Brian Smith and other members of his coaching staff have forgotten more about football than I know, but this one I don't understand. Whether looking at Fickel's numbers or by my eye test, he deserves a scholarship offer.
Often it’s a numbers game. With portal and NIL it’s even more of a numbers game. Sometimes it’s a “hedge your bets” thinking no one else is going to woo a kid that we can get on the cheap. Sometimes it’s like AJ, which had no other offers and we had no space. So, we got him to commit to a PWO with understanding that the first open scholarship would be his. It happened on day one. It’s a great story, but it wasn’t totally the Disney angle it was made out to be.