What else do we want?

Wasn't Newsome being counted on as a kickreturner? Maybe Irvin's commitment took a little of this need. Plus higher ranked recivers are still available.
 
Been following his twitter and saw that and wondered about it... not owning up to my Sherlock Holmes Badge to have missed that.. In reply to:
 
Newsome announced that he will make his commitment on Jan 23rd at Aledo high school. Man, that is possibly too late. I want this guy, but we may have no scholarship to give him by then... damn. I was hoping he would announce next week and just join us.
 
It just seems it's not meant to be with Newsome. If he really wanted to play for the Horns he would see there isn't much room left and he'd announce.
 
John Burt called the coaches and decommitted last night. That means we are at 25 commits now and have 6 spots to give. He has not committed to Auburn though. It seems Texas will continue to recruit him and he still has his final Official Visit set to Texas on Jan 30th. If he has committed to Auburn by then, or if WR Ryan Newsome or Carlos Strickland commits to us by then, I think that OV may not happen. Not sure if we will try to get in on any other WRs, but maybe we will just shut it down with the 2 WRs we have, if we have enough other top guys for the remaining spots.
 
Jay,
You mentioned "shutting it down with the two WRs we already have" when posting about Burt decommitting. Besides Gilbert Johnson, who are you including as the 2nd WR? There are a couple tweener options and a probable silent commitment from Newsome, I concede but none currently in the fold that I was initially projecting at WR.
 
^^^ Deandre McNeal is being looked at as a WR. I think he just cannot afford to gain any more weight and lose any speed, however (he seems to be all muscles and is about 225). Hopefully he'll try to slim down a bit, I suppose. But he has been promised that he will be a WR and we are indeed looking at him as one (many others offered him on defense). Big target with good hands. A bit more of a possession type, but he is very good as a Harris replacement for now. Or he would become more of an H back later. That's my understanding.
 
Makes perfect sense, Jay. I have had him pegged in my mind at H-Back or defense (where I too think he will ultimately end up), and I forgot about the "first pass of the ND game" promise which almost assures he starts out at WR.

Speaking of that, what a promise! All we have to do now is start making bets on what the story's going to be as to why that isn't going to happen. I'm going with "the young man requested to be redshirted". One can only hope.
 
Exactly. I thought then that it was odd and so un-Charlie-like to make such an offer to deAndre but there were interviews of DeAndre the next day and he was truly touched by that. And now, after all the "finessing" he did all through the process keeping a poker face, he says he had been a Texas lean all along since then, which even Malik didn't know till he finally asked him and he finessed with the "deep in the heart of Texas" song. Deandre seems to be an interesting character and Charlie seems to have understood exactly how his mind works. He wanted to be on the offensive side despite everybody telling him otherwise. For many offenses, he would be a liability, but Charlie probably feels Watson has an offense (at least in theory and plan) with enough complexity that can use a possession receiver or H-back like that, so he convinced Deandre that he was honest about the offer. The "first play in the ND game" clinched it.

Now we have a perfect excuse to pull out a trick play to start the ND game. Maybe a half-back pass or a flea flicker or some stuff. If it works, great. If it doesn't, Charlie has an excuse for having tried something rare. The team gets jacked anyway with some fun rather than get nervous. Who would dare go to South Bend and start with a trick play? This will be fun, as long as nobody fumbles the ball
smile.gif


But like you say, maybe the "young man requested not to do it" is probably what will happen though.
 
I think Boyd and Hill "get it" and will come.
I also think Brossete and Lodge come as well.

If those commits can pop up fairly soon, then I think Newsome wants to be a part of it as well.

So I'm going highest probability for
Boyd
Hill
Brossette
Lodge
Newsome

I just think these are the kind of men that find playing for Charlie Strong a big plus, and they're capable of realizing "it's Texas" after all.

Those are my highest picks. After that Warren, Soso and Locksley .

I will not be surprised if they all come. There's a point where the synergy kicks in, and the social media has shown the relativeness of it all, and then you get down to something solid and lasting.
 
I think Lodge is pretty much off the board now, Hu_Fan. He was never serious, ever since we didn't keep Darrell Wyatt as the WR coach. Then he warmed up just a bit as we kept on recruiting him, but I think our staff decided in the last 10 days or so that they have better use of their own time. With Burt showing more indications of a re-commit and Gilbert on the board already, I think we are focusing on Newsome for the smaller slot receiver spot (with more priority on kick returns, now that Irvin is gone). So we have moved on from Lodge, it seems. That is why I didn't even add him in my list above. I think Kyler Murray will manage to reel him in at aggy in the end, though he keeps saying Ole Miss... We may have slowed down on Strickland too the same way (again, possibly because the staff may know more on Burt's plans). But if we hear that Burt won't recommit, we may have a better chance to go after and get Strickland in the last minute than we have of getting Lodge.
 
^^ Yeah, an interesting saga going on, about our only DT commit, Duvonta Lampkin. News pretty much broke yesterday that he is just waiting to de-commit and re-commmit to OU from where we had flipped him some months ago. Suddenly since a week ago, the OU reporters were getting all confident that he is definitely going to flip to them, and serious chatter started from Norman. Then some Texas recruiting sites started talking about a story they had got (may be even an anonymous email etc) about Lampkin getting furious at Charlie when Charlie asked him to not visit UCLA, and emailing Stoops about re-committing. The story abut his scheming for an NSD surprise de-commit to OU. Then Lampkin had this tweet last evening (The Link ) - "The fact that me and my brother @Rossino_90 might have an opportunity to play with each other again. please work out" with a picture of him and buddy @Rossino_90, who is Ross Donelly, a top-700 three-star DT from his school. Lamkin has a longhorn cap and is doing a hookem. But everybody started talking about him trolling Texas, and about OU probably offering his buddy. Anyway, everything looked like it was going down the tubes for us holding on to Lampkin.

The interesting thing was the reports from Texas reporters that our staff is aware of Lampkin's plan to pull a switcheroo because Jay Norvell passed on that inside info from OU to Charlie. Now it was getting confusing... What is more, DuVonta is scheduled to do his OV this weekend with us. Nobody seemed sure if he was going to, but 247's Jeff Howe did talk to him this morning and he confirmed that he is coming. When asked if there is truth to the allegation that others are making, he would not comment (so obviously there was something to it!). Then he tweeted a link to Jeff's article and said this - "No longer talking to any reporter, analyst or whatever y'all wanna be! Don't Dm me or call me!". More confusion as nobody knows what his deal is, and why he is even taking a visit then.

But the more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be items not quite fitting in. The first thing is that his trip to UCLA was supposed to be in late December. If he was upset and contacted OU, it was in late December. Why would he drop a UCLA visit only to pull this stunt? If he was not coming to Texas, he could as well have said "to hell with you" to Charlie after contacting OU and gone to UCLA. It was all for "revenge on UT" says the story, but it just doesn't wash. Why did this "Lampkin to OU" story suddenly become big 2 weeks later from OU guys, if OU was not leaking it to the Norman reporters?

My guess - OU figured Jay Norwell must have told Charlie about it and decided to bring the story out themselves, putting it all on Lampkin (just a possibility). Then the question arises, is it Lampkin telling OU that he would switch on NSD or is it something they initiated? My guess is that they told Lampkin that they will have a spot for him in the last week, so keep quiet about it. Might even have told him that they would try to make a spot for his buddy (hence his tweet about "please work out" about that). It also seems Lampkin is a bigmouth and has generally made other recruits feel that he would flip to OU later too....

But, what made me wonder is why he would be visiting this weekend, when he knows that Charlie is now aware that he was furious about not being able to visit UCLA, and about all his contacts with OU? What is the point? The only thing that makes sense is that he over-reacted and contacted OU, and OU smelled an opportunity to pull a last minute flip on us and asked him to go quiet. Then they realized 2 weeks later that Jay Norvell might rat on them, and leaked a story putting this all on Lampkin as "his scheme".

Lampkin really understood all this only this morning, when all the reporters started calling him. Something he might not have understood to be a serious game has now become a big issue. That is why he shut the reporters out, to figure things out (my guess). He now has probably only two options. Go through with his visit, which means he will have to clear the air with Charlie and tell him that OU started this NSD flip idea. The other option is not too visit and just go to OU.

This afternoon he tweeted - "Sooo ready for my OV this weekend #HookEm" ... That, in my opinion, can only mean that he has decided to drop the plasn and stick with us. You can troll people and fool people over the phone and twitter, but you cannot come on a visit and fool all the other recruits and the staff for 2 days, if you have switcheroo plans, even if you are Oscar winning actor. Impossible. He could still decide not to visit. but if he visits this weekend, I would count him as pretty solid to us.

I know it is all a bit of a convoluted saga, but this is hard recruiting at its vicious best! It wouldn't matter as much, if it were any other position than DT where we have not picked up anybody else for depth. We will watch out for the weekend to see if he makes it in.

Once again, I have no sources, and I'm just piecing together what is reported at various sites. My read on this whole thing could well be wrong....
 
That is one jacked up story. I am always amazed how young guys think they have the ability to concoct a plan like this and out smart the seasoned vets who have heard and seen every trick in the book., especially in the college football arena. Well he got caught and became the goat. Hope he can square it with Coach or he's screwed and we lose a DT. I'll be interested to see if he shows up in ATX this weekend.
 
I guess I expect Lampkin to come in and talk it out with the coaches. What the chatter was between Strong and Lampkin and between Lampkin and OU, only the principals know. I assume Lampkin will come for his OV at the school he has been committed to, UT. He and Strong will discuss the salient issues and either they can agree to keep the commitment in effect, in which case, Lampkin can either live up to his commitment or renege later; or they can decide to mutually part ways.

As a nosey gossip, I hope someday the details will be told.

I am somehow reminded of the 2013 recruitment of A'Shawn Robinson, a 5-star DT who had been long committed to UT up to the last week before signing day. The way I heard the story, the UT DT coach Bo Davis went for a last home visit where Robinson told Davis he was going to switch his commitment to Alabama and then asked Davis to help him fill out the necessary paper work for the Alabama pledge. Bo returned to UT and told the UT staff that Robinson was going to switch his pledge. The story soon went public and Robinson got mad because Davis had ruined the surprise of his moment in the spotlight with and his press conference hat pick. Ironically, Davis is now Robinson's position coach at Alabama.
 
I'd like to see a last-minute shocking flip to us from a bigtime player. Something along the line of Daylon Mack. We've been bleeding a lot lately losing some big names and taking some thrust out of our recent thrust up the rankings. I'd like to grab a respectable amount of our targets still out there, but also one big shocker that catches us by surprise and blazes the fire again.
 
Right now, the biggest chance for some late big news like that is with 5-star RB/ATH Soso Jamabo. In my view the chance to pry him away from UCLA has gone up from 25% to 50-60% in the last couple of weeks (based on reports/rumors we are seeing). He visits this weekend, apparently with his whole family.
 
I've gotta say I've really enjoyed observing the recruiting drama, but now it is over the top and I'm wishing I had just waited to see what happens on NSD. It's like sausages and laws ... you don't want to see how they are made.

Middle School dating/matchmaking is the only area where there is so much emotion, so much drama, so much intrigue and so much "information" being delivered by folks who don't actually know anything. Damn it all. Now I have Neil Sedaka's version of "Breaking up is Hard to do" rolling around in my brain.
 
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