ESPN's Top College Football Recruiters of the Year

Nice to see Coach Beck getting some props at UNL - damn fine man and great coach.

This coming on the heels of 247 declaring Applewhite Big XII recruiter of the year too.

What do y’all think of Doyle?

Lonnegan?

how many of those teams would we switch classes with?

Enough said

I’m sure Texas placed someone in the second 25.

Who are these guys?

Sir Aurthur Conan?

I’m sorry, but how hard can it really be to recruit to UT?

Nate makes a good point. Even Mack mentions several times in the video that the guys wanted to come to Texas their whole lives.

Even so, if there are 25 guys in the country that are better recruiters than Mack Brown, well lets just say they don’t need the glen garry leads

Even so, if there are 25 guys in the country that are better recruiters than Mack Brown

The list is only assistant coaches. And in fairness to ESPN, most of our assistant coaches really don’t do too much, considering a good portion of the class commits the day they are offered.

The annual Mack Brown signing day press conference is my favorite recruiting-related event. There is a collective sigh of relief after all the faxes arrive, MB is upbeat and hopeful, heaps praise on the new kids. It’s great to finally hear the coach discuss details about the recruits and their stories, things we might not have known about until he disclosed them. Good stuff all around.

“I’m sorry, but how hard can it really be to recruit to UT?”

Uh, see Longhorn recruititng circa 1986 - 1997. Does Texas have built in advantages? Yes. Does it take the right person to utilize those built in advantages? Yes. Recruiting success is not predetermined as is well known by any Longhorn fan who graduated before Mack arrived, it is achieved by the right coaches taking advantage of what Texas has to offer.

“How hard can it really be to recruit to UT” is just a built in excuse OU fans carry around in their back pocket to bring out any time they lose a recruit to Texas. “What, that DE signed with UT? Well, I mean come on, UT has all the advantages.” Of course when a kid signs with OU it is supposedly all about the championships and tradition and people holding up 7 fingers and such. Not sure what happens to our superior advantages when we lose those kids.

moola:

I’m sorry, what? UT had a complete moron as their offensive coordinator until last year. The same guy responsible for allowing OU to pitch the first shutout on UT in the RRS since God knows when. The same guy who managed to almost fuck up Vince Young. That’s like fucking up a ham sandwich. And the defenses up until 2005? Jeezus, were they bad. Until 2008, they promoted to merely average.

And yet UT was still going out there and stocking up on talent like Vince Young, Roy Williams the lesser, Cedric Benson, the 2005 OL (holy hell, those guys were money), Jamaal Charles, Derrick Johnson, Earl Thomas, Nathan Vasher, and a list that can go on and on.

From 1986-1997, UT’s coaches were actively messing up the program. You could’ve replaced the coaches with a random screen generator operated by a chimp with Down’s Syndrome and STILL fielded 10 win teams. Mack Brown is smart enough to know that 99% of the job is just getting out of the way and letting UT be UT.

NateHeupel

So I’m sorry. Mack’s talent is that he gets out of the way? Was he getting out of the way at North Carolina and leaning on all of the football tradition to pull NFL player after NFL player to that university? Once again, does UT have advantages? Yes. Have I been around and seen those advantages squandered? Yes. To not give guys credit for pulling in top 5 class after top five class and basing their recruiting success on UT’s built in advantages is simply not fair. People have short memories, and Mack’s recruiting domination has lent an air of inevitability to our recruiting that wasn’t there for an awfully long time. All of those guys you mentioned came to UT because Mack and Co. convinced them to, not because it was the only place to go to springboard to the NFL. see University of Oklahoma.

I like the class but feel Texas may have missed a big fish, in fact, the biggest fish:

“Despite growing up in Gamecocks country, Clowney was a Texas fan, idolizing Longhorns stars such as Ricky Williams and Vince Young. Texas never recruited him, but he said he would have taken an official visit there if he had ever heard from the Longhorns.
‘I didn’t think I’d ever get to play for them, but I like them,’ he said.”

mc,

Interesting nugget you found there. I wonder if Mack’s “I won’t offer a kid who doesn’t want to come to texas” rule worked against him there, in the case that he might have been thinking that Clowney wouldn’t be interested in texas since he was from out of state? How do you fail to at least send him some mail and call him once or twice to gauge his interest, especially if he is as good as everyone says he is?