Eno Benjamin decommitts from Iowa

Eno Benjamin is no longer Iowa City-bound.

Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz and his coaching staff have policies, but not necessarily rules, when it comes to recruiting. Among those policies, sent to recruits who offer a verbal commitment, is that 'you must not visit another institution.'

When Benjamin, a 4-star running back recruit out of Wylie, Texas, took multiple visits to schools after committing to Iowa, it reportedly caused some strife with Benjamin and Iowa coaches.

While Benjamin downplayed the drama that seemed to be unfolding on social media last week, it all culminated in his announcing on Twitter Sunday night that he was decommitting from Iowa and reopening his recruitment.

I am officially opening up my recruitment! October 23, 2016

I am officially opening up my recruitment! pic.twitter.com/Q3qILK12ni

— EB5™ (@eno_benjamin5)

Thank you & God Bless

After rumors of tension between the two sides surfaced last weekend, thanks to the visits, Ferentz was asked about it during his weekly news conference on Tuesday. By rule, he's not allowed to discuss specific recruits, so he did not mention Benjamin by name, but he addressed the scenario of a recruit taking another visit after committing.

'I don't think you can enforce it. You can have policies,' Ferentz said. 'It's kind of like some of the things in our building, I tease our coaches sometimes, there's policies and then there's rules. Policies are policies. You can break policies. There's no penalty. But rules are rules. The rules don't forbid that, so there's no — but we can have policies.

'It's like anything else, you just decide every individual case and kind of go from there. I think it's good to have policies and beliefs, and hopefully everybody that's on board is on board and goes with us.'

In the past, Iowa has pulled scholarships from players who have visited other schools after making a verbal commitment, but that was not the case with Benjamin, who made the announcement late Sunday afternoon.

Benjamin had been active in trying to help recruit other players to go to Iowa since he made his verbal in April, and would regularly send tweets and messages to potential Hawkeyes, urging them to theoretically join him in Iowa City.

The 5-foot-9, 204-pound running back is an All-American and is rated by 247Sports as the No. 159 recruit nationally and No. 10 running back. He has 27 offers, according to 247Sports, including Michigan, Arizona State and Texas, among others.

The Iowa staff takes actions following a commitment very seriously, and the letter sent to commits spells that out plainly. When asked about it in August, Iowa recruiting coordinator Kelvin Bell laid out how serious they are about it.

'Extremely ... extremely ...,' Bell said in August. 'Once you've committed to us, we're committed to you. We're not going to go out looking at other kids at your position, so we don't expect you to go out and look at other schools.'

Following Benjamin's decommitment, Iowa has 16 players verbally committed to its 2017 recruiting class, five of those from Texas. Given Benjamin's vocal role in urging other recruits to come to Iowa, it remains to be seen if or how many other dominoes might fall.

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