In the NIL era, the majority of recruiting classes are wrapped by the end of Summer.
It makes the process less stressful & it's easier for staffs to manage, instead of having to play Russian Roulette all Winter hoping & praying the proverbial other shoe doesn't drop.
Now that players are signing contracts & getting paid, there's binding language & guaranteed money at stake, so while flips may still occur, they're less frequent depending on the nature of the contract.
Also, NSD as a whole has been moved up, more & more players are early enrolling & getting on campus ASAP, so the players themselves aren't being as flippant as they were in the past with their commitments.
The name of the game is take all your visits in the Spring/early Summer & then by the end of Summer-before your HS season starts to commit to your school to get that locked in. Play your Senior season & be on campus by January.
They don't really have as much time to lollygag around with their commitment choices like they used to. And now because of NIL, there's budgetary allocation that have to be divvied up & slots might not always be available, so it's best to get in where you fit in, rather than drag your recruitment out.
It's also decreases the amount of leverage a recruit has in negotiating the longer he waits. Now that recruitments are playing in the million dollar ball club, there's a less speculative market for them to drive up. There's a finite number of teams willing to pay that much for certain recruits & the longer a kid tries to play possum, the less suitors he'll have to leverage against in negotiations.
