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This weekend is The Opening Finals. The biggest recruiting event of the summer is held by Nike and this year will be in Frisco. What exactly goes down here? We’ll let Bud Elliott, SB Nation’s recruiting guru explain.
Nike’s The Opening Finals, the year’s annual biggest camp for football recruits, is this weekend. Out of the 163 prospects in attendance, a whopping 25 are five-star recruits, per 247Sports, and another 107 are four-stars. The Finals from Frisco, Texas features a variety of competition-based events, including a 7-on-7 tournament, a lineman competition, and a Nike training camp.
The event has a combine like event, 7-on-7 games with teams given super buzz word-y names by Nike like “Team Boomin” and “Team Overdrive”, and 1-on-1 lineman drills. It’s not a made for TV event so follow @SBNRecruiting for updates. They will have plenty of recruiting updates of The Opening and general recruiting news all year long.
Why do we care? Are there any Arkansas Recruits there?
Last year it was pretty slim to find any Arkansas interest at this event, but Chad Morris’ staff has been much more active and is going after a few guys at this event pretty hard. There are several names that Arkansas has offered but they are almost certainly going elsewhere, so we won’t spend too much time on them, but there are two guys Arkansas fans should keep an eye on.
Bobby Wolfe - A 4-star DB by 247Sports, Wolfe announced his top-3 of Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Ole Miss and is expected to commit this weekend. 247Sports’ Crystal Ball is leaning pretty significantly towards A&M, but Arkansas recruiting expert Richard Davenport has said Arkansas has made a big push and feels good about their chances.
Stacey Wilkins - Wilkins is one of the top prospects in Arkansas, and is the only player from the state heading to this event. For a while he’s been leaning towards Oklahoma or Texas, but he made an official visit to Fayetteville this month and the staff is still prioritizing him pretty high.