Unlike basketball where the top recruits often compete against each other in AAU events, there are few opportunities for the top football recruits to go head-to-head. The Opening, where the top 165 of the nation's best gathered last week at Nike's world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, was one of those opportunities.
And even though it's against NCAA rules for recruiters to attend the event, there were a lot of eyeballs focused on what happened both on and off the field. RecruitingNation gave recruiters a veil of anonymity to get their true thoughts on what they saw in Oregon. Here are the results.
The freak
When you're ranked as the No. 1 prospect, all eyes are on you at an event like The Opening. Recruiters absolutely loved what they saw from defensive tackle Rashan Gary. The most used word to describe Gary by recruiters was 'freak.' In fact, it was used by six different coaches from different conferences all over the country. One Big Ten recruiter said Gary, from Paramus, N.J., will have a more immediate impact on college football than Robert Nkemdiche did when he signed with Ole Miss in the 2013 class.
"We've got an uphill battle to sign him," the Big Ten assistant said. "But our staff believes he's the highest impact recruit to come out in the last five years. It was fun to watch him destroy all those good linemen. It looked like he was back in New Jersey."