Recruitment winding down for QB Paul Piferi; who's in the mix?

Paul Piferi's recruitment has been hot this spring, and the temperature rose a bit when he received his first offer from the SEC.

The Villa Park (Calif.) gunslinger had his weekly conversation with the Purdue coaching staff on Monday afternoon, and then got a text from Missouri to give them a call. He received the offer from the Tigers, which was a big one for him to get.

"I was pretty pumped," Piferi said. "Pretty much my entire family on my mom's side went to Missouri going back to the 1940's. It's pretty exciting."

Piferi plans on committing to a school before June 14. And he's looking to set up a trip to go see Missouri before he makes that decision.

"They said we can do any type of visit -- unofficial or official," said Piferi. "I'm trying to look at dates right now to come visit."

Piferi isn't taking to social media to announce top schools or anything like that. He did note that he informed the Ivy League schools that he wouldn't be attending their universities.

So it takes some context clues to figure who the top options are for Piferi. In recruiting, I always say to "follow the visits" when it comes to a recruit's decision. Let's do that for Piferi. He wants to visit Missouri before committing, and he has two more visits planned.

Piferi is unofficially visiting Oregon State from May 28-29 and is officially visiting Purdue the weekend of June 8-9. Missouri, OSU, and Purdue are three safe bets for landing spots for the 6-foot-5 quarterback.

Piferi spoke about the coaching staffs at Oregon State and Purdue.

"The coaching staff at Oregon State is pretty interesting because the head coach was the quarterbacks coach at Washington, and I attended a QB camp when I was a freshman," Piferi said. "He really liked me and wanted me to come visit again. He moved to Oregon State and I told him I was happy for him. And coach Lindgren was recruiting me last year at Colorado and was interested in me as well.

"The Purdue staff has ex-quarterbacks from the NFL and definitely know a lot about the position, as does coach [Jonathan] Smith because he played quarterback at Oregon State."

There are two major keys to Piferi's decision making process: academics and the culture of the program.

"Academics factor in the top two things I look for in a school with both of my parents being engineers," he said. "Academics has been important to me from an early age."