The real movement begins next week when portal opens
Arizona just completed its first season in a new conference, doing so with a new head coach. But the newness wasn’t over when the season ended.
The Early Signing Period, which began Wednesday, previously had been the week before Christmas but was moved up two weeks this year to occur just before the opening of the NCAA transfer portal next week. Throw the advent of revenue sharing into the equation, and this year has been unlike any other for the UA and all college football programs.
“I think signing day traditionally was the end of a recruiting class, where now it really is the start,” football general manager Gaizka Crowley said. “We have the Early Signing Period. We’ll have a December portal window. We’ll have another signing day in February, then we’ll have a spring portal window. We’re a long way from the end. This is the first step of another nine, 10 months before we finish building this team for next season.”
That first step saw Arizona announce the signing of 20 players, 19 from high school and one junior college, that make up the first full recruiting class under Brent Brennan. When Brennan was hired in January to replace Jedd Fisch the first prep signing window had come and gone, and the transfer portal had closed for everyone except schools—like the UA—that had gone through a head coaching change.
Brennan and his staff signed three JUCO recruits in February, along with quite a few transfers both before and after spring practice. The portal will again be a big part of Arizona’s roster construction for 2025, while the class signed Wednesday will be more about 2026 and beyond with a few candidates to contribute immediately.
“We’re really excited about all of them, and I really think they all have a chance to really contribute in meaningful ways,” Brennan said. “Some of them this next year, then some of them down the road. I feel like we answered some real areas of need, and we’re going to be very, very active in the transfer portal, which opens up on Monday. So there’s all kinds of work to be done for our football program, and we are excited about where we’re going, and we’ve made some great progress with the retention of our current roster.”
The non-transfer class, led by 4-star Florida wide receiver Isaiah Mizell as well as six players from Texas and five from Arizona, is ranked 52nd nationally by 247Sports. Among Big 12 schools it is 10th-best but still ahead of conference title game participant Iowa State and fellow 10-win team BYU.
Those recruits didn’t sign the traditional National Letter of Intent (NLI) of past years, instead signing individual contracts related to academic aid, NIL opportunities and a piece of the school’s revenue sharing that is part of a pending NCAA settlement.
“So there’s multiple contracts for everybody to figure out,” Brennan said. “And when you’re dealing with players with different representation, that representation might have different issues with how contracts are written, or how it reads, all those things.”
Brennan said the financial aid agreement is the “binding” part of the deal, and the one that’s supposed to prevent other schools from continuing to recruit a player like that of the old NLI. In theory.
“Once they sign their financial aid agreement, it is supposed to create a so-called recruiting ban,” he said. “How binding those things are, I think time will tell. We are obviously in this constant state of evolution in college football right now. I think the NCAA, college football coaches, recruits, everybody, there’s a lot of new landscape and everyone’s kind of navigating it as we go through it.”
Arizona is fresh off a superbly disappointing season in which it went 4-8 overall and 2-7 in the Big 12, the 6-game drop in wins from the previous year tied for largest in school history. The on-field struggles may have contributed to the Wildcats losing some commitments, including 4-star receiver Terry Shelton (who signed with TCU) and 3-star linebacker Sean Robinson (Texas Tech), but according to Brennan the connections he and his staff made with recruits and their families in most cases won out.
“When you start recruiting a young person, you’re starting a relationship, you’re starting to build trust over time,” he said. “And I really think that recruits choose people in the recruiting process. And so we continue to lean on the value of a University of Arizona education, on the quality of people here, on living in the city of Tucson, like things that are obvious and easy for them to see and feel when they’re either here on their official visit or here unofficially.
“And so when we weren’t having success in the season, there was still a lot of trust and a lot of history there. They chose to come play for the coaches on the staff, because they believe those coaches are going to help them develop into high-level NFL-quality players, and that didn’t change just because we didn’t have success.”
One member of the 2025 class, 3-star California tight end Kellan Ford, is someone Brennan has kept tabs on since birth. Literally.
Ford’s mother and father went to high school with Brennan’s wife, Courtney, and when they visited the hospital after Kellan’s birth it wasn’t just to congratulate the new parents.
“I brought him an offer letter the day he was born,” Brennan said. “I handed his parents an offer letter, and it said, when he’s ready, I want him. I’m glad brought that letter to the hospital the day he was born. And it’s going to pay off big time for the Arizona Wildcats.”
Staff update expected Thursday
Brennan said he would reveal what changes he plans to make to his coaching staff on Thursday, preferring to focus Wednesday on the recruiting class.
All 10 full-time assistants were on hand for the Early Signing Day ceremony, which doubled as a donor event, including offensive coordinator Dino Babers. Babers is considered the most likely assistant to not be part of the 2025 staff, as his contract was only for one year and he was stripped of his play-calling duties after three games.