PJ Fleck Hoping ‘Biggest Official Recruiting Visit of All-Time’ Leads to BIG TIME New 2018 Recruits

By    |  
Dec 4, 2017

The Golden Gopher’s Football program will be hosting 34 official visitors for this weekend’s event “The #eLITe18Palooza.” According to 247Sports.com, it may be the biggest official visit weekend of ALL TIME. 22 of the event’s attendees are already committed to Minnesota.

R-E-C-R-U-I-T-I-N-G. Like Coach Fleck said at his introductory press conference, it’s the “number one pipeline and lifeline to any program.” That’s a tough statement to argue. Nick Saban doesn’t have some magic potion brewed up for his players prior to kickoff. The best coach in College Football has had the number 1 recruiting class every year for the last seven years (2011-2017).

The Gophers currently have a higher ranked ’18 class than any of their Big Ten West peers. Fleck and his staff are out there making moves. Many employees slack at their job and make a mad push at the end of the month to meet required numbers. The U of M coaches treat everyday like closing day.

What exactly is The #eLITe18Palooza?

Alright, so simply put, this “#eLITe18Palooza” is something Fleck and the Gopher Football team have created to host a massive “official-visit night” at the U of M campus. PJ is keeping all of his official visits for one grand-finale night where everyone will come and hang out for what Fleck hopes to be a great time….. and much more.. As you can read in the article above from Steve Wiltfong, the recruits will be visiting all the places to be in Minneapolis, including US Bank Stadium and Target Field.

The only 2018 commit not attending this weekend is Victor Viramontes. DON’T PANIC! Our future QB used up his official visit at the end of November. He simply can’t attend as it would be an infraction. So, 22 out of 23…Pretty good ratio, eh?

To view next year’s athletes, click here: Gopher’s 2018 Football Commits

The top recruit, so far, for next fall is Alex Reigelsperger. The D-Lineman from Ohio is actually the top ranked U of M commit in over a decade.

The top 300 ESPN ranked player seems thrilled about being a part of Row the Boat Nation. What’s the main reason he’s chose Maroon and Gold? After speaking to Reigelsperger a couple of months ago, his answer was clear. It’s coach P.J. Fleck. If you polled the rest of the future Gophers at the Palooza, it’d be interesting to see how many of the other 21 would give the same answer. 

What about the twelve non-commits attending?

So 22 commits are coming, but they aren’t the reason for this PJ Fleck Party. No, no, no… As mentioned by Steve above, there are currently 34 visitors planned. I’m not a math guy but that’s at least 10 more visitors than commits, so what gives? Well, some of the visitors will be “Preferred Walk-ons“, which are recruits who usually can get scholarships at smaller schools, but would rather walk on and prove themselves into a future scholarship with a larger school.

But, that’s not all the extra visitors. PJ Fleck only has room for a few more scholarship players in his 2018 class. It’s getting late but there are still some BIG names out there. And, from what I’m reading over at GopherIllustrated.com, some of those visitors could be big time. How big time? There are some HUGE names on the board that GopherIllustrated has moved over to the “Targets” category for PJ Fleck’s recruiting radar. Some of them would be higher-ranked by 247Sports than anyone currently committed…..

And it was recently confirmed today by Kyle Goblirsch, who is dropping all these bombs over at GopherIllustrated, that PJ Fleck’s TOP TARGET Curtis Dunlap WILL BE IN THE BUILDING on Saturday night. Dunlap is currently listed as a commit to Florida. However, he hasn’t planned any visits to the Gator campus AND he already visited Arkansas (all in the link above)…. who has changed coaches since his visit. This is a BIG DEAL people…. The Gophers BADLY need help on the offensive line and this guys is one of the best OL recruits in the country. And, he is using an official visit on the Gophers THIS LATE, when early signing day is just a couple of weeks later…. What a Christmas present Dunlap would be for this team.

And, he isn’t the only big uncommitted recruit rumored to be coming to town. There aren’t any others that I’ve seen confirmed although we will come back and update this with any new information. Meanwhile, here are the list of hot new targets for PJ. All of these guys could be around this weekend.

It’s more than well-known that, here at Minnesota Sports Fan, we are all in on the #RTB era. We’re betting farms that we don’t have, on the future of this team. You’ve heard our opinion on the Fleck and company plenty of times (too many to link.. search Fleck/Gopher Football in the search bar). For a change, we’ll let someone else speak on the topic:

 

Johnny Minnesota (@mnsportsnstuff) & The Boss (@RealMNSportsFan)
Minnesota Sports Fan MinnesotaSportsFan.com

Photo: Came from @benjaminsapp and edited by Eric

Share: