Some recruiting news

According to rivals.com, Brian Leffler passed on a chance to go to Stanford and reaffirmed his commitment to Yale.

Leffler was one of the 11 players who were early entrants into Yale. The number dropped to 10 when Louisiana linebacker Chris Wade (more on him later in this entry) committed to Miami (Ohio).

Leffler, a 6-foot, 215-pound linebacker/running back who starred at The Hun School of Princeton, N.J. and was one of the top targets of the Yale staff. Among the schools looking at Leffler was Stanford and West Virginia.

By my count, Leffler makes 18 confirmed commitments for the Bulldogs who are hoping to bring in a class somewhere between 25-30 players.

Here's the list which figures to grow in the next few weeks as reports of other players committed to Yale begin to surface.


Roy Collins TE/OL Choate
Nick Daffin, DE Cincinnati (Elder HS)
Allen Davis LB Choate
Dylan Drake, DE St. Thomas Aquinas, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Dez Duron QB Evangel Christian Academy, Shreveport, La.
Ryan Falbo DB Moon Area High, Moon Township, Pa.
Charlie Holmes LB Choate
Justin Hymes, OL Allegany High, Cumberland, Md.
Mark Kaczor, TE St. Paul, MN
Brian Leffler LB/RB Hun School, Princeton, N.J.
Will McHale LB Greenwich
Philippe Panico K Buckingham Browne & Nichols, Cambridge, Mass.
Russell Perkins, DB Menlo-Atherton (Calif.)
John Powers QB Hopkins
Derek Russell, QB Newton (Mass.) South
John Runk WR 6-4 195 Cincinnati Anderson
Javier Sosa, RB Belen Jesuit, Miami
Chance Van Meter, RB Jesuit High, New Orleans, La.

Two players you won't see on this list are Jerry Rice Jr. and Chris Wade.

Rice Jr. is the son of the NFL's all-time leading receiver who made a visit to the Yale campus in October. The standout receiver from the Menlo School in Atherton, Calif. was considering coming to Yale if he didn't get a scholarship offer from a Pac-10 school. However, the people most responsible for recruiting Rice Jr. was former defensive backs coach Tony Reno, who is now on the staff of Harvard coach Tim Murphy. A source close to the situation said that Rice called Yale in the last week to see if they were still interested and he was told that they were done with their recruiting efforts. I do not know how Rice Jr.'s academic credentials were received by the Yale admissions department but if he was able to get into Yale, it seems odd why Yale wouldn't take a flyer on the offspring of the best receiver in the history of the NFL. The source did indicate that even if Yale practiced due diligence in the recruitment of Rice, he would likely have decided to become a preferred walk-on at either UCLA or Stanford.

The decommitment of Wade to go to Miami (Ohio) seemed a little out of the ordinary at the time. As it turns out, this is one time where appearances were not deceiving.

A story in Wednesday's New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Yale recently backed off the recruitment of Wade. Fortunately for Wade, one of his teachers at Northshore High contacted Miami on his behalf which began the process of Wade landing a scholarship with the Oxford, Ohio school.

Expect the entire class to be announced in May. The new coaching staff should be revealed in the next couple of weeks.