“All Hope Lost” As Salt Lake City Brutally Terminated 3 Super Stars For Breach Of…

Sharrieff Shah has been in the recruiting business long enough that he can anticipate the negative tactics that will be used against his school.

“Oh, you don’t want to go to Utah,” the Utes’ cornerbacks coach said incredulously, launching into his best impersonation of opposing coaches. “It’s bad out there. … It’s so far.”

He paused and laughed at his hypothetical recruiting pitch for a second.

Shah can laugh because he knows the state and the program’s strengths. But for recruits who have never seen Salt Lake City, the thought of moving to the mountains — away from the recruiting hotbeds in Texas, Florida and California — can be daunting. And opposing coaches like to prey on that.

“Everyone else will say, ‘Utah is the LDS population. It’s this. It’s that,’” running backs coach Quinton Ganther concurred. “We are fighting all types of uphill battles, but we are fighting them.”

For the longest time, Utah’s answer to the negative recruiting war was to get players on campus. Let them see it for themselves. Even that has become more difficult, Shah and Ganther said.

Since the introduction of name, image and likeness, Utah coaches are finding it harder and harder to get recruits to come on unofficial visits. Coaches believe many top recruits are charging a fee just to visit. Recruiting and NIL experts say that is against the rules. But some Ute coaches feel, it is a reality that is making recruiting more challenging.

“It is a lot harder to get a kid to come unofficially,” Shah said. “That’s for sure.”

Thirteen years as the cornerbacks coach at Utah, filled with hundreds of hard-fought recruiting battles, will harden a coach. It will also refine a recruiting pitch, forcing you to nimbly predict what other programs will use against you and turn it into a strength.