Last century, Lake Travis football sucked.  It was not just that they were a losing program since their inception, they were considered soft, rich lake kids that ran the spread long before it was popular and never had a defense. Golf, soccer, basketball, baseball, those sports flourished and produced elite players. Then something happened after the turn of the century.

Football  finally got a meanass coach, one who also was trying to pull himself up from the bootstraps after serving on the staff of state championship teams but wasn't finding life out in the hinterlands too successful. The football culture did a turnaround, the softness tag was soon forgotten and the Cavaliers started winning. The transformation came to completion this past year with a Class 4A-Div. II state championship under the leadership of a talented quarterback, Garret Gilbert.

However, there was one notch still left to carve, one that was so close that it always hurt no matter how much they accomplished: their next door neighbor, Westlake, who had been the powerhouse Lake Travis only saw in their dreams. For decades there were beaten on the field like step-children kidnaped by pirates. Westlake was richer, closer to Austin, older, faster, had more famous UT sons, had a sports reporter who lived there and adored them and gave them ink by the barrel. Lake Travis just had a neo-European name from another era, Cavaliers, and a rich but not rich enough chip on their shoulder. The only things the Cavs ever ran over were the thousands of deer who insisted that every road and pathway belonged to them.

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This is your thread to claim a recruit to follow this fall.  Rules are here.

NOTE: If you're brave enough, add your player to your signature line so we know who your guy is and can bug you all season for updates.

2009 Commits

Tariq Allen, LB
Thomas Ashcraft, OL
Eryon Barnett, DB
Marcus Davis, DB
Garrett Gilbert, QB
Trey Graham, TE
Calvin Howell, DT
Derek Johnson, DT
Dominique Jones, DE
Paden Kelly, OL
Kyle Kriegel, DE
Barrett Mathews, TE
Patrick Nkwopara, LB
Alex Okafor, DE
Garrett Porter, OL
Greg Timmons, WR
Kenny Vaccaro, DB
Mason Walters, OL
Chris Whaley, ATH

2009 Top Remaining

Devon Kennard, DE
Jamarkus McFarland, DT
Dre Kirkpatrick, DB
Emory Blake, WR

2010 Top Recruits

Lone Star 100

2008 Supers List, 5A

Last year we experimented with Adopt-A-Horn, which was popular as a concept but proved to be of limited utility; I didn't need someone telling me how Colt McCoy or Marcus Jackson played--I saw it myself. Accordingly, I'm ditching the project this year unless enough of folks speak up that they'd like another go-round.

However, I do think the concept can be put to better use--as a tool to track high school players Texas has, is, or may recruit. The operating premise is the same as Adopt-A-Horn: Once you've drafted your player, he'll be your adopted son for the football season. Once a week, there will be a post asking you to fill in the rest of BON about how your player performed. The better parents in the group may create their own weekly Fan Post, complete with performance reports and any available news on their player's recruitment.

Something tells me Seastrunk's adopted father will enjoy the weekly write ups.

ADOPT-A-RECRUIT DRAFT & SEASON DETAILS

WHEN: The player draft will be tomorrow, Thursday August 28, 3:00 p.m. CT.

HOW:  First come, first serve. Once the post goes live, the first comment to claim a player has rights. (As noted below, if two people really want the same player, go for it. Otherwise, choose a new adopted son.)

WHO:  The draft will cover three sets of players:

1. Members of the 2009 Texas recruiting class. Garret Gilbert, Chris Waley, etc. If you draft a player already committed to the 'Horns, your primary responsibility will be to inform the rest of us with news on the player's season. At a minimum, you should plan on looking up your player's performance on Friday night to report his (or his team's) stats. More comprehensive reports might include injury reports, scouting reports, and other news items on the player.
2. Potential members of the 2009 Texas recruiting class. Although Mack Brown's about done for 2009, there will be a little action between now and signing day. If you want to grab a player who may yet commit to Texas, feel free.
   
3. Any 2010 player Texas is, likely will, or should be recruiting. The scram for Lache Seastrunk should be fun to watch.

And that's about everything, really. We'll keep things simple once again. A few final notes:

* If someone drafts a player you really want to follow obsessively yourself, it's totally fine to work together or have two people reporting on the same player. This thing is informal. Do what works.

* Choosing a player you could plausibly go see play in your area would be especially cool insofar as you could provide to the group a scouting report on what you saw.

* Please make sure you have the sticktoitiveness to see the season through. If you don't want to be troubled with a short weekly write up, for the group's sake, don't draft a player.

* Beyond that, no real rules here. The idea is just to find an efficient and fun way to talk about recruiting, because I want to kill myself if I try to follow every little rumor on one of the Rivals/Scout subscription sites. $100 a year to be miserable... no thanks. This should be more fun.

Honestly, I didn't much feel like hunting for scraps of news tonight. But I did feel like blogging... What to do?

Go unapologetically creative, damnit. At least on this night, anyway, I had a must-scratch itch to put Rick Barnes and Mack Brown together. Despite this site's ban on politics, an hour of photoshopping and another hour of writing resulted in a good ol' fashioned fireside chat.

Tonight's nominal topic? Recruiting.

Rick: Hell, they SHOULD pay y'all footballers more. Even thinking about that much recruiting gives me a headache.

Mack: You kiddin' me, Ricky? That's the easiest part of the job.

Rick: [rolls eyes]

Mack: Hey now - I'm not kiddin'. [pointing] What YOU do? That's recruiting. But that's not what I do.

Rick: Oh?

Mack: Hell no. I harvest, Rick.

Rick: [scoffing] Like some kind of farmer, huh?

Mack: Exactly right! Like a farmer! Or farm owner, at the least: I sit on my porch, sip mint juleps, and watch all that I need grow right before my eyes...

Rick: [laughing dismissively] Don't make it sound so hard now, huh? For starters, you sound like a damn Aggie. But seriously, come on: if it were that easy they wouldn't be paying you the GDP of Rhode Island.

Mack: [makes mock stern face] Don't tell me my business, boy!

Rick: [sticks his palm in Mack's face] There's a tremendous amount of filth and gook here... And by 'here', I mean your pet theory. It smells.

Mack: [smugly] Fine. I'm not a farmer.

Rick: Thank you.

Mack: [pauses] I'm a shepherd.

Rick: You're a jackass.

Mack: [with a wink] When in Rome, Ricky... I've heard your pressers.

Rick: And I've heard yours. Seriously, what the hell is that? Do you take lithium beforehand? It's like being in Sunday School all over again.

Mack: Hey now. I'm selling an image here -

Rick: [interrupting] No I mean it. You make Jason Klotz look charismatic by comparison.

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The Statesman is reporting that Texas has secured a commitment from the #5-ranked sophomore basketball player in the country - 6-8, 215 pound forward Tristan Thompson (St. Benedectine Prep, Newark, NJ)

Not a week out of signing day and Texas is up to seven commitments for the 2009 class, including Thomas Ashcroft (Cedar Hill), a 6-5, 280 pound lineman who checks in at #59 on the Rivals100. That now gives Texas four Top 100 prospects (Gilbert, Whaley, Ashcroft, Timmons) already, and we've only just begun. If the class of 2008 wasn't one of Mack's best, the class of 2009 is shaping up to be a special one.

Yesterday I wrote about why I thought it made sense not to limit one's sphere too much and to supplement the in-state targets by taking shots at some elite national prospects. That argument rests on the premise that unless you clean house in-state, you run the risk of being left holding the bag.

In the end, though, it might have just been an academic point. Because more often than not of late, Mack Brown's been doing just that: cleaning house in-state.

Seven future Horns in the books with a lot of big, big names still on the board.

--PB--

Perhaps the most interesting debate among diehard Longhorn football fans right now centers on Mack Brown and out-of-state recruiting. Should he expend time and resources trying to land high-four and five star blue chippers outside the borders? If so, to what extent?

Let's take a look.

RECRUIT THE NATION

During this year's Signing Day press conference Mack  Brown told reporters that he wants, first, players who want to come to Texas. But a close second, he wants kids from the state of Texas. His espoused philosophy is that kids from the state want to play for Texas, want to represent the state, and help tie the team with the state's high school coaches and the state as a whole.

The first potential problem with this approach is that you significantly limit the number of available players who meet your criteria. Let's say, just as an illustration, there are 200 kids nationally who would be objectively good for Mack Brown to recruit. With each additional qualifier you add to the process, you lose kids from the pool. For example:

MUST BE FROM TEXAS: Pool shrinks from 200 to 60
MUST ONLY WANT TEXAS: Pool shrinks from 60 to 20

The problem quickly becomes obvious: if you don't clean house in-state any given year, you're left holding the bag. The less obvious problem, though, is that high-four and five star recruits are exponentially more valuable than three and low-four star players. If we were to plot it out, the resulting graph would look something like this:

They don't call 'em "can't miss" prospects for nothing.

This is a powerful arrow in the quiver of those who want a national recruiting strategy. Though the state of Texas is home to a deep pool of four-star talent, it's an undeniable fact that you can build a stronger top-to-bottom class if you expand the pool of potential recruits beyond the state borders.

RECRUITING "I'M A TEXAN AND I LOVE THE LONGHORNS" KIDS

Mack Brown and those who share his view do have some counterarguments. We'll lay them out there before evaluating their various merits.

1. By being so committed to recruiting the state of Texas, Mack Brown's relationship with high school coaches is unparalleled.

2. Along with Georgia, Florida, Ohio, and California, the state of Texas is loaded with high school talent.

3. The talent pool is deep enough to fill a Top 10 class every year without recruiting beyond the borders.

4. Staying in-state shrinks the number of players to evaluate, which in turn allows you to make more thorough evaluations of each.

5. You'll necessarily lose fewer recruiting battles.

WHO'S RIGHT?

Though Mack Brown's strategy isn't without merit, I think it's inherently the weaker one. As discussed in the first section, the biggest problem is that you simply can't build as strong a class by recruiting from a smaller pool of players. And though you'll have some years where you truly have a great, great class, you're going to have some more modest classes in years when either the state isn't as well stocked with studs or you don't win out on all the in-state battles.

Beyond that, I think Mack Brown's justifications for staying in-state are shaky in certain regards. The unstated premise on which Mack's philosophy rests is that recruiting nationally can't be done effectively. But a thorough cost-benefit analysis suggests otherwise. This is a program with deep, deep, deep resources - so deep that being more cost-efficient (but less talented) by staying in-state is not - to stay with the metaphor - worth the savings. Though it would destroy a school like Baylor to try to recruit from coast to coast, Texas has the capital to do so. And therefore should, if you ask me.

Additionally, finding the blue chips is easier than it's ever been before, and gets easier each year. The recruiting sites like Rivals and Scout identify the nation's top players when they're freshmen and sophomores in high school, and their evaluations are verifiably excellent. Gone are the days when recruiting required the coaches themselves to drive around in cars to watch as many high school games as they could. Nowadays the stars are pre-identified and you simply need evaluate all the ones in whom you're interested.

And finally, I find the "What we've got now is good enough" attitude to be a bit unsettling. You don't see Microsoft content with its market share, and I'm not sure - given everything discussed above - Mack Brown should be content with the status quo, either. Not when the cost of doing so is so manageable and the benefits of staying in-state relatively intangible. Moreover, one senses an "It's more trouble than it's worth" attitude from Mack Brown on the matter, yet coaches like Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel and Pete Carrol - all from talent-rich states - regularly pluck players from across the country to supplement their classes.

I understand why Mack Brown does things the way that he does, and I can appreciate the appeal. I also think the results are, for the most part, outstanding. But I think a thorough analysis suggests that we can do better. Which begs the question: shouldn't we?

Update [2008-2-11 18:59:47 by HornsFan]: Some excellent counterpoints are being made in the comment section. Definitely worth reading. And responding to, which I'll do in another post down the line.

--PB--

Rivals is reporting that four star wide receiver Greg Timmons (Aldine) accepted an offer from Mack Brown this weekend. Timmons, at 6-3/194, checks in at #69 on the early 2009 Rivals 100.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, Permian OL Garrett Porter (6-6/285) also committed on Sunday.

2009 Commits
QB Garrett Gilbert
RB Chris Waley
OL Padden Kelley
DB Marcus Davis
WR Greg Timmons
OL Garrett Porter

Just a quick update: no one is reporting that Russell Shepard committed to Texas over the junior day weekend. With Gilbert's Friday commit to Texas, that's not terribly surprising, especially in light of Terrelle Pryor as yet being undecided about where he'll play ball.

The point being this: if you want Shepard as much as I do, root for Pryor to wind up at Michigan. Because if Pryor doesn't wind up in Ann Arbor, you count count on Rich Rodriguez throwing the kitchen sink at landing Shepard. It'll make luring him to Texas that much harder, especially with Gilbert already in the '09 class.

--PB--

Four star tailback Chris Whaley (Madisonville), #65 on the 2009 Rivals 100, committed to Mack Brown over the weekend. Texas also picked up commitments from Paden Kelley (Lake Travis) and Marcus Davis ($). The Statesman reports that Emory Blake did not receive an offer this weekend, but now lists Texas as his top school.

2009 Commits
QB Garrett Gilbert
RB Chris Waley
OL Padden Kelley
DB Marcus Davis