re: New Director of Recruiting

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Number one, we're going to sign the SEC players out of Arkansas. We ain't going to let them leave the state. That's number one. After that, and I said this in my interviews to all the coaches, you've got to be effective in Texas. It's a must.

I have a cousins who are head high school coaches, another couple of cousins who are assistant coaches, and I have 15 aunts and uncles in Texas. I've already got a cousin calling me when I was driving in, "Hey, I've got this DB who's an SEC player." So I'm using them. I'm already bringing them up to the coaches. I called my contacts in Florida. I laugh because one of my running backs that I signed at Southeastern was from Florida. His step-dad is the high school coach, and he's calling and congratulating me and saying, "Hey, here are 15 SEC players right here in this area. I can help you."

When this announcement went public until the time I got here, I probably had no less than 200 phone calls and 250-300 texts, and 75 percent of them were high school coaches. It was "Hey, I've got this kid, I know these guys in this area, get me the camp dates, etc." They were from Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma. They all knew me and they know I was a good recruiter and I care about the kids. They knew I helped kids. Because even if I wasn't signing the kid, I was helping him. If I thought a kid was bigger than us, I was calling my friends, like, "Coach Smith, you need to see this kid."

When you do that, help kids, help coaches, the coach sees it and it makes him want to give you his kids. We're going to use all the ties. We're going to start in-state, but we're going to be in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia...we're going to get some work done.

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