I believe that if an athlete doesn’t sign an NLI before leaving for their mission, then they become a recruitable athlete after a year, even though they might enroll and play before leaving like Covey did. Coaches cannot talk specifically about recruitable athletes.
Actually it has to do with the “dead” and “quiet” periods in NCAA recruiting rules… At the end of National Signing Day we entered another dead period until basically the Spring Game, and coaches can’t talk about unsigned personnel in those periods. Whitt was correct to talk about him on Signing Day, but Scalley was correct to not talk about him yesterday (or whenever it was he was on the radio this week). So all good.
Here’s a dated article from last year but it explains what’s going on…