Those who stay will commit in June

At least that's how it used to be at Nebraska. We'll see if this recruiting sweet spot still exists in a new era of college football.

Nebraska RB Gabe Ervin Jr. during Nebraska’s win over Northern Illinois in 2023. | Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Running back Gabe Ervin Jr. and defensive lineman Nash Hutmacher are all that’s left of a specific cohort at Nebraska. They were two of 13 scholarship recruits who committed to the Huskers in June from the 2019 through 2022 recruiting classes. They are the only two from that group that didn’t leave Nebraska, and that’s unusual.

Recruits who have committed to the Huskers in June have typically been some of the best bets to stay. From 2011 to 2018,¹ Nebraska lost 46.5% of its total scholarship signees to attrition.² Players who committed in June, however, had just a 24% attrition rate.

Pre-portal this was something of a sweet spot for Husker recruiting, and, I always thought, an overlooked or simply unknown facet of what has always been one of the biggest months on the calendar. June wasn’t valuable simply because Nebraska could get a bunch of prospective players on campus for camps. For most of the Big Ten era, the players that chose NU then tended to stick at an above-average rate.

Is that gone now in an era of unlimited transfers? I doubt it despite the Huskers’ track record with June commits in the Scott Frost era.