It’s not a huge surprise that other states’ schools come to Texas for football players. They’ve been doing it for decades, many a title run has been spearheaded by Texans.
Even though outside schools routinely pluck Texas talent, there hasn’t been a year quite like this one, at least in recent history. In 2016, five of the top ten stayed home. In 2015, Texas schools brought home four of the state’s top ranked players. In 2014, six. You can browse through 247’s rankings of prospects over the years and see for yourself that this is the lowest number of players in the top ten recruits that Texas colleges have managed to keep in-state.
It doesn’t stop at the top ten, either. Only four of the top twenty players in Texas stayed in-state, and only eighteen of the top fifty remained in the Lone Star State.
So, where does this leave the state of Texan college recruiting? For most colleges, it’ll likely be okay. There’s an influx of new coaches across many of the big names this year, like Rhule at Baylor, Herman at Texas, and Major Applewhite at Houston. Being thrown into the process with single digit weeks to spare before National Signing Day probably means that they weren’t going to lock down the huge names, but each of those coaches did well for themselves.
In short, it’s an eye-popping anomaly, especially after Ohio State picked up three of the top ten and were definitely in the running to land a fourth, Marvin Wilson, but it’s not much other than that. You need to recruit well to win in college football, yes, but you also need to develop your players while they’re there, and just about every single coach has already recruited well enough that missing one or two huge prospects shouldn’t hurt too bad.
Brought to you by: XENITH
