Pitt HC Talks Recruiting Philosophy in NIL Era

PITTSBURGH — The recent lifting of transfer restrictions has caused a boom in transfer portal activity. Some teams rely almost solely on transfer additions and skimp on traditional high school recruiting. The Pitt Panthers are not one of those teams.

Pitt signed 21 incoming freshmen as part of its 2026 recruiting class during the early signing period. The number of high school signees has not changed for the Panthers since the emergence of the transfer portal. They have consistently added anywhere between 19-22 high school recruits since 2023.

Some programs choose to recruit primarily through the portal, like Colorado, which signed 18 more transfers than high school recruits in last year's cycle, or teams with new head coaches, like West Virginia and Purdue this past year, which signed 53 and 54 transfers, respectively.

Pitt even dabbled in the transfer portal last offseason, signing 16 transfers — the most in program history.

But Pat Narduzzi has remained adamant that high school recruiting is more important than transfer portal recruiting in this new world of college football.

"We're averaging 22 players each recruiting class. That tells you how important high school recruiting is," Narduzzi said on Early National Signing Day. "I've talked to coaches that are signing two or three kids. That's not good. We want to still build our football team with high school football players. I want to make sure that's clear."

Importance of High School Recruiting

A large part of building a program in college football is creating a culture. The best way to do that is by coaching and developing players from the time they step on campus as a freshman until they receive their diploma as a senior.

"You want to develop your own people right now," Narduzzi said. "We want to take these guys that come from high school and develop them, build their habits."

This, of course, has become increasingly difficult to accomplish with the unbelievable number of transfer portal inductees each season and the emergence of Name, Image and Likeness deals. But it isn't impossible.

Narduzzi said that approximately 75% of the 2025 roster is made up of high school recruits and the other 25% are transfer additions, further proving his emphasis on high school recruiting.

"When you look at the young guys we have on our team, whether it's Mason [Heintschel], Boosie [Ka'Kyrian Turner], Trey Butkowski, Shawn Lee, I'm probably missing somebody. It means that there's too many freshmen to talk about and that's a good thing."