Montlake Mailbag: Portal v. recruiting, NFL development and tweeting at recruits

Your questions, my answers.

It’s already been a busy week here at On Montlake.

On Monday, we told the story of that classic purple car used in last weekend’s recruiting photoshoots.

On Tuesday, we took a closer look at the eight recruits to commit to UW on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Two more have committed since: three-star Portland (Ore.) Jesuit cornerback Elias Johnson, and four-star Van Nuys (Calif.) Birmingham safety Peyton Waters.

Ryan Nanni of the Shutdown Fullcast joined Danny O’Neil and me for Episode 57 of Say Who, Say Pod. We also talked about recruiting. And our monthly Zoom call with Friends of the Program included a special guest: UW football play-by-play man Tony Castricone, who was gracious enough to answer some questions and talk shop for an hour. (This seems a good time to remind that you can upgrade your subscription at any time.)

Let’s get to the mailbag. Topics this week include:

• Can programs cover a down recruiting year via the transfer portal?

• What happened to The Pursuit?

• Is it OK to tweet at recruits?

• What’s a day like for a UW football player?

• Which NFL players have UW’s assistants developed?

• Best Pac-12 restaurants

• NIL

• Jimmy Lake