This normally is a very busy time for college recruiters. They use the time between the end of the regular season and the bowl game (for those that are in bowl games) to host recruits on campus and to try to nail down firm commitments from players they have been courting for months.

It’s a rare year for the Hawkeyes. Kirk Ferentz and his staff don’t have much to do. They have a solid recruiting class of 19 committed players in place. All they want to do now is make sure they hold onto what they already have.

And Ferentz admitted that because of the kind of season the Hawks have had, they don’t expect to have much trouble doing that.

At least one of Iowa’s recruits – quarterback A.J. Derby of Iowa City – is planning to graduate from high school in mid-year and enroll at Iowa for the second semester so he can go through spring practice. It’s a blow for the City High basketball team, but it should help Derby find playing time earlier in his college career.

Scout.com rates the Hawkeyes’ recruiting class No. 33 in the country and No. 5 in the Big Ten, which is probably slightly higher than they usually are rated. Recruiting rankings aren’t something Ferentz cares much about anyway.

The rest of the Big Ten, according to Scout.com: Penn State is 4th, Michigan 16th, Ohio State 21st, Michigan State 26th, Wisconsin 39th, Purdue 42nd, Indiana 47th, Minnesota 50th, Northwestern 58th and Illinois 68th. The Illini normally would be up in the middle of the Big Ten somewhere, but they only have six commitments at the moment.

Tags: A.J. Derby, Iowa football, Kirk Ferentz

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Hawkeyes Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.