As he announced via Twitter on Tuesday, 2024 tight end out of Blue Valley Northwest High School in Overland Park, Kansas, Gavin Hoffman has committed to Iowa.
The three-star prospect chose the Hawkeyes over offers from programs like Tennessee, Arkansas, Auburn, Illinois, Texas Tech and others. He took official visits to Missouri, Arizona State and Iowa.
His official visit in Iowa City was this last weekend, and Hoffman left with an excellent impression -- from the city and the staff.
"I had a great time this weekend," he said. "It was really surprising to see the city and stuff. I've never been to Iowa, so I was thinking it was just going to be cornfields, but Iowa City is actually a pretty cool place."
"Sitting down with Coach Hodge and talking about football was awesome," he said. "Meeting Coach Ferentz and actually talking with him for a while was great, too. They said that if I go there, 'Nothing's going to be given to you. You're going to have to work.' They didn't promise anything like a lot of colleges do. Coach Ferentz just said 'You've got to come here and work hard.'"
That sentiment stood out to Hoffman, who had been hearing the opposite to this point in his recruitment.
"Compared to the other schools, Iowa was just way more straight forward with me and they're all about hard work," he added. "They told me the logistics of what I could do there if I really work. They said it's going to be really hard, but that's what I want to be challenged by. With the development piece, Iowa is just at a higher level than a lot of these other schools."
Att the end of the day, it was Iowa's reputation as Tight End U that made it an easy choice for him.
"Ultimately, if you go there and put your head down and work, you have a really high chance of going to the NFL," he said. "That's been my dream since I was a kid. So, I feel like I have the best chance to make it through Iowa with the program they've established over the last 25 years. That's the biggest part."
Hoffman is the 16th commit overall in the Hawkeyes' 2024 class. He joins a list of commitments that includes Devan Kennedy, Reece Vander Zee, Graham Eben, Michael Burt, Brevin Doll, Xavier Williams, James Resar, Derek Weisskopf, Cam Buffington, Preston Ries, Drew Campbell, Cody Fox, Josh Janowski, Bodey McCaslin and William Nolan.
