re: 2015 Recruiting Discussion

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nothing is too much for my lauren

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Confession time … as the calendar turns from May to June and the realities of next February become clearer by the day, I'll admit that I was expecting slightly more from Charlie Strong and Co. on the recruiting front at this point.
It's a tricky confession for sure and it's likely one that's bathed in the complexity and urgency of the challenge that awaited Strong and his coaching staff when they arrived in January to begin cleaning up the Exon Valdez recruiting mess that Mack Brown left behind, more so than it is anything that the new staff has failed to do in its first four-plus months on the job.

What makes the confession even trickier is that we all know that the Texas staff has been working its collective backsides off at a level that surpasses anything Mack Brown's staff used to do during the spring evaluation period. According to UT Director of Player Personnel Mike Giglio on Sunday, the staff visited 944 schools in the state of Texas (and we can deduce that they visited hundreds more outside the state) during the last five weeks, numbers that speak volumes as it relates to the amount of work the Longhorns are putting into recruiting.

This group is grinding. G.r.i.n.d.i.n.g. The fact that their hustle is so apparent and that momentum in recruiting has still been so slow to come by, especially with the best of the best in the class of 2015, feels rather ominous. We knew that Mack left a mess on many fronts when he departed in December, but is it possible that we underestimated how unstable things were on the recruiting stage after 16 stagnant months beginning with the start of the 2012 season?

One of the most challenging aspects of the job that Strong took in January is the realities of a new-age in recruiting, one that forces coaches to focus on juggling multiple recruiting classes at once, a task that a majority of college coaches aren't asked to take on at the level that is required in the state of Texas. From the moment Strong showed up, he's been asked to salvage recruiting in 2014, while putting a charge into 2015 and an aggressive, forceful plan in 2016. Oh, and while he's at it, he probably should put the throttle down in 2017 and 2018 as well. In doing so successfully, Strong needs a strong comprehension on the numbers and needs for the program for all four classes that are on the table, otherwise making decisions on scholarship offers turns into more of a guessing game than the level of meticulous planning that is needed.
While Strong has always enjoyed a strong reputation as a recruiter, he's never been asked to dothis …. this wasn't part of the job requirement at Louisville … at least not on this level.

Each class has its own issues. Originally, the thought was that anything Strong could do to put a bandage on the 2014 class was a small victory because of the circumstances involved and that 2015 would be the first year to truly evaluate what recruiting might look like under his skillful watch. While we all knew that Strong was starting 12 months behind his competitors in the relationship-building, my expectations were that Strong's honeymoon momentum boost that all coaches seem to receive when they show up sparkling and new at a school like Texas would enable the Longhorns to create some strong headway for a number of difference makers that would pay dividends in February as long as there was a strong product on the field to support it.
The thing that I never would have imagined is that there wouldn't be a huge honeymoon momentum boost that would at least carry them into the season … we're talking seven or eight months, right? I'll be honest when I tell you that I can't completely explain it, but my eyes have seen what my eyes have seen over the course of the last five months. Whether it is mostly related to the late start in building relationships with the top players or the need to see the Texas product on the field before getting excited or something else entirely, it's been a little tougher sledding with those top players than I expected.

In fact, there's already a sense from some that the 2015 in-state terrain is in such a place of uneasiness with the war daddies up for grabs that that the biggest priority for the new staff needs to be the looming 2016 class, a group whose best prospects are showing the Longhorns more interest, even if it's not in runaway fashion.

More than anything, the Longhorns need a game-changer this season on the field to kick-start the forward-charging momentum that the program is going to need if it wants to flip the script within the recruiting landscape that Strong promised would occur when he first took the job.
Ironically, the program has been down this road before.

Although Mack Brown arrived in Austin in the spring of 1998 with a reputation as one of the nation's top recruiters and he had an ace up his sleeve in a young Tim Brewster, the makings of what turned out to be the nation's No. 1 class looked meager in the summer before Mack's first season. While everyone remembers the closing of that class because it included Chris Simms, Rod Babers and Cory Redding, the truth is that the coaches were so worried about the team failing to succeed that season, and thus leaving them with no momentum in recruiting, that they offered a number of kids at the June summer camp because the staff didn't believe there would be better options in January.

Unless you're a recruiting historian or lifer, you probably don't remember the atmosphere around the program when players like Jason Barron, Brett Robin, Adam Hall, Reed Boyd, Gerald Hanson, Matt Trissel and Antonio Moore were taken, but I can assure you that there more than a few WTFs thrown around when Mack caught camp fever that year.
Yet, Mack had a second ace up his sleeve in Ricky Williams and by the time the Dreaded One had changed college football history, the Longhorns were rolling in momentum. Without Ricky, none of those big recruiting events in 1999 ever materialize the way they did. If you're looking for a double piece of irony, Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin didn't exactly have the rest of the state on its knees in recruiting when he arrived in College Station (even with the celebrated move into the SEC) until Johnny Manziel became an American household name at the same exact moment that Mack dragged the program down into the abyss of mediocrity.

Both of those coaches received gifts from the college football gods and the question now becomes whether the same college football gods will smile upon Strong this season the way they smiled on the others. If not, something else is going to have to create that needed momentum because conceding another class of elite players in the state of Texas in 2016 because of unfair circumstances is simply not an option, not if competing for national championships remains the stated goal.

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ketch

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something else is going to have to create that needed momentum because conceding another class of elite players in the state of Texas in 2016 because of unfair circumstances is simply not an option

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unfair

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The thing that I never would have imagined is that there wouldn't be a huge honeymoon momentum boost that would at least carry them into the season

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It is interesting to me that Charlie never got his grace period in recruiting. Hell Fran and Sherman both got a boost in the beginning of their HC career at A&M.

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