Officially, we are smack in the middle of what the NCAA mandates as — and let's lower our voices here — a "quiet period" in major college football recruiting.

Unofficially, in Hawai'i, however, the volume of mail hitting home and school mail boxes and e-mail in-baskets is thunderous by historical standards.

By NCAA rule, in this "quiet period" coaches aren't allowed to go into the schools or homes of prospective recruits or meet with them again until the fall. But through allowable letters and e-mails, including early scholarship offers, we're told the process is more furious than it has ever been here.

"For a quiet period, it is anything but," notes Doris Sullivan, director of the non-profit Pacific Islands Athletic Alliance, which helps place Hawai'i athletes with colleges.

In the nine years of tracking recruiting with the PIAA, Sullivan said this is the busiest "quiet period" she has seen. Likewise for Keith Amemiya, the executive director of Hawai'i High School Athletic Association, who calls it "the most competitive" off-season he's seen in more than a decade.

Once upon a not-so-distant time it was a rarity for a Hawai'i high school athlete to have a football scholarship offer in hand before his senior year started. Or, as Sullivan puts it, "if you had one, you had one more than most everybody else."

But Punahou School linebacker Manti Te'o already has 25 or more, depending upon whether today's mail has arrived yet. While the 6-foot-2, 225-pound Te'o is the marquee player in this year's crop of major college prospects, he is not alone. Several prospects have double-figure offers.

In most any other year, a number of players, Kapolei offensive tackle Stan Hasiak among them, could be the top player. Small wonder Tom Lemming of the Chicago-based Prep Football Report was here last month to personally meet with some of the leading prospects.

All of which underlines what is potentially one of the state's bluest of blue-chip classes and one meriting plenty of attention. "This was already a solid (recruiting) class, but Manti takes it to another level," Amemiya said.

UH, which in previous years was curiously reluctant to extend much in the way of early offers, has become aggressive under new head coach Greg McMackin. The Warriors, by Sullivan's count, have made at least 12 early solicitations.

That is an indication of just how competitive things have become in their backyard, where every Bowl Championship Series conference now recruits. As Sullivan notes, it was once unheard of for Auburn or Clemson to send a coach this far, the feeling being their interests — and budgets — could be better served sticking closer to home.

But things have changed in a hurry. And, as we're reminded, not quietly, either.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.