Junior Day

[Outwest]

Help! What is Junior Day? How does it work? Do most top schools have Junior Day? What happens at Junior Day? Are scholarships offered to some players, most players? Are athletes timed in the 40 and tested on their athletic gifts? How does word of scholarship acceptance come out? I couldn't find "Junior Day" in Wikipedia. I think it's about time somebody explains Texas Junior Day to Longhorn fans way out here in El Paso. Thanks.

 

[Bill in Sinton]

That is a very good question Outwest.
I will try as best I understand it Outwest but please remember I have never been to one and more qualified posters I am sure are to follow. But I think you have the right idea. They have the juniors run some drills (no pads or contact of course) such as the 40 yd dash. After the drills and everything with them are over the coaches get together and evaluate the players they think are sure successes. This is obviously difficult. Also the needs as well as talent are considered. Then players are offered scholarships especially to the ones that performed well that have expressed a big desire to come here and are willing to verbal right away. For a few the recruting process will be a long one.

 

[cehorn]

The way I understand it is you have to be invited to attend. Everyone who is invited is not offered a scholarship. For a good breakdown of the evaluation and decision process the coaches go through check out the transcript of the press conference from Wednesday. Mack goes into pretty good detail on the process of evaluating and offering a player. I think the junior days are ways for the coaches to further evaluate players and also get to know them to see if they fit. There have been numerous cases over the years of players that are more than talented enough to come here but never receive and offer because they don't fit (whether it be grades, personality, or whatever). It has also been stated that in a majority (if not all) of the cases the player has to meet Mack and step foot on campus before they get an offer. I would bet over 90% of the offers that come out of junior day were decided on before the player ever got to the junior day. I think it could probably also be described as a 1 day football camp.

 

[GHoward]

I think our good friend JaMarkus McFarland can best describe a visit to UT: link

But does anyone know for sure if they are allowed to run drills/exercises. I thought that sort of thing was saved for the summer camps. I thought players were not allowed to "try out" which is why the summer "camps" were invented.

 

[OldHippie]

Link

 

[scharnell]

When will word of the commitments come out? I believe last year it was Sunday afternoon/night. Am I remember this correctly? Thanks.

 

[fhetw]

The first junior day isn't until next weekend due to the superbowl. We should start hearing about early commits next sun afternoon/night and possibly early into the week.

 

[dongato]

check hippie's link above for a preliminary list of invitees.

 

[Burnt Orange Bevo]

Anybody else think Jaxon Shipley is going to get an official offer?

It seems that OL will be an especially pressing need for the next class, so hopefully Mack will reel in another class of beef.

 

[WestGAHorn]

In reply to:

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[orangecat]

several famous football names on the list, IMO:

Anderson
Evans
Flowers
Hughes
Jackson
McFarland
Moss
Randle
Reed
Scott
Shipley
Thompson


quite a few, anybody got any others?

 

[warrior]

Next year's class will be heavy on Offensive Linemen

 

[kbrown]

If we are gonna load up on an oline class of beef we better hope our second and third junior days have more olinemen attending. According to the link provided there are only two coming next weekend

 

[FridayNiteLites]

For some reason, I think Bob Shipley said that Jaxson would commit after the first junior day. I did see that Jaxson made the sports writers all state team. He posted some pretty good numbers for missing 5 or so games.

 

[CraigHorn]

may need to go out of state for an OL or two

 

[UTFAN4EVER]

Craig, I think you are right. We may do more OOS this year than ever before.