Colorado football coaches adjusting to early signing period

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During Colorado head coach Mike MacIntyre's weekly press conference on Tuesday, he was asked about how the new early signing period has changed things for his coaching staff during the football season.

"It's changed the season for the coaching staff," MacIntyre said. "We have a lot more official visits during the season.

NCAA rules prohibit college coaches from speaking about specific recruits, but as MacIntyre mentioned, the Buffaloes have had a lot more in-season official visitors than in the past.

So far this season, the Buffaloes have had six official visitors (four of them were in Boulder for the UW game), and this weekend against USC, we are expecting a good group of prospects to come in as well.

Colorado currently has 18 verbal commitments, and the Colorado coaching staff hopes to sign all of their pledges in that period. They hope to add a few more recruits if the scholarship numbers allow them to.

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With December 20 basically being the new signing day rather than the first Wednesday in February, it's changed the way the CU coaching staff handles the recruiting process.

"It's definitely sped it up a lot more," MacIntyre added. "There are a lot of things that are sped up, but it definitely has made it a little more frantic and a bit more pressing during the season than it has in the past. I think we've adapted well to it and had a good plan. Our recruiting department has done a great job with preparing for that."

If Colorado is able to sign most (if not all) of their recruits in the December signing period, it will allow them to get a jump start on the 2019 class, which is very important.

Prospects in the class of 2019 will be the class of high school recruits that are allowed to take official visits in the spring of their junior year.

"The one good thing I'm looking forward to is when we sign them on December 20th, it's basically over then," explained MacIntyre. "Now, you're starting for the next year. Maybe after the Christmas holiday it won't be as frantic in January as it was."