Signing daze: Sermons decides on UCLA
Brandon Sermons woke up Wednesday morning knowing he would sign a national letter of intent, he just didn't know with whom.
The Diamond Ranch High School senior, ranked the 33rd best cornerback in the country by rivals.com, verbally committed to UCLA way back on Oct 21. But in the three weeks before signing day was wavering enough to visit hard-charging Oregon State and Washington.
These weren't just courtesy trips.
"Three days ago he was leaning Washington," Diamond Ranch football coach Roddy Layton said Wednesday afternoon. "Two days ago he was leaning UCLA. Yesterday he didn't know."
Sermons and Layton had a four-hour dinner Tuesday night, during which Sermons was leaning in so many different directions it's a good thing he was sitting down.
When he could muster no more discussion, Layton's final piece of advice was "Whichever one you think of when you wake up, go with it."
Sermons was stirred in the early morning hours of national signing day by the ring of his phone. Who could be calling at 5 a.m.? How about several coaches who had probably been up for hours - if they slept al all - making one last effort to kiss the 6-foot-1, 190-pound cornerback in the ear.
In the end, Sermons stuck with his original semtiment and signed with UCLA. He gave legitimately compelling reasons for all three schools, but it was difficult to argue with those that swayed him towards the Bruins.
"I went with the place where, if I got hurt in the very first practice and never played again, that was the place I wanted to get my degree," he said. "And I wanted to prove all those people wrong who said I was going to go back on my word."
When Sermons verbally committed to UCLA in October, the recruiting frenzy came to a screeching halt. No more calls, no more text messages. After fielding close to 20 scholarship offers, it was almost too quiet for Sermons. That is, until Bruins defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker departed for the head coaching job at New Mexico State.
Enter Oregon State.
Walker's hiring was officially announced Dec. 31. Two weeks later Sermons was in Corvallis, Ore.
On vacation in Florida, Layton, who keeps close tabs on his players' dealings with colleges, happened to turn on his phone for the first time in a week a few minutes before an angry Arizona assistant coach rang wanting to know why he was reading internet reports that Sermons was visiting Oregon State.
A week removed from his last conversation with Sermons, whom he believed was firmly committed to UCLA, Layton didn't know what Arizona - one of the remaining handful of contenders when Sermons made his verbal pledge to UCLA - was talking about. Layton immediately phoned Sermons...
Layton: "Are you really taking a trip to Oregon State?"
Sermons: "I'm at the airport right now."
Not more than a few weeks removed from his offensive coordinator job at USC, Washington's new head coach Steve Sarkisian acted like he never left.
"He's got that USC recruiting mentality," said Layton, a former USC football player. "They think they can get anybody, anytime."
Sermons was courted by USC, where older brother Rodney played running back, but never offered a scholarship. With Oregon State having pried the door ajar, Washington sauntered right through it.
Despite a winless season last year, Washington nearly added a headliner to its recruiting class in the final few days. From a coaching standpoint, according to Sermons, it was the next best thing to USC. Several members of the staff that helped Pete Carroll develop all that NFL talent, including defensive coordinator Nick Holt and Trojans 2007 defensive backs coach Demetrice Martin, joined Sarkisian in Washington.
Had Sermons been handed a pen on Monday, he probably would have signed with the Huskies.
Instead he is a member of a UCLA recruiting class ranked fourth in the nation by scout.com.
It's a stock answer for some of these kids to cite academics as the reason for their choice, but I honestly believed Sermons when he said it was not only a degree from UCLA but job connections in L.A. that broke the tie. It is, after all, U.S. News & World Report's 25th ranked school in the nation. And It obviously meant a great deal to Sermons to honor the word he gave Rick Neuheisel.
In a way, it was refreshing to hear about his struggles as signing day approached. It's situations like his that make signing day so fascinating but rarely are people so willing to discuss it as Sermons and Layton.
Sermons was even frank about how he'll feel moving forward.
"It feels like all this weight was lifted off my shoulders" he said. "I'm glad it's finally over. I signed with got no regrets. Well there are no regrets yet; we'll see how it goes when I get there. But whatever happens, I'm not gonna pout."