Recruiting is all about relationships — from coach to player, and coach to other coaches.
New Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez, who successfully recruited the state of Florida while at West Virginia and Michigan, dipped back into his Sunshine State relationships to land the latest publicly committed player to the Wildcats.
That would be receiver Clive Georges from Key West, Fla.
His coach, Jerry Hughes, replaced Rodriguez as a volunteer assistant at West Virginia after the 1989 season. The two became such friends along the way that they were described as “fishing buddies” in a 2009 story in the Key West Citizen.
So when Hughes had this late-blooming senior prospect who wasn’t get a lot of BCS-level recruiting attention, he turned to his fishing buddy.
“My coach gave Coach Rodriguez my film,” Georges said Sunday following his official visit to Tucson.
“(The Arizona coaches) said they liked what they saw and said they needed a couple more fast guys.”
Georges (6-1, 190) is rated a three-star recruit by Scout.com, which called him a “major sleeper” in a headline on a recent story. He is not ranked by Rivals.com or 247Sports, which speaks to how he has been under the radar.
Georges had 450 yards receiving, 250 yards rushing and eight touchdowns as a senior, according to Scout.com. He had other scholarship offers from Western Michigan and Florida Atlantic.
Georges said speed is his game, and that Arizona will test him out first as a slot receiver. You can see in the highlights video above that he is familiar with the read-option offense and, at least in high school, can turn the corner on end arounds.
He has a personal-best of 10.86 seconds in the 100 meters and 48.69 in the 400 meters. He has also competed in the triple jump.
Georges didn’t know much about Arizona a couple of months ago — “I knew they were in a slump,” he said — but finds himself part of a new era.
“When I saw the facilities, I just loved it, and the people around there, I love them,” he said.
“And that HD videoboard (at Arizona Stadium), that’s crazy. I was like, ‘Wow.’”