Texas Football: Longhorns Double Down on In-State Recruiting With 2020 Class
Recruiting is changing.
It used to be that Texas would mostly have to hold off the likes of Texas A&M, Oklahoma and whatever in-state school was hot at the time for talent in the Lone Star state, but those days are no more.
Thanks to social media, nearly every game being nationally televised and the instant communication that comes with text messages, any player can be legitimately courted by any university in the country.
Over the past couple of seasons, the Longhorns have taken full advantage of the ability to recruit outside state lines, leaving the fertile talent fields of Texas in a national search for top-end talent.
Fourteen of the Longhorns' 26 signees from 2019 were from somewhere other than Texas - making up more than half the class. It's the first Texas class that wasn't a majority Texan since recruiting services started keeping records.
The 2020 group is different. Partially because of a particularly strong year for in-state talent and partially due to a more concentrated effort on the part of Tom Herman and his staff to focus on players within the Texas borders, the Longhorns got back to recruiting basics.
Eighteen of Texas' 19 signees hail from the Lone Star state, the only exception being Bijan Robinson (who just so happens to be the No. 1 running back in the nation).
"Something we’re extremely proud of – all but one of our recruits in this class are from the state of Texas," Herman said. "I want to thank the high school coaches here in the state of Texas and their straight-line recruiting model. We take a lot of pride in getting the best of the best in our home state to play for their flagship university, which is the University of Texas. We couldn’t be prouder. We addressed a lot of areas of need, and brought in a lot of guys we think will be able to come in and play early. We have over 60 guys on our roster from the state of Texas. Recruiting here in this state is going to be our lifeblood."
Staying in state is getting tougher. The days of having to compete with a handful of schools for Texas talent is over. Not only is recruiting electronic and national as I stated before, but the SEC now has a significant footprint in the state with Texas A&M joining the conference a few years back.
But the coach at the University of Texas has to be aware that the opinion of high school coaches in the area will always be a major factor in your program's success. Offering a kid from Arizona or California over someone from Katy or North Shore comes can be necessary at times, but a person in Herman's position must also pick carefully which hill he wants to die on.
So will we ever see Texas recruiting return to what it was like under Mack Brown, when the Longhorns could just about name the players they wanted from the state? No. But the current staff certainly recognizes the importance of maintaining a reputation inside the state borders.
"We love going out of state when the interest is reciprocated, but we know that for us to have the kind of success that is expected here, we’ve got to do a great job in our state, and I feel like we’ve done that," Herman said.
