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Mizzou lands transfer commitment from highly touted 2024 LB
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Mizzou came up short in Jeremiah Beasley’s initial recruitment. Turns out, he’ll be a Tiger for the 2024 college football season anyway.
Beasley announced his commitment to play for Eli Drinkwitz’s program on Wednesday.
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As a high school prospect, Beasley was rated 4-stars, the No. 8 player in the state of Michigan, No. 31 linebacker and No. 377 prospect overall by the 247Sports Composite.
He gives Mizzou a blue-chip linebacker in its 2024 class. MU’s only other 2024 LB signee is Nicholas Rodriguez, a Composite 3-star. Williams Nwaneri headlines the class a 5-star edge defender.
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Changing world of college football recruiting
For many years, Ricky Bobby’s wise words, “if you ain’t first, you’re last,” held true in college football recruiting. Being the runner-up in a college football recruitment was the ultimate “almost doesn’t count.”
In college football’s new landscape, there is something to be said for building relationships with prospects who sign elsewhere.
As a standout of Belleville (Michigan) High School, Beasley received scholarship offers from 27 programs. Last June, he decided to take official visits to Michigan, Michigan State and Mizzou.
Beasley committed to Michigan on June 28, 2023 after his visits were completed. He followed through on his verbal pledge and signed to play for a Michigan program with Jim Harbaugh as the head coach.
Beasley enrolled at U-M on Jan. 15, days after Michigan’s national championship. Harbaugh remained coach for nine more days, taking the Los Angeles Chargers job on Jan. 24. Harbaugh’s departure provided Beasley an opportunity to hit the portal immediately, but he elected to go through spring practice.
After one spring in Ann Arbor, Beasley decided to hit the transfer portal. With the NCAA deciding to give multi-time immediate eligibility (as opposed to only first-time transfers), there is less hesitancy for a player to hit the portal.
With Beasley in the portal, the work of Drinkwitz’s staff from recruiting him a year ago gave Mizzou a leg up on the competition. And now Beasley is CoMo bound – just a little later than the Tigers had originally planned.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
