Every big time school was and still is doing this. A&M just got caught. You are kidding yourself if you think players currently at A&M, Texas, OU, Ohio St, LSU, Auburn, USC, or any other school with a large following are not getting a little something something on the side. Schools seem to have learned how to distance themselves from the actual infraction while surely knowing everything that is going on (See Rhett Bhomar and Cam Newton's Dad). I'm just glad we've improved to the point where we are not getting caught.
A good friend of mine who was at UT several years ago, one who I'd trust with my life, told me a story once... he was playing video games with several other students in a football players dorm. He got a knock at the door. Two older men were outside. The football player knew what to do. He asked everyone to leave and hungout with the older men for about 20 minutes. Just talking. They wanted to get close to the guy I guess, rub shoulders with him, let them know they appreciated his talents. The men brought the football player some magazines. In those magazines... a few thousand dollars in bills. That's just how it goes. The NCAA could easily put together an undercover task force and cut down on this stuff if they wanted to. They obviously don't want to.
Then maybe its just a coincidence that it was during the only extended period of time that A&M was nationally significant.
Apparently so considering we had very good recruiting classes since then even though we did nothing with them. I'm sure we are still cheating just like every other major school. It's a matter of who gets caught.
Very good recruiting classes? About half of the 10 years you mentioned you are out of the top 20 or nearly out of the top 20? Sheesh! I guess mediocre is "very good" at Texas Agriculture and Mechanical. DND
If you go back and look at the classes they had when they were top 10 every year, I bet you won't see recruiting classes in the 20s as consistently as you posted. In todays world, kids judge recruiting class by how many guys get drafted. If you have layers of guys getting drafted, then you've had good recruiting classes. If you've had 1 1st rd pick in the last 6 yrs, then you haven't been recruiting top talent.I went back and did some reserch to see if i was right and I was pretty much on point. I put in some varibles using for both tamu and texas. I wanted to see how many players were drafted for a 10 yr span during slocum and mack brown. I only used guys drafted till the 3rd rd. I did this because to me, this says more about the the type of recruting class you have than the $5.99 magazine. http://www.pro-football-reference.c...LL&college_id=texasam&conference=any&show=all http://www.pro-football-reference.c...LL&college_id=texasam&conference=any&show=all http://www.pro-football-reference.c...=ALL&college_id=texas&conference=any&show=all http://www.pro-football-reference.c...=ALL&college_id=texas&conference=any&show=all Tamu had 36 players drafted including 8 1st rd picks in that span. Texas had 30 players drafted and 11 1st rd picks. From 89-98, texas only had 19 players drafted in the 1st 4 rds. From 00-11, tamu only had 17 players drafted in the same 4 rds. Its not a secret or a trick question in regards to tamu or longhorns programs and the proof is there. When tamu recruited well, they had really good teams and guys got drafted, but when they haven't, guys didn't get drafted and the team wasn't good. Same goes for texas, ou, florida,alabama,lsu and every other major program across the states. Very rarely do you see a team loaded with drafted players not being good or upper echelon. Until tamu can get back to getting those draft egible type players like they did in that 10 yr span, then they will continue to suffer. If mack brown starts to lose players he usually gets, texas will suffer also.
You're assuming that draft picks are determined at the HS level. But the reality is, especially for the top 3 rounds, draft picks are also about development at the college level. The knock on A&M is that they are getting talent but not developing it - if that's the case, you'd see the same results with people not getting drafted very high. That's the same criticism Mack Brown's staff got last year - that they had gotten lazy and weren't developing the players as they had in the past, so despite top 5 classes, Texas went 5-7. Whether it's true or not, who really knows, but it was a major criticism. Texas had tons of talent based on recruiting classes, but you wouldn't know it watching the team last year.
Exactly, what does draft status have to do with selecting highly ranked players out of High School? We got good athletes when we were caught cheating (and they turned out to be good and the team was good) and we are getting good athletes when we have not been caught cheating (but likely still are along with every other school), but the coaching/evauating was not there to turn them into a good team/draft picks. A&M's failures in the past decade are not because of recruiting. According to some of you, A&M got great players in the 80s and 90s, but once we got caught cheating, we were getting 2 and 3 star athletes after that. It just simply isn't true. ... And yes I believe our recruiting has been very good. In the last 10 years, half of our classes were ranked 17th or higher, and the "bad years" in the 20s are not really bad. Compare the recruiting rankings to our actual team and where we deserved to be ranked at the end of seasons and you will see a stark contrast.
Relative > absolute. Look no furhter than Texas A&M's record in head-to-head matchups for specific recruits with Texas and/or Oklahoma - the Aggies win maybe 1 or 2 out of every 10 matchups when those schools target a player that the Aggies have offered. There's the occasional victory now and then which serves as the exception that proves the rule, but most of the time they just lose outright. So, sure you can argue that "our recruting hasn't suffered none!" if you view it in the abstract, but since the late 80's mid 90's glory days evaporated, it took a steep dropoff (also the cult of recruiting rankings was a lot different in those days and much less consolidated) in terms of head-to-head battles. The Sam Adams etc now all go to Texas or Oklahoma or LSU or another regional rival, in some cases even if they're committed to Texas A&M.
You shouldn't be comparing TAMU's recruiting class to UT and OU for this argument, the fact of the matter is they consistently lost to worse teams. That falls on coaching. Tech wasn't out-recruiting Texas A&M, but they were beating them regularly for a stretch.
If you watch enough high school football, you can see the kids who will be playing on sundays. If you can't, then you don't watch enough hs football. I'm not saying player development doesn't matter, because it does. What I can say is I've seen a lot of guys in high school and knew they were going to play Sunday. You don't think the aledo rb will play on sundays? I watched vince young in the playoffs and knew he was playing on sundays. There are cases when guys will develop after coming without fan fare and turn into all americans, but for the most part,you see those guys coming from their jr year in high school. Its the pedigree of the players. When tamu was getting the sam adams, patrick bates,aaron glen type of talent, the were a top program. I played against bates in high school and he was a beast in 3 sports including track. I knew from highschool he would play on sundays. Its not hard.
In Vince Young and Johnathan Gray, most people would've said that. Likewise, a guy like Sergio Kindle was a no brainer. Would you have said Colt McCoy would be playing on Sundays based on high school? Or Sam Bradford? Or the Acho brothers? For a program like Texas, we get our fair share of the "no brainer" studs, and I think a lot of the recent troubles can be pinned when those guys actually miss (cough, Gilbert). But the difference between a ranked team and a title contender is when a couple of the lesser heralded guys pan out too. Vince Young is still the best college player I've ever seen, but the star of a pretty talented defense was a pretty lightly heralded Michael Huff. No doubt there's a decent predictive ability coming out of high school, but there's a reason Mack Brown was called "Mr. February" before VY finally won him a title -- the talent has to be coached up a bit, too.
If it's that obvious to you, you could make a lot of money as a college scout or a recruiting rankings person. Because right now, they miss all the time. Out of curiousity, which freshmen on the UT roster are you certain will play in the NFL?
Joe Villavisencio Killed In Car Crash http://www.aggieathletics.com//ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=27300&ATCLID=205351348 RIP
This is just awful. I cannot imagine the pain his family is feeling to bury their son during the holidays.
Is it possible to pull out another clutch loss like this again ... This would be the grand daddy of them all being up 23 in the 4th Unreal!
