I've been playing this game a while and I typically recruit hard and heavy very early. I was wondering if anyone had ever waited for several cycles to start. The reason that I ask is that I notice that there are quite a few quality recruits left on signing day (never really paid much attention to that) with 3 sims on them. How hard would it be to knock those sims off and pick up some quality recruits late?

It is expensive but certainly doable. You could not afford to do that more that two or three times in a decent sized class.