Iowa added their tenth verbal commitment to the 2012 football recruiting class over the weekend... but we kind of knew this one was coming. When last we checked into the creepy corner (to profile Detroit linebacker Laron Taylor) we noted that Taylor could soon be joined by a teammate, WR/S prospect Ruben Lile. Here we are, three weeks later, and Lile has indeed decided to follow Taylor's lead and head to Iowa.
Lile is a consensus 3* prospect from all the scouting services with good size (6-3, 200) and a small but solid offer list: Wisconsin, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Cincinnati, and almost everyone in the MAC. As far as what position he's likely to play at Iowa... TBD. Rivals and ESPN list him as an athlete, Scout lists him as a safety, and 247Sports lists him as a wide receiver. Lile himself notes that the Iowa coaches told him he could choose which side of the ball he wanted to play when he got here; right now he says he's leaning safety because it looks like there's a bigger need there. That's probably true at the moment, but by the time Lile arrives in 2012, Iowa's wide receiver corps will consist of Keenan Davis and a whole bunch of dudes who (for now) have yet to actually catch a pass in college.
So go ahead and pencil him into the defensive backfield for now, but that decision is far from settled. If the NCAA Football series of games has taught me anything, you have to wait until he shows up for training camp, then scroll through his OVR rating at each position. Fingers crossed he turns into an 82-rated blitzdemon of a defensive end!
Do we know anything else about him? Well, ESPN's profile begins thusly:
This guy is a pretty good football player.
Sold! That's some in-depth analysis right there.