Kansas Football Recruiting: You Win Some And You Lose Some

Since the coaching turnover the Kansas recruiting class for 2012 has gone through some pretty significant changes. If you start counting transfers, decommitments and new commitments we're pretty much looking at local product Brian Beckmann and junior college transfer Ty McKinney as the only two holdovers from Turner Gill's time.

These last few day signaled what should be the final exodus though as both Beckmann and McKinney have indicated that they will stick by their initial commitment to Kansas. However JayhawkSlant recently reported on a series of changes signaling a few more losses in recent days, but Kansas also added a few players and it's worth catching up.

Seth Russell was a holdover at quarterback who recently committed elsewhere in the Big 12 after a visit to Baylor. His departure seemed somewhat inevitable due to his desire to play quarterback and the change in system with the new regime.

Cornerback HB Rosser is another player who switched his commitment over the weekend electing to head to UT-San Antonio. This decision would appear to have been a mutual one along with another defensive back in Derek Keaton who is set to move in a different direction as well. While it's always disappointing to see someone have a change of heart, it's inevitable in this situation and sometimes you're just going to lose.

The good news is that you also stand to win. Yesterday brought about three NEW commitments for Charlie Weis and the Jayhawks. The first is from our third junior college defensive tackle in Butler CC product and Wichita native Chanquil Reed. Reed checks in at 6'3" 290 and brings another immediate competitor at a position where Kansas desperately needed options.

The other two commitments were players that pulled a switch in committing to Kansas. The first is defensive back Greg Allen. Allen had recently committed to Utah but took the trip to Kansas before making the switch on Monday. Allen is rumored to have measured in at 6'1" 205 during his visit and he has great speed so this could be a player that could easily fit the mold of a Kenneth Crawley who Kansas recently missed on.

Last but not least is an offensive tackle from Big 10 country who was flying below the radar and headed to the MAC. Sean Connolly checks in at 6'7" 290 and was targeted by Rob Ianello and Ron Powlus at Akron. After visiting last weekend, Connolly took the next step in committing to a BCS Conference school.

Overall with commitments and decommitments this puts the Jayhawk class back at 12 if you aren't counting players like Dayne Crist, Justin McCay or Jake Heaps. Headed into this year with Turner Gill the belief was that Kansas had about 13-15 spots to work with. After attrition and addition that puts us somewhere in the 7-10 neighborhood. Charlie Weis has stated that he will likely hold a few for May 5th year transfers that he might be aware of but it would appear they still have a little more work to do.

It's hard to say how big the class get's on paper at this point, but the new staff does appear to have done a decent job early at addressing needs. If they can continue to do that on the defensive side of the ball, Kansas could pull together a decent class considering the circumstances. Of course if you want to start counting transfers, then some might argue it's a better than decent group.