Omillio Agard, the St. Joe’s Prep cornerback who has never allowed a touchdown, is headed to Wisconsin

As a sought-after recruit for nearly 2½ years, St. Joseph’s Prep’s Omillio Agard made a daily routine of answering phone calls and fielding offers from college coaches.

“This recruiting process has been kind of hard and stressful and time-consuming, especially with my busy life playing at The Prep and the schoolwork that comes with it,” Agard said.

On Saturday, the coveted cornerback ended his prolonged recruitment, announcing at a party for his 18th birthday that he was committing to Wisconsin after receiving offers from more than 30 schools.

Agard is ranked by Rivals as the third-best class of 2024 recruit in Pennsylvania and by ESPN as the state’s top defensive player. A two-time state champion, he has never allowed a touchdown in his high school career and has never given up more than seven catches in a season, his dad, Justin Agard, said. By the end of his freshman year, Omillio already had received offers from many of the most recognizable Power Five programs in the country, including LSU, USC, Miami, and Penn State.

Two months ahead of the start of his senior year, Agard decided Wisconsin was the right fit. The Philadelphia native said he and new coach Luke Fickell built a relationship going back to Fickell’s time at Cincinnati.

“It just felt like a good spot for me to land because they recruited me for a long time,” Agard said. “They showed a lot of love, a lot of interest. I think I could play there Day 1.”

Wisconsin, which has never won a national championship, is a less heralded program than others that courted Agard and didn’t make a list of final five schools he released in December. But the Badgers’ persistence left an impression on Agard and his family.

“Wisconsin came in at the tail end, and they wowed us,” Justin said.

“Going to Wisconsin has a lot of opportunity to make new history — and make history at a place that hasn’t done that before.”

The timing of Agard’s announcement was influenced by the realities of modern-day recruiting.

Over the last five years, changes to NCAA practices have meant that high school recruits are competing for roster spots not just with their own classmates, but also thousands of college transfers seeking new homes through the transfer portal. Between August 2021 and July 2022, more than 3,000 FBS football players entered the transfer portal, a database that has made it much easier for athletes to get their names out to other programs.

For Agard, the competition from transfers required him to be more proactive in his recruitment.

“It definitely sped up our process because we started to look at the landscape, and we made a choice to commit earlier than we kind of anticipated to commit,” Justin said. “The transfer portal really is making kids have to make a decision much sooner because if you don’t, then a school probably will go with an older kid.”

» READ MORE: St. Joseph’s Prep receiver Brandon Rehmann commits to West Virginia

Now that college athletes can profit off of their name, image, and likeness, high school recruits are increasingly weighing a school’s NIL opportunities in their recruiting decisions. But Agard said he views NIL differently.

“I call NIL the beginner money,” Agard said. “It’s not big money, it’s probably thousands of dollars worth. The money I’m looking forward to is the NFL money — that’s multimillionaire, big money. So I’m not really worried about NIL, that really hasn’t [been a] factor.”

Though Agard has been on many Power Five wishlists for the last few years, his recruitment hasn’t always gone smoothly. During his junior year, a critical time for many high school prospects, Agard missed four games with hip, foot, and ankle injuries. When he did play, he wasn’t 100%.

“I never got hurt that serious before,” Agard said. “I love football. And it’s kind of depressing because when you don’t have the thing you love the most, it kind of hurts.”

It was hard for Agard’s father to ignore the nitpicking and second-guessing that ensued online in the aftermath of his son’s injury.

“You read the blogs, you read the ranking sites, you read everything that people have to say about him. And it’s like, wow, people really must have forgot that this kid is the Big Bad Wolf,” Justin said.

But Agard’s stock remains high, and his family says he has recovered from last season’s injury issues. He hopes his college decision is a springboard to joining a growing list of St. Joe’s Prep alumni in the NFL, including current Eagles D’Andre Swift and Olamide Zaccheaus.

“I want to get my degree in three years. Long-term goals [are] definitely [to] make it to the NFL [and be a] first-round draft pick,” Agard said.

» READ MORE: Olamide Zaccheaus’ path to the Eagles began with his mother, a Nigerian immigrant, and a domestic violence survivor