What is your family tradition on when you open Christmas gifts? Some families open their presents on Christmas Eve, some on Christmas morning….and a few families even open things up on Christmas evening. That last one must be torture as a kid by the way.

Apologies to our non-Christian friends, I'm just trying to create a nice angle to get to our latest and greatest verbal commitment.

On Christmas Eve, Paul Wulff got the biggest present he could have possibly hoped to receive. It came in the form of a 5'11', 190 pound running back that lives just up the road in Spokane. He runs a reported 4.45 forty. Just take a peek at the video for a minute or two and you can see why we've been recruiting this kid for a while now. There's a reason why the WSU coaches have been frequenting Gprep games and why they've jokingly been asking the Prep Head Coach to pull Sankey at half so no one else will "discover" him.

Let's take a look at how this helps beyond just getting a touted recruit on board:

He's the top running back recruit in the State of Washington in the Class of 2011. Any way you slice it, this is the kind of recruit that you should be doing backflips over if you are a WSU fan. He's got all the raw material to be an impact Pac-10 running back quickly. I dare you to try and name me a running back at WSU (over the past decade) that we recruited from high school and was an all Pac-10 type of player.

For some reason, we have had much more success mining JC running backs. Wulff is looking to change that. This will be his third class and he's taken exactly one JC running and Chantz Staden was really viewed as more of an H-back hybrid type of receiver/running back. While Arthur Burns and Carl Winston were nice additions last year and Ricky Galvin is looking like an exciting runner in this class…..Sankey will be the first high school running back recruit that we will need to fight for until signing day since Dwayne Wright back in 2000. 

This is also great news because it signifies something just as important. The WSU staff has placed premium importance on completely closing down Spokane and surrounding areas. He does not want to see a Cameron Elisara starting at dtackle for UW or Byron Hout  at dend for Boise State or Carson York starting at offensive guard for Oregon or C.E. Kaiser starting at offensive guard for Oregon. The GSL might not be where we can sign a full class but Wulff clearly believes that one to two kids each year are high D-I players and he intends to keep them home.

This is great on so many levels. It does give us a home territory to focus on and gives us an advantage when that true blue chipper comes along every couple of years. It also (hopefully) increases fan interest in that area. I'm sure it won't take you long if you're out at a bar in Spokane to hear a "friend of a friend" story on Travis Long or Aaron Dunn or Connor Halliday or Jared Karstetter or Bishop Sankey. Keep these guys home…..every single one of them. 

Finally, one of the most intriguing aspects of this is the fact that he's verballed so early. It really depends on the type of personality this kid has but his profile and stature is the type that you can build a class around. By that I mean, he will have the ability to try and bring some other high profile kids along with him.

An example of this is what Jake Heaps did this past year. When he verballed to BYU he brought with him a four star receiver out of Texas (Ross Apo) and a four star linebacker out of California (Zac Stout). Now Sankey is not hyped nearly like Heaps so he's probably not going to help "nationally" but he could certainly help around the state. There are two national recruits in the state in 2011 and one of them plays for Skyline. It would be an awfully compelling pitch if you have Simone (whom Kasen Williams played with for two years) and Sankey in his ear. Who wouldn't want to head to where the top running back in the state is headed and where your previous receiving partner is already established? Kasen Williams might be headed out of state but the pitch to get him to look at WSU becomes much more interesting with Sankey in his class, Simone already enrolled, and the possibility of an established QB passing to him by the time he arrives. That's not something Oregon or Washington will be able to say as they will graduate their starters after next year. There will be another 10-15 kids in state that will head to Pac-10 or high D-I schools on scholarship. If you're an offensive player, the notion of committing to WSU just got a lot more compelling.

Hopefully I've got you excited about why getting Sankey on board and on board early is great for the program and also for Sankey as he's just greatly increased the likelihood of having a fantastic recruiting class built around him.

Nevertheless,  I do want to take a minute and look at some of the red flags. There are two that stick out in my mind. One is the system that Sankey plays in currently. It is essentially the same offense that Bellevue runs in the sense that it's almost exclusively a running offense that is based off of various wing and wishbone types of formations. This sort of offense can mask the quality of a running back and it also requires a greater ramp as an incoming freshmen since he isn't currently learning about pass blocking, receiving out of the backfield, zone reads, blitz reads, and everything else that comes with a more balanced offense. The worst case scenario is that he's JR Hasty or Keith Rosenberg.

Again, it's something to balance in your mind when you see him run and not something that should worry you about with this guy. If nothing else, Wulff and staff are showing that they can absolutely evaluate talent so lean on their eyes and the fact that they've offered him more than anything else.

The second issue is the notion of "top-end" speed. Supposedly, Sankey doesn’t have that breakaway speed that separates the very good regional recruit from the Jonathan Stewart type of recruit. This is a pretty subjective notion and he's still got a year to develop more. Hopefully he's working like a madman to solve for this and you'll see it emerge as a Senior.

Overall, this is exactly the type of recruit Wulff needed to kick start the 2011 class and exactly when he needed it. Welcome aboard Bishop, we can't wait to see you in Crimson and Gray.

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