O’Connell: Trouble ‘Bru-ing’ For Top Football Recruit

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Let’s talk about Bru McCoy. If you haven’t heard that name yet, all you really need to know is that Bru McCoy is a really, really talented athlete and football player (WR) from Mater Dei High School in Southern California.

He is 6’2”, weighs about 210 pounds, runs like a deer, possesses excellent instincts and hands, and sports a highlight reel of touchdown catches befitting his 5-star ranking as one of the nation’s top football prospects.

Bru is poised to begin his college football career with one of the nation’s blue-blood heritage programs… He just can’t decide which one…

Going To USC?

Like many top talents in high school sports; particularly football, McCoy decided to forego his semester of high-school to enroll in college early and participate in spring football practices.

It’s almost expected of the cream of the crop now. Because that 5-star rating means you should be competing for starting reps as a true freshman.

McCoy kept his recruiting open longer than some of his highly-coveted peers, but ultimately chose to play wide receiver for USC. He signed his letter of intent January 6th and enrolled in classes two days later. The move made perfect sense, given the longstanding connection between Mater Dei football and the Trojans.

But…

Sixteen days later, McCoy changed his mind, reversed his commitment, spurned the Trojans, and announced his new commitment to the Texas Longhorns the next day.

Texas freshman, former 5-star Bru McCoy weighing his transfer options, again? via @TaylorEstes247https://t.co/gBSog4yYsO pic.twitter.com/O8JtEfxYXQ

— 247Sports (@247Sports) May 27, 2019

Trojan fans balked, Longhorns rejoiced, and he headed to Austin for spring football. Oh… And classes I suppose. Transferring before you get started is not common, but it’s an easy way to reverse course on a commitment that an 18-year-old has every right to second-guess.

The move raised questions for many pundits and gave rise to concern over the state of the USC program under head coach Clay Helton. Losing McCoy was a bad look for USC, and a huge win in the eleventh hour for Texas.

Now A Longhorn?

But…

Now, four months after his first shocking move, McCoy is looking for another change. Reports emerged this week that the young man was entering the NCAA transfer portal. Not only does Bru McCoy want to leave Texas football after only one spring training camp; he actually wants to return to USC!

A Texas spokesman confirmed to me that Tom Herman, Drew Mehringer, Kevin Washington and QB Sam Ehlinger are flying to LA today to convince Bru McCoy to stay at Texas. First reported by @AnwarRichardson.

— Brian Davis (@BDavisAAS) May 29, 2019

The flip-flopping of an impact recruit is not exactly something to ring alarms over, but it’s really someint

Recruiting Is Rapidly Changing

The world of recruiting has changed very rapidly and very significantly over the years. To be honest, it’s a little too much to keep up with. I admire the hard-earned acumen of those I know in the world of high-school scouting, recruiting services, and top 300 prospect lists, but I myself have a hard time investing the way so many do in following the whims of talented adolescents.

Of course, the work is necessary and relevant for fans who want to know about the future of their favorite programs.

Obviously any coach worth a salt will tell you that players are the lifeblood of a program, and the only way to ensure you have the best ones is to comb the limitless tracts of game film and highlight edits to find the right athletes for your program.

Beyond that, coaches and recruiters have to stay on top of “The Opening”, “Elite 11” and any number of other elite skills camps. Don’t forget to keep track of the invitees to Under Armor and U.S. Army All-American games! (That’s great way to gauge how the best stack up against one another).

Make sure you know the disparity in rankings for major services like Scout.com and 247sports. More importantly, make sure you know the reasons why a recruit is prized by one and maybe not the other.  If a rival in your conference has offered a kid, it’s definitely crunch time in making sure you get in too.

If your local 4-star pass rusher or wide receiver is committed as an underclassmen, don’t assume the press is over. Better to double up on visits and efforts, keep the vultures away until pen hits paper on signing day. And don’t forget that signing day has moved up! It’s right there in the meat of the college football postseason now.

Better make sure you’re in a good bowl game to eliminate any doubt for those coveted athletes who are still wavering up until the very last minute. And what kind of coach or recruiter are you if you only offer the kids that everybody knows about?

You’d better mine a few diamonds-in-the-rough to go along with those star ratings, because sometimes it’s about fit, and recognizing “your kind of guy” when you see one…

It’s an impossible puzzle to put together. Actually, it’s more like four impossible puzzles together. This year’s class, next year’s class, the rising juniors, and junior college prospects that can play stopgap for you at positions of need.

Wait… realistically, it’s probably better to view this as a conglomerate of six rapidly-shifting puzzles, because I forgot the transfer portal and preferred walk-on game that are so very fashionable at the moment.

Red-shirts, gray-shirts, blue-shirts, and a shotgun spray of hollow offers from the top programs in college football make it even more of a jumbled mess. But that mess is what feeds the team you cheer for.

More importantly, if you are a coach, that chaos is where you must find the building blocks for the program that will either keep you employed and compensated, or have you looking for a new job the next time the coaching carousel begins its wicked rotation.

Even outlining this insanity gives me a headache, so again, if you’ve mastered the calculus of college recruiting, I tip every cap I have ever worn to you.

But here’s the thing… We treat recruiting like a science. When really, it’s an art. A wildly subjective and speculative process that can look like a masterpiece one moment and fade from relevance the next.

It should be expected, because the success of your recruiting class is subject to an endless array of variables to include quality of coaching, stability of coaching, team culture, adolescent self-discipline, NCAA investigative pressure, booster input, and plain luck, to name just a few.

Multi-million-dollar empires of college athletics and broadcasting giants are reliant on the whims of young men who are just as often completely unequipped to handle the pressures of their talent as the opposite.