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mandated that if only 7.5 percent of the football program's population – players, coaches, support sta8, etc. – test posi- tive, the entire operation shuts down. Most programs have roughly 120 players, plus another 50 support sta8ers, which means that it would take about 24 posi- tives in a span of a few weeks to force a cancellation. I'm not a doctor, but that doesn't seem unrealistic given what we've seen across the country, especially in a locker room setting. "I don't know how you can justify bringing somebody into our community or onto our campus for a recruiting visit when they haven't been tested and they haven't quarantined and haven't done all the things that we do," Franklin said when asked about the dead period back on Sept. 17. "I don't know how that's fair to the student-athletes that we have here and how it's fair to [the recruit] as well. Then, what do you do with host- ing? Who hosts the student-athlete? There are just so many challenges and problems that come with it." Even if you could test prospects, rapid antigen testing still has a margin of error of about 3 percent. That's acceptable when you're administering these tests to the same people daily, but for one-o8 situations like recruiting visits, it leaves enough room for error that you'll likely see a problem somewhere, especially when you consider that there are 357 schools in Division I. Between all the di8erent sports, tens of thousands of prospects are being recruited. Franklin's opinion is shared by the ma- jority of Power Five football coaches across the country. They may not say it publicly for fear that it will hurt them with recruits, but even the NCAA ad- mitted in July that coaching associations were in favor of the dead period's exten- sion. It just doesn't make sense in the current climate. Most Power Five athletic departments will survive a:er all this, but even one as robust and deep as Penn State's has been seriously damaged 7nancially. Loans will almost certainly be necessary to survive the next few years. That's why every dol- lar collected from television rights is pri- ority number one for all of these conferences. Anything that could jeop- ardize that, including recruiting visits, is expendable this year and has to be cut. As for the recruits, they don't have to sign in February if they don't feel ready. One widespread misconception about recruiting is that high school prospects have to make their decisions by the 7rst Wednesday in February if they want to play Division I football. That's not the case. National Signing Day is a tradition, not a rule. Although the Nittany Lions didn't come away with his signature, fans should remember Terrelle Pryor's re- cruitment well. The Pennsylvania native ultimately signed with Ohio State, but one thing that was interesting about his recruitment was that he didn't sign in February, electing instead to wait another 7ve weeks. Pryor ultimately ended it on March 19, 2008, and during that span he took an uno9cial visit to Columbus, which is allowed. O9cial visits are al- lowed, too, as long as the prospect hasn't already used his allotted 7ve. More re- cently, 7ve-star running back Zach Evans did something similar. A:er backing out of his commitment to Georgia this past December, he waited until May before ul- timately ending up at TCU. While it can be risky for recruits to wait as long as Evans did – schools want to have their scholarship numbers 7g- ured out as early as possible – this isn't a normal year. Schools can o8er o9cial visits at any point a:er Sept. 1 of a player's senior year. If you've been pa- tient this long, the option is on the table. Many recruits and their families don't realize that. ■ ELITE PASSER Christian Veilleux and his father pose with James Franklin and Kirk Ciarroccca during a recruiting visit to Penn State. The three-star quar- terback prospect committed to the Nittany Lions this past April. Photo courtesy of Veilleux family

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