Football: Greenon’s Cade Rice selling himself with college football recruiting limited by pandemic

Although it will likely be hard to forget, the spring of 2020 is certainly not normal.

>>RELATED: Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

Instead of a recruiting tour, the Greenon junior is stuck at home like everyone else in Ohio and much of the rest of the country waiting out the coronavirus, which has infected more than 600,000 and caused schools and many businesses to be closed since last month.

In-person recruiting has been suspended through at least the end of May, but Rice is making the best of it by keeping his recruitment active through multiple communication channels.

While he can't go to Miami University, Bowling Green or Marshall as he planned, the three-star prospect ranked No. 81 among pro-style quarterbacks in the country by 247Sports can bring his workouts to those coaches and any others who find his Twitter feed.

“Pretty much every single coach wants to see me throw in person, so I'm just trying to make these videos to try and give them a virtual perspective,” said the 6-foot-3, 202-pound Rice. “I just do what I think they want to see and a lot of them just want to see velocity, to be honest with you.”

He credited teammates Kameron Cox, Clay Hough, Bass Moore, Evan Davis, Tallyn Peterson and Mason Vawter for joining him at different times. (Fortunately social distancing is not hard to maintain when throwing passes to people 20 or more yards away.)

So far, Rice has scholarship offers from NCAA FCS schools Illinois State and Bucknell.

He reported also receiving heavy interest from multiple Mid-American Conference schools as well as Connecticut in the FBS and FCS schools Eastern Illinois, Dartmouth, Lehigh and Columbia other Ivy League members.

“I didn't expect to get the two offers that I got this early, but I think now that I've gotten those, more schools won't be as worried about offering me and worried about me checking off all the boxes and all that stuff,” he said. “It definitely is a little bit frustrating just because I can't go where I want to go and build the relationships I want in person.”

Rice led the OHC in passing last season with 2,409 yards and 32 touchdown passes in 10 games. He was third in rushing with 859 yards and added another 12 scores on the ground.

While quarterback recruiting differs somewhat from other positions because schools often bring in just one per year, Rice said he is not concerned at this point about there not being any spots left for him when all is said and done and players begin signing letters of intent in December.

For his part, he is looking for place he can play and that has a good business school.

“That's my intended major at the moment, so I check that off and then I'll look for good coaching staff that works well with me,” Rice said. “And then I'll look at playing time opportunities in terms of when I first come in and all that, but then just really an overall fit, like a school that I like to be at.”

Fourth-year Greenon coach Josh Wooten, who is a teacher at the elementary school, is doing what he can to help spread the word about Rice.

“In every way possible, I've tried to reach out to these coaches,” Wooten said. “Sending them film, making phone calls, communicating with them through Twitter and all the different avenues that technology gives you.

“That's what I've tried to do because they're not going to get an opportunity to see him in person, but maybe they can see him on film and look at the numbers that he's produced not only just last year but over the three years and the growth he's made.”

As a Division V school, Greenon is not a typical stop on most major college coaches’ recruiting trips, but Wooten is not a novice when it comes to recruiting. He was exposed to it as an assistant at Division I schools Fairmont and Centerville.

“So far I've had a really good response,” Wooten said. “Obviously, we'd love it to be better, and Cade has done his part with reaching out and communicating with these guys. He knows I'm going to be there and do what I need to do to get his name out, but he's got to be his best salesman. And he does that.”

Rice is not the only potential Division I college player on the Knights roster.

Kicker Ethan Hawks, who joined Rice on the Division V all-state first team last fall, has visited Northwestern, Purdue and Cincinnati, and he has invitations from Louisville, Kentucky, Duke and Wisconsin pending when recruiting restrictions put in place the NCAA are lifted.

Meanwhile, Wooten sees the 5-11, 185-pound Cox as a potential sleeper recruit who could blossom in the right opportunity at the next level after running for 379 yards and catching 41 passes for 628 yards last season.

“He’s one of those sneaky kids that someone's going to have to take a flyer on and maybe in two years they're going to say, ‘You know what? He won a game for us on special teams,’” Wooten said. “And then I think two years after that they're gonna say, ‘Can you believe this kid started every game for us for two years and helped us win 10 games?’ or something like that.”