For some, it’s National NOT Signing Day | Football Insider

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

The NCAA’s Early Signing Period for football opens Wednesday and goes through Friday, a window for school seniors to sign college scholarship papers before National Signing Day in February.

But for star players like Marceles Carey of DeLand, Li’Darious Pryor of Evans and Keydrick Powell of South Lake, there will be no pens or papers or celebrations.

And for several others, there will be feted ceremonies, but the shine won’t be as glossy. Orlando-area leading rusher Amar’e Johnson of Bishop Moore, who eclipsed the 2,000-yard rushing mark in Friday’s state quarterfinals victory for the Hornets, only had one FBS option, and he’ll be signing with Group of 5 team Missouri State.

Edgewater’s Damian Moore, who played his first season at running back this year and had a stellar season and is also a legit linebacker prospect, is headed to little FCS school Duquesne in Pittsburgh. Standout Seminole linebacker Raheem Turner is headed to Group of 5 Arkansas State.

Sentinel’s 2026 Central Florida Super60 football prospects

The top three tacklers on state semifinalist Jones High’s team — Bertrand Derose, Ryan Duval and Quinton Evans — will not be signing this week.

Powell leads the area in receiving yards and is No. 6 in the state with 1,203 yards and nine  touchdowns on 70 catches, but has zero offers.

Eight of the top 30 area prospects are headed to Group of 5 or lower, and 16 of the Sentinel Super60 will not sign Wednesday.

There will be worthy athletes signing to big-time schools. But a baffling number of individuals are victims of a new era in college football recruiting.

Ever since the NCAA transfer portal became the new way to build a roster, high school seniors have felt a negative impact. Colleges, knowing they can easily reach into the transfer portal to find veteran college players, have made high school recruiting less of a priority.

The days of building a foundation with recruited high school prospects is over for the Power 4 programs. In an era when coaches get three years to win or get fired, do not want to put their livelihood in the hands of 18-year-old potential.

Sure-thing high schoolers will have options, but the next level of the talent pool is changing. Players who used to be Power 4 targets are dropping to the mid-major schools. Players who used to be mid-major are now looking at FCS or NCAA Division II or Division III levels, or NAIA options.

This year, 38 of the 60 players in the Sentinel’s 2025 Central Florida Super60 will be signing with FBS programs, but only 25 will sign with Power 4 programs. That number is actually up from a year ago, when only 28 Super60 players signed FBS, only 15 with Power 4 programs.

The glaring oversight this year is the talent that is being overlooked. No one seems to have the answer as to why players like Carey, No. 3 player in the 2025 Super60, has zero FBS offers.

That means of the 136 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, none thought Carey, one of the most versatile players in the state, to be worthy of a scholarship.

Carey ran the ball 113 times for 1,479 yards and 31 touchdowns this season, leading DeLand to a 12-1 record. That’s a whopping 13 yards per carry. He also caught 27 passes for 693 yards and seven more touchdowns. That’s 25 yards per catch. And he returned kicks and punts and played defensive back, picking off six passes, including one pick-6, and made 40 tackles.

Carey’s current options are Stetson and Bethune-Cookman.

DeLand coach Rick Darlington said he doesn’t see college coaches coming to his school to check out players the way it was when recruiters flocked to Apopka. That could be because DeLand is off the beaten path, 45 miles outside of Orlando. But with one of the top 2028 prospects in the country, running back Taihj Moore, also on the Bulldogs roster, you would think DeLand would draw recruiters.

“With DeLand being right on I-4 between Mainland and Seminole [high schools], I figured colleges were gonna come through just like at Apopka,” said Darlington, who just finished his third season at DeLand. “The first spring when I got here, we literally had two college coaches come through. I was aghast. Occasionally an FSU or someone like that would stop by out of courtesy, but no one was coming by to see what DeLand has.

“Year two, we had TJ Moore and Javon Ross, who I thought were really, really good players who, 10 years ago, would have been going somewhere in Division I. Maybe not a Power 4, but definitely Group of 5 schools.”

Wrong again. Moore, the Sentinel’s first-team all-area quarterback in 2024, ended up at FCS South Carolina State, and Ross, the Sentinel’s Iron Man of the Year in 2024, ended up at FCS Bethune-Cookman.

“Everything has fallen down like two levels,” Darlington said. “Guys who were D-I guys area now D-2 guys, and D-2 now NAIA or whatever.

“I get it. If I’m a coach and I gotta get my team put together fast, and I’m looking to win or I’m probably gonna get fired,” Darlington said. “Three years is the most you are gonna get, so they have to get proven performers to plug-and-play. So who’s developing kids now.”

Well, nobody, really.

The theory is that coaches are spending so much time evaluating potential players who may end up in the transfer portal, that the time allotted for evaluating high school talent has been squeezed to a bare minimum.

“So for a guy like Marceles, I’m wondering if anyone is even seeing him,” Darlington said.

It used to be make your film, get the word out via recruiting services like 247 Sports and Rivals and hit the camps to promote yourself. Now the promotion is falling on deaf ears and players are frustrated.

Darlington said Carey has remained humble and is handling the situation as well as he can. But it has to be hard on star players who are doing superlative things on the field only to get shunned by colleges.

“Once the portal closes in January and people don’t have what they thought they had, maybe some spots will pop open, so we’ll see,” Darlington said of Marceles. “But there’s no way he’ll sign this week. He has nowhere to sign.”

Chris Hays can be found on X.com@OS_ChrisHays.

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos