Big 12 has problem
Conference can close gap on rivals with improved recruiting, which is easier said than done,
For much of the past year, the Big 12’s leadership has tied itself in knots trying to figure out how to change the perception that it is falling behind the other power conferences. Everything from expansion to a championship game for football to a league television network has seemingly been discussed.
But the real solution for the Big 12 almost never gets brought up. It really comes down to recruiting better players.
When the final college football recruiting rankings come out for 2016, they will likely confirm once again that the Big 12’s problems start on national signing day, where the league collectively has not been recruiting at an elite level since the last round of conference realignment shook up the landscape.
On signing day in 2010, a few months before Colorado and Nebraska accepted invitations to other leagues, the Big 12 boasted five of Rivals.com’s top-25 classes, headlined by Texas at No. 3 and Oklahoma at No. 7. That put it on par with the Pac-12 and well ahead of the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast conferences.
But the Big 12’s recruiting prowess has steadily declined since then. Last year the Big 12 had two top-25 classes in Texas (No. 12) and Oklahoma (No. 14). And as the league heads toward the wire for 2016, it’s quite possible it will go a second consecutive year without a top-10 class, as Baylor sits at No. 11, TCU at No. 16, Oklahoma at No. 23 and Texas at No. 42 in the Rivals rankings, though the Longhorns are expected to add high-profile prospects by Wednesday.
“The top two teams in recruiting right now are Baylor and TCU, and that’s not the way the Big 12 is going to thrive,” said Mike Farrell, Rivals.com’s national recruiting director. “Those are good programs that have had a lot of success recently, but for the Big 12 to be successful you need a strong Texas and a strong Oklahoma. I know Oklahoma got into the (College Football) Playoff this year, but they used to be a perennial top-10 recruiting program, as did Texas, and the last five or so years that hasn’t happened.”
POACHING COMMONPLACE
The problem, however, might be much more difficult to fix than it is to diagnose, because the Big 12’s greatest natural resource in recruiting — the state of Texas — is up for grabs like never before.
Before realignment, the Big 12 could reliably expect the vast majority of elite Texas high school players to land in its league, with Texas and Oklahoma annually dominating the state. But the minute Texas A&M left, in 2012, the Big 12’s home-field advantage began to disappear, opening the state to raids from the Southeastern Conference and others.
Between 2007 and 2011, 72.8% of players ranked in Rivals’ top 50 for the state of Texas signed with Big 12 schools. In the past four classes, however, that number has dropped to 47% — and it’s not simply a matter of Texas A&M’s numbers shifting from the Big 12 to the SEC.
Since Texas A&M joined the SEC, LSU has more consistently recruited top players in Texas; Alabama, which wasn’t a factor at all, has come in to grab elite players; and Mississippi has made its presence known.
As of Monday, 40 of the top 50 Texas players in this class were verbally committed, with 19 headed to Big 12 schools and 15 going to the SEC. That includes the No. 1 player, offensive tackle Greg Little from Allen, Texas, who has committed to Mississippi. The Big 12 did get good news Monday, when four-star defensive end Mark Jackson Jr. flipped from Texas A&M to Oklahoma.
“There’s a connection to the SEC now, and the biggest thing is there’s so much parity,” said John Walsh, coach at Guyer High in Denton, Texas, and father of former Oklahoma State quarterback J.W. Walsh. “Alabama is the constant, but across the nation there’s just a lot of parity. And with the Internet and social media, everybody gets advertised so much better.
“They can have instant advertising on the phone. Even 15 years ago, you wouldn’t know a whole lot about Ole Miss, unless you really did some research. Now if you are on Twitter and follow the right people, you’ll find everything you want to know. It really opened up the nation to what I think is the best high school football in the country.”
Texas high schools, of course, remain the lifeblood of Big 12 recruiting. That won’t change. And because of the sheer volume Texas produces — 459 players from the state signed with programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision last year — it always has been prime recruiting ground for coaches from every league. But a shift clearly has occurred. Though top-50 rankings are merely projections, not perfect measures of talent, and don’t account for things such as player development and fit, the most highly regarded players are not staying in the Big 12 at as high of a rate as they used to.
And it’s reasonable to correlate that with the product on the field, where the Big 12 was left out of the College Football Playoff in 2014 and got in this year with Oklahoma, which was beaten soundly by Clemson in the semifinals.
“Realignment hurt them, and there’s a perception being sold by other coaches that you have less of a path to a national championship in the Big 12, based on what happened a couple years ago,” Farrell said.
LONGHORNS COULD BE KEY
Much of the perception issues go directly to Texas’ fall-off as a program since making the national championship game after the 2009 season.
In 2007, the Longhorns grabbed 19 of the state’s top 50 recruits, a number they repeated in 2010. But turmoil in the program in the later Mack Brown years combined with the coaching change to Charlie Strong and Texas A&M’s initial SEC surge clearly affected the Longhorns’ brand in the state.
Texas signed nine of the top 50 in-state prospects in 2013, seven in 2014 and 11 in 2015, though one of them last year was five-star linebacker Malik Jefferson.
Wednesday will be a key indicator of whether Strong, who came into the job with more recruiting groundwork laid in Florida than in Texas, has started to make inroads with the high school culture in his backyard. Texas, which is 11-14 in two seasons under Strong, could land a handful of four-star prospects on signing day.
ESPN analyst Tom Luginbill said Texas started going down the wrong path under Brown when it took commitments too early from highly rated freshmen and sophomores who didn’t pan out as expected.
“Now you’re seeing Charlie Strong and his staff not taking the easy guy who’s followed the program all his life. They’ve chosen not to go that route, which is really wise,” Luginbill said.
“Slowly but surely, they’re making more inroads with high school coaches and making an impactful impression in the state of Texas.”
Still, it’s a harder fight for Strong than it was for Brown, who charmed his way across the state and didn’t have to deal with Baylor as a national power, TCU as a Big 12 member or the SEC factor.
Texas A&M, in fact, often struggled to get top-50 Texas players, signing a combined 23 between 2007 and 2011. After the SEC move was announced, the Aggies signed nine in 2012 and then 13 in 2013, the year after Johnny Manziel came on to the scene.
Even though Texas might be on the upswing in recruiting and Texas A&M’s hot streak has subsided with Kevin Sumlin’s tenure hitting turbulence after a disappointing season, the SEC is going to be a major obstacle for the Big 12 to overcome.
In the five years before realignment, the SEC pulled an average of 5.6 players out of Texas’ top 50 recruits. Since then, that number has more than tripled to 17.3.
If the Big 12 can’t slow that hostile takeover of its prime territory, its on-field reputation as a slightly lesser brand of football might not change anytime soon.