2005 Recruiting Class Revisited

The 2005 offseason was a time when Texas fans may have thought that Mack Brown had lost his recruiting touch. If you'll recall, Texas had three "major" targets for that recruiting class: Fred Rouse, Martellus Bennett and Ryan Perrilloux. Perrilloux committed to Texas over the summer, and at one time both Rouse and Bennett were believed to be following him to Austin. Well, Perrilloux decided to stay in Louisiana, Rouse stayed in Florida and Bennett followed his brother to A&M. Normally we think it takes 3-4 years to really ascertain the effectiveness of recruits. These three stars, however, were expected to make immediate impacts on their respective programs. We've been wanting to take a look back at these three...gentlemen...and Ryan coming back into the news again seems as good a time as any.

Bennett could be called the valedictorian of this class. Clearly a humble guy, Bennett went to A&M to make a name for himself playing both basketball and football. He quit the basketball team just four games into last season to focus on football. On the A&M football team, Bennett is the star TE on a running offense. On the whole, Bennett probably made the right choice in not coming to Texas. He would not have seen the field on the 2005 championship team and would have to compete with Jermichael Finley for playing time. He seems to be a nice player but the Longhorns really didn't miss too much of a beat going from David Thomas to Finley.

Fred Rouse ended up in Texas after all. Rouse was kicked off Florida State (which is kind of like when Dickie Betts got kicked out of the Allmann Brothers band for drinking too much) and ultimately found his way to UTEP. The Longhorns clearly didn't miss out on this one as he wasn't all that good in his one season with the Seminoles.

Which brings us to the reason for this post. Ryan Perrilloux came into LSU expecting to win a Heisman in his freshman season. Since then the Perrilloux era has been nothing but fun. There were rumors of transferring to Grambling, an investigation into counterfeiting, and the rise of Jamarcus Russell and Matt Flynn (it turns out they're both better quarterbacks than Perrilloux). Now Lyin' Ryan is at it again. On Tuesday he was suspended indefinitely from the LSU football team for trying to use a fake ID to enter a casino, which doesn't seem like it would be a crime in Louisiana (one of us is from Louisiana, so it's okay). Perrilloux hadn't exactly lit the world on fire yet at LSU and--if reinstated--probably isn't going to start at least for another year.  It's beginning to look like, although Mack may have lost Perrilloux to LSU, he may not have missed out on much at all.