The first two weeks of June official visits are officially in the books as we near the halfway point of the busiest month on the recruiting calendar.
Fifteen of the 28 five-star prospects and nearly half of the top 100 recruits in the 247Sports Composite are still uncommitted. Buckle up for a fun summer.
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Here’s what I’m hearing:
Auburn in the hunt
Five-star wide receiver Caleb Cunningham out of Ackerman, Miss., kicked off his official visits with a trip to Auburn during the first weekend of June. He followed up with a trip to Florida last weekend and will travel to Tennessee this week before he wraps up the month with a visit to Alabama.
“A lot of people, they’re working hard to get me,” Cunningham said. “Everybody is competing.”
Right now, though, he has a frontrunner.
Auburn is “1A,” Cunningham said this week — doubling down on a comment he made to On3 earlier this month about the Tigers being his top school.
5-star WR Caleb Cunningham tells @JLeeAULive that Auburn is the No. 1 school on his list🦅
Read: https://t.co/f6Gsz0Nyb0 pic.twitter.com/r0eYTBORKn
— On3 Recruits (@On3Recruits) June 2, 2024
Florida is “right behind” at “1B” after his trip to Gainesville to see coach Billy Napier and the Gators.
“(Florida) was telling me that I’m a great fit for them,” he said. “And then of course getting to spend time with (quarterback) DJ Lagway. He’s recruiting me hard. They definitely want me on that team.”
Cunningham is ranked No. 13 overall and the No. 2 wide receiver nationally, behind only Dakorien Moore out of Duncanville, Texas.
Coach Hugh Freeze and his Auburn staff made quite the splash at receiver in the Class of 2024 when the Tigers signed five-star Cam Coleman and four-stars Perry Thompson, Bryce Cain and Malcolm Simmons. Coleman (No. 3) and Thompson (No. 44) were top-50 national prospects as the Tigers took significant measures to beef up a passing attack that ranked 124th nationally in 2023.
It should come as no surprise that Cunningham made sure to spend time with Coleman during his visit.
Cunningham, who caught 48 passes for 1,138 yards and 14 touchdowns as a junior at Chocktow County High School in 2023, said he initially planned to issue a commitment in December but now believes he’ll make his announcement sooner.
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In-state schools Ole Miss and Mississippi State are doing their best to keep him home, and Florida State is also in the mix. He plans to take an official visit to FSU in October for the Clemson game. He will also visit Ole Miss and Mississippi State officially during the season.
What’s he looking for?
“Great people, people that I can trust,” he said. “I want to be developed and be around great players.”
Stanford’s big pursuit
Stanford hasn’t signed a five-star prospect since the Class of 2017 when the Cardinal landed quarterback Davis Mills and offensive tackles Foster Sarell and Walker Little.
Troy Taylor, entering his second season as the head coach, is trying to change that.
“Coach Taylor has reenergized the program,” said five-star offensive tackle Andrew Babalola, who visited Stanford last week. “I saw that all weekend.”
Babalola, a native of Overland Park, Kan., who is ranked No. 25 overall,scheduled five official visits for June and plans to commit to one of those schools over the summer once he and his family talk through everything. It’s difficult to overstate how critical of a pick up he would be for Stanford, which is competing with Auburn, Missouri, Michigan and Oklahoma.
The Cardinal might lag behind those other schools on the field after winning just three games in each of the last three seasons, but they have certainly pulled out all the stops for recruits through the first two weeks in June. That has included enlisting the help of two of the school’s most famous supporters: former quarterback Andrew Luck and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“(Luck) said a lot,” Babalola said of the former quarterback’s message to the group. “His main message was, Stanford, it’s a place that truly changed his life. He talked about going in and just putting his head down and grinding whether it was on the field or in the classroom … and how, obviously, that opened many doors for him not just on the field, but off.
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“(Visiting with Rice) was awesome. Obviously, that’s not something that happens on a lot of visits. It was awesome getting to hear her talk to us and talk about how she loves Stanford and the support that she has for coach Taylor.”
Babalola said he is looking for three things: development, culture and overall fit.He also said he doesn’t have a leader, but it’s clear the trip to Palo Alto resonated.
“Stanford, obviously it’s an elite academic school just filled with great people overall, and that’s something I saw all weekend,” Babalola said. “Talk about the academics and what Stanford can do for you after you’re done playing, it’s pretty powerful. But I’d say it’s just the people at Stanford, overall. It’s just great, genuine people who truly care about their players.”
Babalola believes he might want to major in either business or environmental studies. Football will also be very important.
“(Whoever gets me), they’re getting a player who just puts his head down and works,” he said. “I know where I’m at right now. Obviously, I’m nowhere near a finished product. They’re getting a guy who’s gonna work and who’s gonna be coachable and ready to develop.”
Bryce Underwood’s summer
Five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood, the top prospect in the country who has been committed to LSU since January, told On3 earlier this month that he will not be taking any other official visits.
Underwood’s coach at Belleville (Mich.) High School, Calvin Norman, echoed that sentiment last week.
“One thing about Bryce and his family — his dad is one of my coaches — they are mean-what-they-say type of people,” Norman said. “If they say they’re with you, they’re with you. They don’t veer from that.
“There’s gonna be no somebody-coming-in-at-the-last-minute-and-changing-his-mind. That’s not gonna happen.”
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Underwood committed to coach Brian Kelly and the Tigers on Jan. 6, about six weeks after his sophom*ore season ended with a loss in the state championship game.
Norman had a hunch the Tigers had separated themselves from the rest of Underwood’s suitors when it became obvious just how much they wanted him. Norman said he saw coaches from LSU, which is 1,000-plus miles away from the high school, more than he saw coaches from Michigan, about 20 minutes away.
“I thought that I would see them more,” he said. “You would think that you would see (those) guys all the time. So that was the only disappointing part — because I’m a Michigan fan. Now I’m an LSU fan.”
LSU didn’t necessarily do anything special aside from the coaches consistently expressing their interest. They showed up to campus so often, Norman joked he should have gotten them their own hall passes.
“They would sit down, they would talk with the staff, they would talk with the teachers,” Norman said. “And then they would just look at Bryce as an everyday kid to see if he could fit into their program. The more they kept coming by … I knew that was gonna be the fit for him.”
Underwood enters his senior season after throwing for 3,000-plus yards and 40-plus touchdowns as a junior.
In addition to not taking official visits this summer, he also hasn’t participated in any Elite 11 events for the top quarterbacks.
So what’s he up to?
Last week he spent time working out with Belleville’s junior varsity team just to get on a football field. In the meantime, he’s focused on being a 16-year-old and getting his team back to the state championship game next season.
“We went last year and we didn’t finish the job. We went 13-1,” Norman said. “This was his third time going to the state championship and he wants to go back one more time. With him not taking any more visits and him making that decision, it (also) gives him an opportunity now to just sit back and enjoy the game of football (and) enjoy his friends because he enjoys his teammates a great deal.
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“Without all that distraction, without his phone ringing every five minutes, he can really sit back and enjoy being a kid and enjoy this last year of high school.”
Elsewhere
• Four-star wide receiver Jayvan Boggs, out of Cocoa (Fla.) High School, posted on X on June 4 that he would no longer be taking his official visit to USC. He then posted Sunday that he would no longer be taking his official visit to Georgia and that he is down to two schools. USC and Georgia were initially in his top four, which also included UCF and Missouri. He visited UCF during the first weekend of June and is expected to visit Missouri next week ahead of a July 4 decision date.
• A week after Rutgers picked up 10 commitments following the first weekend of official visits, the Scarlet Knights received more good news on Sunday when four-star safety Tariq Hayer out of Washington, D.C., committed to the Scarlet Knights. He is the program’s highest-rated prospect since signing four-star offensive tackle Micah Clark in the Class of 2017.
• Keep your eye on a few four-star prospects who are expected to issue a commitment this week. Linebacker Mason Posa out of Albuquerque, N.M., will commit on Thursday. Offensive tackle Shedrick Sarratt Jr. out of Gaffney, S.C., will announce his decision on Friday. So will receiver Eugene Hilton Jr. — the son of former Indianapolis Colts star T.Y. Hilton — out of Zionsville, Ind.
(Photo: Courtesy of Caleb Cunningham)
Grace Raynor is a staff writer for The Athletic covering recruiting and southeastern college football. A native of western North Carolina, she graduated from the University of North Carolina. Follow Grace on Twitter @gmraynor
