If we don't recruit someone...

notanative

notanative

1,000+ Posts
...how can we miss out by not getting them?

I'm reading in the DMN that we missed out on a couple of QB prospects, but then I read in the artilce that both indicated they would have considered Texas if Texas had made an offer or expressed interest.

Makes little or no sense to me. Am I missing something, or should I just ignore sportswriters?
 
YES!!!
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It sounds like we're shifting to be more active recruiting nationally. At the same time, we still need to own Texas.
 
From the DMN:

Texas missed out on a pair of premier quarterback prospects. Jameis Winston, the top high school quarterback, according to ESPN.com and Rivals.com, told the Birmingham News that he would have been a Longhorn if Texas had offered him a scholarship while Bo Wallace, the nation’s best junior college quarterback, expressed interest in playing for the Longhorns but Texas passed on the 6-foot-5, 215-pound signal-caller.
 
I don't recall ever seeing Winston's name on the various lists that show recruits interest in various schools.

When Bo Wallace was courted, he was set up to visit campus. Right at that time, McCoy confirmed that he was returning and not transferring as some rumors indicated. Wallace's visit was cancelled. It appeared it was a roster space issue. Whoever actually knows all the details has not made them public as far as I can tell.
 
if your a 5 star recruit and want to play for a certain school... you make it known.... Gray, GG.... they knew they wanted to go to Texas and made sure the coaching staff knew that as well.
 
Saw on ESPN that UCLA and Bama each signed a Texas QB.
 
If anyone wants to go back and do the research, they'll find that Luck had zero interest from the get go in UT. As for RG III, our former offensive (very offensive) coordinator wanted him...as a receiver. Something about him not being tall enough to play quarterback here...hmmm...tell that to the Heisman selection committee.

Bottom line...hindsight is 20-20...pick a year, any year, and you can find someone and say the UT recruiters missed the boat on him. You can also say that about blow-u recruiters, LSU recruiters, 'Bama recruiters...nobody bats 1000 in recruiting.
 
H-D, I read an article quoting Luck's father, who BTW holds a law degree from UT, that he couldn't get the son interested in UT and that it was Stanford all but 100% from day one.
 
Andrew's cousin & I are great friends and we had dinner when he was in town (Houston) visiting friends and visited with him on that subject... and he doesn't know where all that came from. The scenario is as I stated above! I also 'worked' his last high school football game against Fort Bend Clements 4 years ago, but I digress... It's a mute point at this time.
 
No doubt the Horns were all in on Gilbert, and maybe if Luck comes to Austin, he's the Heisman-candidate quarterback he's been at Stanford, or maybe he isn't, for one reason or another. I'd venture that he's the only one who really knows if UT interested him, and what happened four years ago is a lot of water under the dam.

The applicable point to my post was the last part. No school is ever gonna bat 1000 in recruiting, and you can pick any staff, any year, and find players they missed on. Some players are all-world in high school, not so much in college. Some players fly under the radar as recruits, but turn into studs in college.

Recruiting is always gonna be more of a crap shoot, and it's never gonna be an exact science. The best that can be said is a handful of schools, UT being one of them, are pretty good at recruiting year in and year out, and for UT, it all starts with Mack.
 
3 things here:

1) as has been mentioned, hindsight is 20/20 on individual recruiting stories, you have to look at the overall long term success of a program/staff

2) What about Colt McCoy. Everyone wants to talk about 'missing' on Luck or RG3, but no big schools wanted McCoy but we took him and turned out to be the best passing QB in our history. Nobody talks about our successes (McCoy, Robison, etc) just the so called 'misses'

3) You can't just start taking every player interested at a position, it doesn't work that way. First of all pure scholarship numbers/allocation. But also (especially at QB) you are gonna piss off other players and recruits you have commitments to already. What if we took one of those guys mentioned, Brewer de-commits and goes on to be an all american at Alabama, and our new guy never pans out. You have to go for the players you feel best about and stay commited to them, you cant just get upset about every high ranked player that wanted to come but there was no more room or we already had other plans. It doesn't work that way
 
I would rather focus on the guys who we got than who we didn't get. Recruiting isn't just about getting the most talented players in the country and plugging them in like fantasy football. You also have to get talented players that fit your system and fit in with the team. Scholarship limits allow only so many players per class and not everyone who's interested can come.

This year's class is a great haul and most programs only dream to have classes of this caliber.
 
One of the talking heads on ESPNU yesterday made a really valid point concerning this discussion. He said even if you look at 'Bamas recruiting classes under Saban, he doesn't recruit just four and five star players. The point was made that 'Bama, and indeed all successful college football programs have plenty of three star players that develop over four or five years into solid performers, and sometimes star players.

Coaches want the best players at every position, but generally speaking, too many four and five star types can lead to too many egos tripping all over each other, and THAT can destroy a team. It's hurt UT in recent years.

The point to this discussion again is this: It's wasted time to go back and gripe about players a team might have had instead of ones that don't turn into stars. Everybody has their misses, because despite all of the computerization, recruiting services (legal and otherwise, Mr. F.), and modern mass media available, recruiting is NOT an exact science. It is, like I said earlier, a crap shoot, and some are better at it than others. Mack's among the best, year in and year out.
 
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