CFB: Why Shaq Thompson May Not Sign with Cal on National Signing Day

Building relationships is often times the most critical element in recruiting a high-profile high school football prospect and how strong of a bond there is between an assistant coach and the player he’s in charge of recruiting will usually be the determining factor when it comes to that player deciding where to play his college ball.

Many assistants at college football’s upper echelon programs will devote hours upon hours of their life trying to land one certain player and. if they can figure out how to develop a strong enough friendship and trust with the recruit, their chances of landing him increase exponentially.

Such is the case with star safety prospect Shaq Thompson, a five-star recruit considered by many to be the top overall safety of the 2012 recruiting class, and now former Cal assistant Tosh Lupoi.

Lupoi, who has been credited with being the main reason for Cal’s tremendous success on the recruiting trail in recent months, sent shock waves through the recruiting world when he bolted Berkley to join Steve Sarkisian’s coaching staff up in Washington on Monday.

The move stunned many of the players who Lupoi had built those all-important close relationships with during the recruiting process, including Thompson, who told ESPN, “I know this is a business and everyone has to do what’s best for them, but this one still hurts. I’ve known Tosh forever. He has been recruiting me for the last three years and, even though he won’t be my position coach, he’s a big reason I got interested in Cal in the first place.”

Losing Lupoi has already cost Cal one blue-chip prospect, DT Ellis McCarthy, a four-star recruit out of California's Monrovia high school, who switched his commitment from Cal to UCLA shortly after the news came out about Lupoi.

Many recruiting analysts and fans are now beginning to wonder if Lupoi's departure will effectively lead to Cal’s 2012 class, which was shaping up to be one of the most highly rated in the country, dissolving and ultimately falling apart.

The decision of Thompson, who is considered to be the gem of the Bears’ 2012 class, is sure to have a major impact.

The 6’2’’, 210-pound All-American is viewed as a potential instant impact player, who could step in right away and fill either of the holes left by departed starting safeties D.J. Campbell and Sean Cattouse and, in time, develop into one of the premier defensive backs in not just the Pac-12, but the entire country.

Losing a player of that caliber would certainly be a huge hit to the team, but it remains to be seen if Thompson will actually stick with Cal or join Lupoi up in Seattle.

Tara Turnure of Fox Sports said she recently interviewed Thompson and she said that he told her he was “50/50 between Cal and Washington.”

Those aren’t the type of odds you want to see if you’re a Cal fan, especially since it was just a few weeks ago that you were celebrating Thompson’s announcement, when he put on a Cal hat and committed to the Bears at the U.S. Army All-American game.

At the time, that seemed like a great day for the program, but with the way things seem to be headed since the departure of Lupoi, Bears fans may soon look back at that video after National Signing Day and simply wonder what could have been.

If Cal does lose Thompson to the Huskies, it wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the world, though.

The Bears already have their quarterback of the future, four-star prospect Zach Kline, one of the best signal-callers in the country, locked up, and they’ve still got commitments from some of the biggest names in the state of California such as WR Bryce Treggs (St. John Bosco HS), LB Michael Barton (De La Salle HS) and OT Freddie Tagoloa (Salesian HS), who are all considered four-star prospects.

Still, obviously losing a recruit like Shaq Thompson, especially to a conference foe such as Washington, would be a tough pill for Cal fans to swallow and it could signal a deeper problem that coach Jeff Tedford better get corrected quickly, or else he could run the risk of falling back to the pack in recruiting in the years to come.