Chuck Lillie is the newest addition to the football department in Manhattan.

Kansas State's new scouting analyst will work on the recruiting side of things with both Taylor Braet and Hank Jacobs, as the Wildcats continue to beef up that part of the program.

Having only been on the job a couple weeks - and most of that being under quarantine - Lillie caught up with KStateOnline to provide members more background and to introduce himself to the fan base.

****CHUCK LILLIE INTERVIEW PART ONE: CLICK HERE****

KSO: You mentioned watching film as a staff, earlier. Is that something you can do and have been doing on Zoom through screen-sharing?

CHUCK LILLIE: They’re able to do that stuff through Zoom, but primarily right now everyone is watching it on an individual level. I guess, if need be, then maybe they can all watch it at one time through Zoom. To my knowledge, that hasn’t happened yet. It’s kind of all on an individual basis and taking it step by step through our evaluation process.

KSO: Your title is scouting analyst. So, are you mostly on the evaluation side, or will you also have a hand in some dialogue with recruits, like Taylor Braet and Hank Jacobs do?

CHUCK LILLIE: It’s going to be a mix of everything. There’s definitely an evaluation component to it. There’s a logistics component to it in terms of identifying how many guys we can be communicating with at once. Then, we’re also figuring it all out from a scholarship standpoint. How many scholarships do we have available? How many guys should we be communicating with, and how many can we realistically communicate with? Then we need to make sure all of those numbers are in alignment and everything and matches across the board on that. There’s definitely a component of communication, as well, between myself and recruits. Once this virus clears up, getting them on campus and being a part of the campus and facility tours. Being a host for players and their families and really trying to be a good ambassador for Kansas State and showing them the good family atmosphere that we do have out here. Showing kids that when they do get out here, they’re going to be at home.

KSO: What are some challenges to this extended dead period?

CHUCK LILLIE: Yeah, specifically speaking to the 2021 and 2022 classes, this is a big time for them to start narrowing their searches. We’re looking at a lot of great players, a lot of really talented players, that rightfully so, have a lot of options to continue their education and athletic careers at the next level. Like I said, this is a time for them to be narrowing that search. I don’t think it’s really any different for a prospective student-athlete versus than just a regular high school student looking to go to college. You might have this big list of schools that interest you, and you start going on tours with mom and dad, and you start saying, 'hey this isn’t the school for me.' Once you see a couple campuses, you may decide, 'hey I want to be at a bigger school,' or, 'I want to be at a smaller school,' whatever the case may be.

Right now, for us, and everybody really, I don’t know that it’s any different for anybody else, we want people coming on our campus and experiencing Kansas State because we know that they’re going to love it when they get here. With all the travel implications due to the virus, it’s impossible to get anybody out here right now. The longer it goes on, the less time we’re going to have for those classes to get out here and get on campus and ultimately narrow down their decisions. Some of those guys are going to proceed to move forward with us, and some of them aren’t, and both of those things are good, because we’ll wind up having players that know that they want to be here, and we’re going to wind up cutting ties with players where there isn’t a mutual interest. That helps us out in being official with our numbers.

KSO: Do you foresee a scenario where many recruits just end up committing places without visiting?

CHUCK LILLIE: Obviously, with the uncertainty of what all is going to be happening over the next three, six, 12 months, whatever, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, and it’s a definite possibility that people are going to be out there committing, site unseen. Ultimately, that kind of falls back on us as a recruiting staff, making sure we are doing a good job of communicating with the players that we have a high level of interest in because, if they are committing site unseen, they’re going to be committing to coaching staffs and committing to schools that they feel like they have the best relationships with. If we can do that and be that staff, those opportunities will arise for us. I really hope for, for the sake of recruits, that things do open up soon because, obviously, they want to get on campus and get a feel for the staff, facilities and see everything in person. I think they’re going to get that opportunity. But to answer your question, there’s a possibility that these guys do start committing to schools, site unseen.

KSO: There isn't going to be a spring evaluation period, which was an essential part of the recruiting calendar. How do you replicate that or fill the void?

CHUCK LILLIE: There is a lot of ways to kind of artificially go through that process. For some guys, it is just purely re-evaluating the film. Some guys, it’s just going through combine footage and watching that stuff and using that as an informal, artificial stream of evaluation. It’s tough, because you want to be able to see these guys move around in person. Our coaches want to be able to get on their campus, talk to their coach, watch a practice or see them work out in the weight room. It is looking like that probably is not going to happen. The best thing we can do as a staff is to just do a good job of going back through, combing back through the film. If there’s camp film or combine film, it is important to go through and look at that. It’s about narrowing our search and deciding what we want to take at each position and trying to identify all those things in the film.

KSO: Establishing the culture this coaching staff wanted was important. They're still doing that. That spills over in recruiting, because you have to recruit to that cultural fit. Does this situation make that more complicated?

CHUCK LILLIE: It does make it more complicated. Everything is going to be better in person. If you go on a date with a girl, you’re going to have a lot better time in person than you are if you just have a phone call with her. It’s tough. It’s tough for everybody. We want to be able to get these kids on campus and sell them on everything that we have here. For now, everything from a recruiting standpoint has to be taking place over phone calls, over facetime, over text messages and twitter direct messages. Right now, that’s just where we live, and there is a lot of issues and problems that come with that.

But, as a staff, I believe that we’re approaching it the right way. We’re not looking at it from a negative standpoint and talking about all the things that are wrong about that situation. We’re searching for solutions and identifying ways to be creative. We’re thinking of prime and innovative ways to communicate with these guys and make them stand out among the other experiences that they’re having and those conversations with other schools. We want to be unique and stay genuine and stand out in the process. Right now, all they’re doing is communicating digitally, and stuff can get lost in the process if you’re not uniquely branded or if you’re not coming off as extremely genuine.

KSO: Schools are doing virtual visits. Some had virtual junior days. Is that something you guys have considered or are planning something similar?

CHUCK LILLIE: Yeah, so we have a virtual visit of our facility that has been made. We’re exploring ways to make that better. Obviously, that’s kind of where any visit that is being taken right now, it is all virtual. Like I said, we have one in place, but we’re visiting the idea of seeing if there’s any way to enhance that.

KSO: New coach Steve Stanard mentioned to me that you are all essentially doing right now, what you normally would be doing in June and July, to an extent, so that you don't lose any time when things do fire back up. Is that how you’re approaching it?

CHUCK LILLIE: Yep. Coaches are able to have virtual meetings with the players that we do have on the team. As a recruiting staff, I think we’re excited because we get a little bit more of the coaches’ time right now than we normally would to focus on the 2021 recruiting class and to start looking at the 2022 class. And to start filling out our recruiting board, because I think - although there’s time that is being restricted and taken away from what we would normally be doing from a spring football period if things we’re normal - there’s time that can be deemed to iron things out from a recruiting standpoint and start honing in on guys in the 2021 class and to start flushing out our board for that 2022 class. We’re going to be a little bit slower than some other teams in terms of that we’re trying to identify guys here that meet a certain athletic threshold and guys that will embrace and enhance our culture. We’re taking the time to call different guys and get them on the phone and have the conversations to identify if they’re going to fit in here at Kansas State and to see if they’re going to be the right one for us.