TALLAHASSEE -- How can Florida State’s new coaching staff showcase itself to priority prospects during an unforeseen dead period on the recruiting calendar?

The question has to be asked, because any success FSU will have in the Mike Norvell Era will be so closely intertwined with his ability to recruit.

Quantifiable on-field results are essential, no doubt. FSU won’t be FSU again on the recruiting trail until that happens. But establishing relationships with a new tier of recruits in Florida and Georgia after Norvell largely tapped into other pockets of the Southeast while at Memphis has been a Day 1 priority for FSU’s first-year head coach. (Alabama and Louisiana are also high priorities, but Norvell’s staff had more organic roots to these states dating back to their time at Memphis).

Finding ways to connect, however, is tricky.

The NCAA enacted a mandatory dead period on recruiting in response to the Coronavirus pandemic last month and recently extended the restrictions through May. All college programs are dealing with the same limitations, but the challenges presented to a first-year staff like Norvell’s are magnified.

“The guys as a staff have had to approach recruiting differently during this time,” said Norvell, who praised his staff’s efforts for what they did in March before the pause as the Seminoles hosted about 75 prospects last month.

So, again, how does FSU go about doing this? How can its staff make headway in the relationship business during a time when in-person interactions are impossible?

The Seminoles are getting creative. Norvell’s commitment to a larger graphic-design staff and willingness to explore unique angles is helping during strange times. From getting recruits to interact with assistants through video games to setting up an in-depth virtual tour of the campus, FSU is finding ways to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

A Different Game

In 2018, around the time he joined Clemson’s staff as a recruiting assistant, Adam Van Clay saw the shift in what recruits valued.

The normal routine of sending team-specific information to pitch a program to a prospect was rapidly becoming dated. Instead, recruits were strongly responding to something else.

“You look at it today, personalized graphics are the biggest commodity that recruits are interested in receiving,” said Van Clay, who returned to FSU earlier this year to take on the role as the assistant director of recruiting operations. “A lot of it is sent out digitally, as well as the mail, so it’s kind of the shift in mindset of how you’re recruiting kids specifically.”

These personalized graphics existed before 2018, but they’re far more prevalent today.

“Obviously the generation is changing, they’re extremely smart and they don’t want anything simple,” said David ‘YAC’ Johnson, FSU’s running backs coach and recruiting coordinator. “That’s definitely changed over the last few years. These kids understand that they want certain things personalized to a certain extent, want to see something different, who’s going to come up with the best graphics for them.

“That goes a lot with the kids today. They even give you some ideas of doing things. It goes back to making sure we pay attention, that we listen to these kids and the things that we like. The graphics, from when I was a high school coach, it’s a totally different game right now.”

Noles247’s Zach Blostein polled more than 50 FBS-caliber recruits last year to get their thoughts on how they valued edits/graphics. Recruits were asked three questions:

--Do edits from a school make you want to check the school out even more?

--If a school makes an edit that is personalized to you, does it make you like the school even more?

--What means more, better edits or more edits from one school?

More than 60 percent of the recruits said that the graphics made them want to check out the school at a deeper level and that personalized edits made them fonder of the school producing them. Nearly 70 percent of those recruits said they valued the quality of graphics over the quantity.

So, understanding the importance of this changing dynamic in recruiting, FSU has responded.

The Seminoles have a forward-thinker in Van Clay, who works as an in-between with coaches, recruits and FSU’s graphics team. The last staff added Klayton “KCamp” Campbell -- who became popular on social media with his FSU-themed edits and graphics before landing a job with the athletic department -- and then Norvell hired Kyle Pulek as the Director of Creative Media in early March.

Several student interns have since been added to FSU’s staff -- Pulek calls interns the “lifeblood” of a recruiting office -- beefing up the graphics/edits efforts in fortuitous fashion just as teams had to stop in-person recruiting.

“We’re at a point right now, as a creative office, where we’ve never been more talented and we’ve never been better staffed than we are right now,” Van Clay said. “It’s incredibly important and this gives us a little time to focus more on that right now because we don’t have official visits coming to campus right now, we don’t have Junior Days where we’re breaking down thousands of photos to send out.

“All of our time is focused right now on what we can do to be creative and engaging. And I think we’re coming up with a lot of unique ways to do that.”

Forward Thinkers

Van Clay held various roles within FSU’s recruiting department from 2015-18 before he went to Clemson, where he collaborated with the defensive staff on evaluations and organization of recruits. He also coordinated official and unofficial visits to campus.

The Tigers went 29-1 in his time there and won a national title, doing it in a way that was more modern and innovative than what we’ve often seen in the past decade from Nick Saban and his coaching tree.

That applied to recruiting, where Clemson was willing to take some creative risks in how it utilized visuals to interact with recruits.

“I think the one thing I took away from that office was that everybody was encouraged to be forward thinkers,” Van Clay said. “To be creative is ultimately going to get you where you want to be. I think at Florida State, we have a lot of creative people. Some who’ve been here for a little bit, and some new staff members have done a really great job of stepping in and contributing right away.”

Norvell holds Zoom meetings daily with his staff while quarantined. He and Johnson have shown a willingness to think outside the box and trust Van Clay to relay information to them -- and vice versa -- about what different recruits value. For example, Johnson wants FSU’s assistants to listen better than ever when they get a chance to FaceTime recruits.

What are their favorite movies? What music are they currently listening to? What are they doing to pass time during this quarantine?

And with that, we’ve seen FSU try to be different.

Van Clay can relay ideas between the coaching staff and graphics staff. This has led to some cool graphics and unique ideas.

For example, Campbell and Van Clay were among those who had a discussion on what they thought recruits were doing while stuck at home. Student interns said they were playing video games, and so the logic went, if they were playing video games...so were recruits. FSU’s staff took a poll to see who was gaming online, and it turned out that younger graduate assistants and analysts were the most active when it came to games like Madden.

Then came the graphics.

?????????? I'll be free later, no more talk. Accepting all challenges ???????????????????? pic.twitter.com/GxQmOMuoYJ — CLINTON MCMILLAN (@coach_mac98) March 23, 2020

“I think it’s a great idea. You know recruits are at home right now and every school wants to contact them,” said Bud Elliott, a national recruiting analyst for 247Sports. “But many kinds don't want to sit on the phone. They’d prefer to text, but with schools wanting to dig deeper on prospects and form better relationships, getting a feel for the person the player is, an actual conversation is often required for that.

“With a video game invite, you get a 1-on-1 with the coach and recruit for at least 30 minutes in a relaxed atmosphere where the player can be himself. The coach can make a connection and inform a player about what he’s like as a coach. It’s not perfect, but there’s no face-to-face contact right now and it’s really the best option.”

The challenge daily now is to be creative, to think about how FSU can distinguish itself from other programs that perhaps aren’t quite as invested in this area. Or how FSU can compete with those who’ve been more dedicated to the graphics game for a while.

Pulek had only been at FSU for a couple weeks before recruiting started to slow down (and eventually shut down). The planning he did with the staff “went out the window” quickly and the creative team had to adjust just as coaches did.

After working in a similar role at Nevada and Coastal Carolina, Pulek has appreciated the willingness to be different at FSU. Campbell and he delve into an artistic process while Van Clay is the liaison of sorts. He understands what recruits are looking for, the coaching staff instructs which recruits need more attention or expresses various needs, and that message is relayed to the design time.

“Adam lets us be creative. Having that trust in someone, that is the theme,” Pulek said. “He challenges us. And the people that have started here, they enjoy that challenge.”

Pulek came up with some stop-motion sort of concepts for recruits at Nevada, compiling compelling graphics with unique information after a player would sign with the program.

He’s now working on his camera game to ramp up that aspect of FSU’s social-media presence.

A Taste of Tallahassee

The biggest project to date for FSU’s new staff was released on Saturday.

Working with Seminoles Productions, the football program put together a “virtual tour” of FSU to show recruits. A player like Amarius Mims -- a five-star recruit at a major position of need, offensive tackle -- had to cancel a visit to Tallahassee due to the shutdown. This tour could help extend FSU’s recruitment of Mims and keeps the Seminoles in his mind from a distance.

“It’s a lot of what makes Florida State special, a typical Florida State tour,” Van Clay.

The key is getting recruits to view that tour. So the graphics team has to be sharp in that regard.

“There are some things that you can’t personalize in the video, but we’re working on things around the video that we can personalize for kids to indulge in opening the video,” Pulek said.

FSU isn’t the first school to use a similar method in showcasing its campus to recruits during this dead period. Kansas, for example, hosted a virtual Junior Day earlier this month.

The Seminoles are putting their own spin on it and are emphasizing the tradition of the football program. This is a theme Pulek wants to rely on heavily until the season begins as he knows FSU’s history -- three national champions and three Heisman winners since the 1990s -- is unique.

Edits, video-game handles, campus tours. These aren’t perfect measures for success for FSU, but given the restrictions in place for a new staff, it feels like the Seminoles are very much making the best of a bad situation and are flexing their recruiting muscle in a virtual landscape.

“I think that our recruits feel a lot more connected to Florida State than they have in a while. And that’s not meant as a shot to anybody by any stretch, I think we’re just pushing out so much more than we ever have,” Van Clay said. “So you have a constant flow of communication.

“A recruiting office, in my view, always is about helping the coaches. We’re not here to recruit for Florida State. They are. So what can we do to make that easier for them? I think we’ve done a really good job with equipping them with whatever they need.”

Zach Blostein contributed to this story