over one of the worst college football programs in NCAA history in 1989, and many transfer players later has made Kansas State one of the envied programs in the country. Kansas State rarely wins signing day, but it frequently wins on Saturdays because of the creative way Snyder has capitalized on the outstanding junior college football programs located in his home state.
It took West Virginia four tries before it finally defeated Snyder’s Wildcat program in 2016.
In a lot of ways, Kansas State and West Virginia are in similar situations because of the limited number of top-level high school prospects located in their respective home states.
“We don’t get many high school kids from West Virginia, probably zero to two a year, so we’ve got to go everywhere, and part of what has enabled us to be able to have a lot of success is to get some good transfers,” Holgorsen explained.
Holgorsen pointed out that two of the players he brought to the Ford Center today for media day are two transfers he’s counting on heavily this year: running back Justin Crawford and safety Kyzir White.
One of the offshoots of having so many transfer players in the program is a collective sense of urgency among the players, particularly when one of them is your starting quarterback.
In Grier, perhaps even more important than his immense physical skills as a quarterback, is his ability to lead.
“He’s got the locker room ready to roll,” Holgorsen said. “He gets them out there and watches film with them and throws a lot of stuff with them. He controls the huddle. He does everything right.
“The timing on getting him was critical because we knew he’d be eligible right now,” Holgorsen added. “I knew there were some NCAA hoops we had to jump through, but I knew we could do that, get him eligible for game one, and he’s ready to rock and roll.”
Because of his willingness to build his team a little bit differently than others, Holgorsen has his football team in a position once again to roll in 2017.
Having guys such as Grier, Crawford and Kyzir White in the program should make for many more restful nights for Holgorsen, especially those Fridays before football games this fall.
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