Wyoming Football: Mid Year Signees And Transfers

With classes starting up again today in Laramie there was bound to be some announcements made of football roster changes. This is the annual ritual of winter where the football gods giveth and taketh away from our football team. Last year was a brutal experience for Cowboys fans after losing three veteran starters. This is going to be mixed bag here with the new players joining the team and athletes transferring to other schools. We'll go with the happy news first this time.

Three players enrolled today and will be able to get a jump start on spring practice. Bonus is that two of the three being high school players with four years of eligibility. Looks like athlete Eric Nzeocha (brother of Mark) is officially listed as a wide receiver. Next is the Aussie punter Tim Gleeson. Great for him to enroll soon as he is likely the successor to Austin McCoy. Finally we've got the big OL Connor Rains from American River CC. Rains is listed as 6-6 310lbs and provide some nice size on the line. He has three years to play two seasons. We've also found some video footage of Eric Nzeocha that we've posted at the end of this post.

So here is the part that Wyoming fans have been dreading since last year. The players who are transferring from Wyoming. The losses aren't as big as 2011 but it certainly hurts the depth. The group of scholarship players are all freshmen: WR Josh Doctson, QB Adam Pittser, WR Kevin Robertson and RSFR WR C.J. Morgan. The loss of Doctson has the biggest immediate impact since he had such a big second half for the Cowboys. It would have been been great for Pittser to stay and try and earn some playing time. I could have imagined the Pokes utilizing him and Smith during in games together next season.

Robertson and Morgan never saw the field this year. In other non surprising news senior WR Jonathan Aiken has been declared academically ineligible and won't be on the team. He arrived in 2010 with academic questions and those lingered this spring as well.

There were also a number of non scholarship players athletes that won't return to the team. That group includes junior linerbacker Brandon James plus redshirt freshmen CB Julian Hawkins, LB Luke Knapton and defensive linemen Helemana Soto. James was formally at UTEP and played in four games this year. Knapton is the younger brother of Gabe. His father is no longer the head football at Laramie High School and I wonder if that played a reason in him leaving.

Never excited to lose any players but this does happen with any program. Players all have different reasons for leaving: playing time, family, GIRLFRIENDS or just not happy at the school. At least it wasn't a big of veteran starters that left this year.

As promised here is the highlight video of Eric Nzeocha.