OT- Texas picks up 12 recruits after junior day
"After losing starting quarterback Colt McCoy to injury in the national title game, Mack Brown knows the importance of depth. Once again, he is "Coach February." At the end of the first of Texas' three Junior Days, Brown and his coaching staff committed 12 high school recruits. One may be the top defensive back in the state. Texas has been courting Leroy Scott from Pasadena, Texas, for over a year. Scott was invited to a Junior Day last year as a sophomore, 2009's spring Orange-White game, multiple games during the season and assistant coach Duane Akina has put a lot of time and devotion into the recruitment of the South Houston high school cornerback."
Dallas Morning News
Let's hope our junior day can be this fruitful and bring in the kids that RichRod wants.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:36 AM ^
It's actually 13 now.
Texas got Sheroid Evans and Desmond Jackson, both of whom Michigan had offered. Evans is from Troy Woolfolk's alma mater, which is kind of a bummer. I was hoping that connection might help us reel him in.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:37 AM ^
Not a single program in the nation can do what Texas does. I would be happy with 2 or 3 commitments for the junior day.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:37 PM ^
They do it every year. Talking to the guy in the cube next to me a lot of these guys feel pressure to sign with them because UT fills up their classes fairly quickly and if you don't get in you could well end up without an offer. They also mandate that you can't go around taking officials so unless they de-commit every single one of those kids is off the table.
They don't call him Mr. February for nothing...
February 15th, 2010 at 11:37 AM ^
Will be much different than the class we just saw.
We had a lot of early commits and a large class....
I expect things to be a little different due to the fact that our class this year will be smaller and there's the "hot seat" wildcard that Rodriguez is facing.
Hopefully a quick dash to 6 wins and bowl eligibility will happen so recruits can feel better about Coach Rod's job status.
I don't like a scenario in which we're scraping by to get our 6th or 7th win in the last two games of the season.
The scrutiny will high if that's the case...
February 15th, 2010 at 11:42 AM ^
I really hope we can even get half of what Texas got from theirs.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:45 AM ^
Not gonna happen. Recruiting in the rest of the country doesn't work like that. We'll be lucky to get a couple.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:55 AM ^
Texas in state is easy. They don't have any real comp. The kids that go to Texas A&M and Baylor never get offered from Texas. Oklahoma is the only real comp for them. Not to mention Texas is so damn big so the talent pool is huge.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:20 PM ^
A&M, OU, and LSU do fight UT for Texas recruits (granted UT does win quite a few battles). Hell, even Baylor stole a 5-star away from UT.
A&M is starting to win more head-to-head battles under Mike Sherman, but they still have a long ways to go. Mack Brown is a beast.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:25 PM ^
A&M is just NOW challenging them. Texas gets who they want. I'm sure Mack Brown isn't too worried about Baylor.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:44 PM ^
You can throw Mizzou in there as well. In fact it's the only real reason Mizzou wouldn't want to join the B10 - it would definitely hurt their TX recruiting base.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:53 PM ^
check out the commitment list for the schools I named. Texas is not even offering kids who are going to Baylor, LSU, Mizzou(maybe 1 or 2). Those schools, including Texas Tech are fighting each other. Texas is on a different level. They are battling USC, Florida and ND for kids. They are just taking the VERY best from Texas and getting them. The size of Texas and the importance of football makes it easy to still get quality kids for the other programs.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:30 PM ^
You really don't have to call him ignorant. The guy was just expressing an opinion.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:10 PM ^
They are almost all only 3 star slot backs.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:14 PM ^
I've got a brother in law from Texas, he played at North Texas for a couple of years. He says that all the best players in the state basically go to Texas... and a lot of the time end up transferring due to their immense depth. With a state that loaded with football talent, recruiting isn't too much of a problem.
Michigan on the other hand is forced to look around, and reach outside of the state. We could rely on our 10 win seasons to reel in recruits before, but now we have a real challenge.
However in an offensive scheme like Rich Rods, we are able to take chances on what most websites/rankings see as avreage players and turn them in to real studs.
Hopefully the recruiting staff can pick up some more big time recruits this year, but I'm not going to be too worried aobut it if they don't.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:21 PM ^
my point exactly on their recruiting. They only had 2 out of state players on their roster this year. That's Crazy!
February 15th, 2010 at 12:32 PM ^
To make matters worse, the Wolverines are now having a hard time even getting our own good in-state players to come to Michigan. We'll be lucky to get the top two rated players in the state this year to come here, in Arnett and Lawrence Thomas. They'll definitely be the top two players and one is almost a definite five star. To make matters worse, not only are they not coming to Michigan, but Gholston went to State last year and Thomas will likely be going there as well. Salt in the wound.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:04 PM ^
We may take players that don't fit the typical mode of a so called position, but I would not call them average players. Face it, most slots are not going to get a high ranking because of there size and/or lack of top line speed. We also take some tweeners now that don't necessarily fit a traditional position and they are also downgraded by recruiting services. To call these players average is an assumption that I would not make.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:38 PM ^
I don't mean to call these players average, that's why I added the "what most websites/rankings." I personally love the way we have recruited and believe that all these players have potential to succeed.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:52 PM ^
Looking at how easy it is for Mack Brown to pull in a top 5 recruiting class every year, it is a wonder that the Texas program fell completely off the map on a national scale for so long. Basically from the early '80s and all through the '90s.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:44 PM ^
Do you look at it and say, "Look how much talent is there for the taking, I can't believe all those guys before Mack Brown couldn't pull these classes", or do you say "The fact that there is this Texas recruiting machine now, where one did not exist before, suggests Mack Brown is in a top tier of coaches."
To suggest it's relatively simple to pull these great classes, even with all the recruiting advantages Texas has, sells Mack Brown short on his role in creating this machine.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:41 PM ^
It's a credit to Mack Brown, I agree. I don't think that he's much of a coach beyond recruiting, but he is an awesome recruiter, and he doesn't get enough credit for it. This is somewhat common. When a program becomes really good, it is accepted as a foregone conclusion that the program should be winning eleven games every year because all the coach has to do is fall out of bed and recruit a top 5 class. We are seeing this right now at USC. We hear about all of the advantages that USC has naturally in recruiting. Funny, we never heard about that in the '90s when that program sucked. Ditto for LSU.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:54 PM ^
With less scholarships to fill, Rich Rod and staff will be much more slective and concentrate on need areas. It will be a solid class, but it just may take longer to put together.
February 15th, 2010 at 1:31 PM ^
Gotta hand it to Mack Brown, he really recruits his state--already a hotbed of talent--extremely well, to put it mildly. Plus the man can coach, and he seems to run a pretty clean program too. Has anyone heard anything to contrary? Anyone have the skinny on shady happenings in Texas football (HS and/or college)?
February 15th, 2010 at 1:44 PM ^
But here's something fishy...
A&M lost 2 of the their top recruits during the no contact period prior to signing day. They both confirmed their intent to go w/ A&M during the no contact period and then signing day came around and they switched. As for shady happenings down here it's all about LSU - the Texas programs stay pretty clean but LSU and Les Miles are very, very shady. People can dog RichRod all they want about bringing in legal risks but Les, hearing from both UT and A&M alums, is the epitome of shady...
February 15th, 2010 at 1:48 PM ^
that they backed off the Lache Seastrunk recruitment for specifically that reason.
Of course standard caveat: rumor mill, message boards, conjecture, fabrication, etc.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:12 PM ^
I know rite? It sure seems like he is a really fine coach and actually recruits well and clean, unlike Pete Carroll at USC and Jimmy T at tOSU.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:51 PM ^
It would seem that Mack Brown is to Tom Cruise that John Mackovic is to Rain Man.