Recruiting game plan has changed at BYU

Paul Tidwell doesn't want to get into a comparison game, trashing the past for the future.

But BYU's football recruiting coordinator, five months into his new assignment, admits that Bronco Mendenhall's game plan for finding recruits surpasses anything he's seen in his four years at the school.

Tidwell could make a blanket statement like: "surpasses all time." But he won't. He can't. He'll leave that debate for observers to sift out in seasons to come.

The new system includes communications that involve former players and alumni across the world, a recruiting resource database for referrals, quadrupling letter writing to players on missions and extensive background checks of prospects.

BYU now catalogs potential recruit tapes into a library that, in months to come, will hold more than 320 cassettes of high school recruits from classes of 2004 and 2005. It will also have junior tapes of the class of 2006 and an evaluating system "significantly more sophisticated" than BYU's football office has undertaken since the digital age.

In BYU football days of old, if a head coach wanted a tape, he went on a scavenger hunt on desktops, through file drawers and inside cupboards of position coaches and coordinators. It was organization disaster with a fuse.

Under the direction of previously underutilized director of football operations Duane Busby, almost every modern computer device available is deployed to streamline BYU recruiting operations.

"One negative we found early on," Tidwell said, "is when we sent out 1,700 letters to former players enlisting their help in finding potential recruits, half our list was out of date and mail was returned. We're working hard to update that list and ask the help of all our alumni to do so," Tidwell said.

"Call or write in now."

Mendenhall's charge to Tidwell and his staff? On his watch, not only will every aspect of the operation be improved, but it will be better executed. Nothing is immune from overhaul.

The biggest change, however is scrutiny of recruits. Mendenhall has turned it upside down. He wants recruits who clamor to be in the BYU universe.

Huh?

Well, there is no question about it, recruiting to BYU and its unique writ of conduct, the honor code, is a huge challenge these days where college life on most campuses is filled with binge drinking, partying and premarital sex.