There was nothing soft about the verbal commitment Rancho Cucamonga High School’s Chris Hawkins was set to issue Stanford on Saturday. That’s why the four-star cornerback with 24 scholarship offers didn’t commit. A day before his recruitment was to end, the 24th offer stopped him in his tracks.
How long an offer from USC on Friday could delay Hawkins’ decision is anybody’s guess. Though he “is a definite Stanford lean right now,” Hawkins will take at least a couple of weeks, according to his father Armond Hawkins, to consider USC and possibly the third school on his list, Notre Dame. When the 6-foot, 170-pound junior does commit, it will be for good.
“I would never go back on my word,” Chris Hawkins said. “That’s why I just had to stop the whole thing for a minute. It was great to have USC offer but it shook me up a bit. Right now I’m going to take some time and research everythig about my top three schools. I’ll probably decide sometime before the summer is over.”
Hawkins took an unofficial visit to USC on Friday when he received the scholarship offer from his 10th Pac-12 school. (Oregon, which will pay a visit to Rancho Cucamonga this week, and Utah are yet to offer). With the door unexpectedly still ajar, a school like Oregon may still be able to sway Hawkins. A visit to Notre Dame may now be in the cards too, according to Armond Hawkins, who explained that once his son commits he will not take any more recruiting trips.
“You see all these kids committing and de-committing nowadays and I don’t want him looking crazy in the media or coming in with a bad reputation,” Armond Hawkins said. “We were ready to go with Stanford but USC came in and that’s his dream school. I figured you can’t go wrong with Stanford because it’s the best education outside the Ivy League and they’re beating USC nowadays too.”
Some of Hawkins’ other offers that have flooded in since early February include Florida, Oklahoma, Michigan, Boise State, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Northwestern and Vanderbilt. Now that he is still on the market, the younger Hawkins allowed he may not be limited to the top three schools on his list if the right option presents itself.
“They just got to recruit me hard,” Chris Hawkins said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. It’s been crazy these last couple of months but it’s gone by fast. I think I can deal with it a while longer.”
