Q: What were your overall impressions of the visit?
Daniel Harris: “It was great. I know one thing we really learned as a family is it’s important for AJ to get around the guys. (At other visits), AJ always meets a DB or a player or two, but coach Coombs invited us to the team hotel Friday night when we got there, we got to go around and his mother and I got to go around and meet parents and AJ got to meet the players. That’s a dynamic we all really realized is important because the love from the players is more important than love from the coaches and the staff, because you’re going to be around the players more than you’re going to be around the coaches and the staff. That was an important dynamic to us, that was a nice little twist.”
Q: It’s been put out there elsewhere that you were very direct asking Ryan Day about the direction of the defensive coaching staff moving forward and you appreciated how direct his answer was. Is that right?
Harris: “That we probably appreciated more than anything over the whole weekend. I’ll keep it in the room, not that he shared much, because he didn’t owe me that, he’s a head coach. I prefaced the question with ‘Coach, I may be overstepping my bounds here, but the elephant in the room for us is x, y and z, and I need to know.’ It was not like, ‘Yeah, you are overstepping your bounds and I’m not going to go there with you.’ He could have easily said that and I wouldn’t have been mad. But he gave us an answer that was very eye-opening and we were very appreciative of his answer. I love that about coach Day. He definitely won some brownie points with us on that one.”
Q: It seems to me that C.J. Hicks is the biggest recruiter I’ve ever seen and yet he’s a recruit. But it seems like he was leading AJ around the sideline all of Saturday. Tell me what that was like for AJ and what their relationship is like.
Harris: “The few people that follow AJ may be aware, but AJ and C.J. met at The Opening in July, and they got put on the same team. Man, the chemistry was phenomenal. They’ve been in touch ever since. So really, Saturday was nothing but a continuation of the relationship they already had started to build. Some people may think that was a surprise, but that’s a relationship that was already there.”
Q: I know there’s more visits to take and the commitment date is a few months away, but how tough of a decision is it going to be after seeing Ohio State on a game day?
Harris: “We always created a rule from the summer where we’ll wait 48 hours to really engage AJ so we all can come totally down off of that high of emotions. I haven’t really talked to AJ yet. This is a nugget I haven’t really told anybody, AJ is going to commit Dec. 13 or Jan. 11, that’s out there, but if need be, we’ll go longer. If we need to go longer, I will have to advise him to go longer. I’m not saying that’s in the works now, I’m not AJ’s mouthpiece, but if it is too tough for him, I teach him to be a man of his word. If something don’t look right or we need to know a little bit more, we’ll take the time. AJ has already told me and his mom, I’m not a needy person. I don’t need to go on five official visits or whatever. So pretty much whoever AJ commits to is probably one of the only official visits we’ll take, we may not take three or four official visits. But if we need more time, we’ll take more time. So I’m telling you, stay tuned come December or January because we could be putting out a whole other narrative if need be.”