Are there recruiting advantages to waiting until after bowl game to hire an OC?

when is the recruiting dead period that is coming up?

I can't imagine that recruits like uncertainty. I don't know what O is telling recruits that are asking him questions about the offense because he doesn't know himself.

well...if the OC in unemployed at the moment, that OC could "recruit" during the dead period

kinda like what we all speculated that O was doing before he was hired by Les

As others have said, it allows the head coach to make extra visits to recruits.

I don't remember exactly what that means, though. For instance, if a team is allowed a specific #-- let's just say 20 visits for now-- within a span of time, does that mean the NCAA allows you 25 visits if you're short-staffed? Or does it mean the 20 visits must be distributed between coaches, and if you're down a coach, the head coach is allowed a greater percentage of visits, but not any above 20?

In the case of Miles, I see the advantage of Miles waiting to announce Cam. Miles was a very established, fatherly figure at that time. So, the value of him, as the fatherly face of the program, welcoming recruits and families into the Tiger family was meaningful. His seat was not hot and he represented stability. With Miles, there was always an idea of what the offense would be, so recruits had an idea of what they were committing to-- even without an OC.

In the case of Orgeron, I see less value... currently, anyway. He's a great recruiter and well-liked, but he's something of an unknown. Orgeron wanted to run some variation of pro-style... then decided LSU should run some variaton of the spread. And nobody knows what that means yet. And they won't know until Orgeron hires someone. So, as charming as Orgeron might be, and as well as he may be able to convince recruits and their familes that LSU is the best place for their talents to flourish, I think the extra visits won't be as helpful in locking up recruits on offense as much as hiring a new OC would.

On the other side-- for the same reason-- I think retaining Aranda and Raymond was very important to stabilizing the current recruiting class and keeping some of the biggest targets on defense still interested.

If Coach O does succeed over the next roughly 2-3 years-- whether the OC is Kiffin, Helfrich, Briles (Jr. or Sr.), Canada, etc.-- and the OC leaves, then I think O will have proven himself stable enough that he can afford to wait to hire an OC and use extra visits to greater advantage.

Also, like someone else said (here or another thread), I think Kiffin would already be hired if Orgeron had his choice. But, if Kiffin is fishing for HC offers, Orgeron needs to start seriously casting the net for the best candidate instead of holding his breath waiting. And if he finds someone who fits the bill, he can still give Kiffin a period of time to accept before offering the other candidate. But I think the sooner Orgeron gets someone hired the better. He may still have the luxury of extra visits anyway since we haven't hired anyone to replace BDP either.

Each coach is allowed a certain amount of face to face visits. If a team is short an assistant, the HC can use the visits slotted for the assistant.