‘A group effort’: Cristobal, Michael Irvin and Greg Olsen all helped get Skinner to Miami
Thomas Wilkes, the wide receivers coach at Greer, spent two years driving Jaleel Skinner back and forth from practice in South Carolina. As he likes to say, he knew Skinner before he was Jaleel Skinner — the blue-chip prospect and, according to On3.com, the No. 1 tight end in the nation.
He knows Skinner well, so when he saw that the four-star tight end was going to visit the Miami Hurricanes in the days before the early signing period began he knew it was serious.
“So,” Wilkes wrote in a text message to Skinner, “you in Miami?”
“Yessir,” replied Skinner, who spent his senior season at Bradenton IMG Academy.
“Am I going to need a new shirt?” Wilkes wrote back. After Skinner committed to the Alabama Crimson Tide, Wilkes made sure he had an Alabama shirt to wear when he’d inevitably go to Tuscaloosa to watch his former player play.
“I don’t know,” Skinner told him. “We’ll see.”
A few hours later, Skinner texted back again.
“Looking like you might need a new shirt,” he wrote.
Skinner came back from Miami with a good idea of where he wanted to go to college, but he didn’t want to rush his final decision, so he waited until Friday to make the big announcement: He was flipping his commitment from the Crimson Tide to the Hurricanes on the final day of the early signing period.
It went down as the biggest recruiting coup of the Mario Cristobal era so far. Skinner had been orally committed to Alabama since October and Cristobal, in less than two weeks as Miami’s coach, flipped him away from the No. 1 team in the nation.
The credit doesn’t all go to Cristobal, though. Led by tight ends coach Stephen Field, the Hurricanes had been recruiting the 6-foot-5, 210-pound receiver for more than a year and brought him to campus for an official visit in June to coincide with Paradise Camp.
As always, the camp was a who’s who of college football legends and Skinner was indoctrinated into the Miami family.
David Njoku, a former Hurricane and starting tight end for the Cleveland Browns, met Skinner and told him he had been watching some of his highlights. Michael Irvin, the former Miami wide receiver and Pro Football Hall of Famer, struck up a long conversation with the four-star prospect. Skinner even has a relationship with Greg Olsen, another former Hurricane, from playing for Cam Newton 7V7.
It all played a role in luring Skinner to Miami, with Cristobal closing the deal.
“It was definitely a group effort and it worked,” Wilkes said. “They did a great job of selling it.”
Field’s persistence kept the Hurricanes in the picture. Before Skinner committed to the Crimson Tide, Field was talking to elite recruit every day.
Irvin helped out by recruiting Skinner beyond the day they met in Coral Gables. The Fort Lauderdale native even spoke with Skinner’s father on the phone while the family was weighing its decision, Wilkes said.
Cristobal closed the deal. The new coach recruited Skinner a bit while he was the coach of the Oregon Ducks, so there was a preexisting relationship and he sold Skinner on his vision of turning Miami back into a national contender.
“He liked Cristobal a lot,” Wilkes said, “but that boy ain’t going across the country.”
When Skinner finally signed his national letter of intent Friday, Olsen even called the senior to congratulate him. He was officially part of the Hurricanes family.
Miami calls itself “tight end U” and it envisions Skinner, who’s the No. 3 tight end in the 247Sports.composite rankings for the Class of 2022, as the next one in line.
“Stuff like that — it looks good on social media when it happens, but at the same time it goes further than that to make a kid feel a part of the community before he even was,” Skinner said. “Things like that are just small things. It might not mean anything at all to Michael Irvin or Greg Olsen, but to a guy like Jaleel it changes his perception or increases Miami in his eyes. Obviously, it was a lot to do with Cristobal, but it was a lot to do also with the alumni, the former players.”
