Catching Up With Jake Butt

Pickerington (OH) North tight end Jake Butt recently was named as the #96 overall prospect in the Rivals250, and he's seen his recruitment take off in recent weeks. Butt now holds offers from Michigan, Boston College, Duke, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Northwestern, Purdue, Stanford, Syracuse, Tennessee, UCLA, and a handful of MAC schools while also generating interest from Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Wisconsin. I caught up with Jake this week to talk about his recruitment, top schools, and upcoming visit to Michigan:

ACE: How many offers are you up to at this point, and which schools have been in contact with you the most lately?

JAKE: I'm up to 18 offers, and the most contact I've been getting is from Michigan—I've gotten a lot of stuff [from them]—Tennessee, Northwestern, Purdue, Maryland, and Iowa.

ACE: You've said that Michigan was your leader in the past. If you had to make a top five right now, which teams stand out to you the most?

JAKE: My top five would have to be Maryland, Northwestern, Michigan, Tennessee, and Stanford. Michigan I'd say is my leader just because of the attention I've been getting from all the coaches, and they said I'm the number one tight end on their board. They've got the number one quarterback in our class committed, Shane Morris, he's a beast. There's just a lot of plusses going on with them. But it's still early, so it's all subject to change.

ACE: You mentioned Shane Morris. Has he been making his recruiting pitch at all to you, and if so, what's he telling you?

JAKE: Yeah, I've been talking to him a lot. He's got like 6,000 followers [on Twitter], so he'll tweet me and get all his little followers, Michigan fans, to really show their love. [They'll say] "I want to see you break records with Shane Morris when you go there," or "I want to see you catching touchdown passes from Shane," and stuff like that. I'm going to be going up [to Michigan] this Saturday and he's supposed to be there with some other recruits.

ACE: I know you've been to Michigan a couple times before. Is there anything specific you're going to be looking for this weekend?

JAKE: No, just kinda getting to know my position coach, Coach Ferrigno, a little bit better, spend a bit of time with him. Then get to see the campus, talk to some of the academic advisors, just kinda get a feel for what life is like up there.

ACE: You mentioned the coaches talking about using you as a tight end. I know with Michigan they use their tight ends in multiple ways. Do the coaches talk a lot about what your role would be like there?

JAKE: They said that they could use me at multiple position. They could use me anywhere from receiver, with a foot on the line, tight end with my hand down, or fullback even. They have a U-back and a Y-back, something like that, they have two different tight ends and they said I could play either, so I'll be playing both if I go there.

ACE: What else have the coaches been telling you when they're recruiting you?

JAKE: Different little things like "I can't wait to see you in the blue and gold," or "you'd look great in the winged helmet." They sent me an article about some of their top tight ends that they've had. Five different coaches have come down to the school, and I've talked to five different coaches by myself, too, so they're showing a lot of love there.

ACE: I've seen a concern among Michigan fans after you said the Wolverines were your leader, and that's with you not holding an Ohio State offer yet. Growing up as a Buckeye fan, if Ohio State were to come into play, how do you think that would change the landscape of your recruitment?

JAKE: You know, Ohio State is definitely a great school. They've got a lot of good things to offer. Urban Meyer is a great coach. That being said, there's a lot of great coaches out there and there's a lot of great programs out there. I like the fact that I got early offers and my early offers definitely stand out having thought of me on top of their list. I wouldn't worry about if from some of the fans's standpoint, I guess, because I'm going to pick my early offers over my late offers any day.

ACE: You just mentioned the early offers being important. When it comes down to making a decision, what else are going to be the main factors when you ultimately decide on a school?

JAKE: The early offers are kind of like a tiebreaker, it's not that big of a deal. Definitely academics is a big deal, having a good football program with a good tradition is a big deal. Then somewhere my parents want me to go. Someone told me that you want to pick a college where if you were to get hurt playing football, you can see yourself living there without football in your life, so that's another factor.

ACE: Other than coming up to Michigan this weekend, do you have any other planned visits or schools you'd want to check out?

JAKE: As of right now I don't. I'm just waiting for basketball season to end before I take other visits, but I'm going to have to get down to some schools because some schools won't give you an offer unless you show you're willing to make the trip down there, so I'll be going to some other schools too.

ACE: In terms of a timeline for when you'd want to get your recruitment wrapped up, do you know when that would be?

JAKE: Probably before next football season I'd like to get it done, but if not, I can wait until after.

ACE: How's basketball season going for you?

JAKE: Pretty good. I'm the leading scorer and rebounder for our team. I think I lead our team in steals, too, so it's going pretty good. Our team as a whole is kinda underachieving, but that being said, I set the bar high for us. I'm the only guy returning with experience right now. We had ten seniors last year, so we lost all of them, and those were our top ten guys other than me, I was the sixth man off the bench. We really don't have any experience coming back, but we're 11-8 right now and we've got a tough game coming up on Friday, too.

ACE: Just to go away from the football field and the basketball court for a second, what's one thing about yourself—whether it's a hobby that you've got outside of sports or whatever—what's something outside of sports that you think people would like to know about you?

JAKE: I'm a leader. I've been selected, not for sports, but for other activities, for leadership conferences. As a sophomore I was one out of four kids in our school that got to go to a leadership conference at Ohio State, and I got selected to a school leadership program called Sunny Side Up in our group where you have to get nominated by teachers other students from your school to go there. You get a three-day trip where you go down you get to do different things, leadership-building activities and such, so I got to do that.

ACE: It sounds like that would obviously translate well to the field and help you there.

JAKE: Yes, sir.