Texas Football

By Greg Tepper // TexasFootball.com

Catch your breath yet?

We just passed perhaps the most dynamic 48-hour period of the past few years in Texas football, as both National Signing Day and UIL Realignment happened on concurrent days. We were with you all the way, bringing you all the information from both Signing Day and Realignment as it happened, and judging from our site’s traffic, there are a ton of fans who turned to the bible of Texas football for all the news.

But here’s the problem with all of this activity: there is so much information to wade through.

We’re not going to pretend that we can dissect all of this recruiting and realignment information in a single day. In fact, we’re going to devote the entire next week here on TexasFootball.com to breaking down all of this information into as many bite-sized chunks as we can. Recruiting analysis? District breakdowns? TexasFootball.com has you covered.

For now, though, we do want to whet your appetite for the goodness of next week’s recruiting and realignment analysis. So, the DCTF staff has their five overarching thoughts from the week that was in the state of football. Enjoy!

1) The past two days, I think, determine exactly what kind of football fan you are. That’s not to say that some fans are better than others; just that some are more dedicated than their counterparts. Some fans didn’t follow any of what transpired over the past two days, and that’s OK; they’re more interested in the product on the field. Some fans – a very large contingency, I think – followed National Signing Day with special intent, but ultimately didn’t care for the next day’s UIL Realignment proceedings. That’s fine as well: National Signing Day is the culmination of high school careers, and the beginning of college careers, so it draws a huge cross-section of fans. But then there are the diehard football fans, the ones who were totally locked in to both National Signing Day and UIL Realignment, getting the full breadth of what was an amazing week in Texas football. They’re the diehards, the dorks, the football junkies. And they’re my kind of people. –Greg Tepper

2) Once upon a time, a little-known coach named Gary Patterson, leading a near-rock bottom program named TCU, started carving up sub-AQ conferences with a bevy of small-school players and two star recruits that no one else seemed to want. Blueprint worked out pretty well for him; nearly ten years after he began that strategy, he won the Rose Bowl. In that vein, I urge you to take a look over in Denton, where UNT, fresh off a 5-7 season under new coach Dan McCarney, roped in a fine class just teaming with talent from the 3A, 2A, 1A and private school ranks. McCarney raided unbeaten 3A-DI champion Chapel Hill, bringing in two key contributors (Sir Calvin Wallace, Rex Rollins). He plucked Beaumont Kelly’s best, WR Nick Schrapps. He swayed 1A star Jarrian Roberts, a versatile athlete from Clarksville. He got transfers from Oklahoma and Arkansas. And he roped in Dallas Life Oak Cliff’s (2A) Roderick Lancaster, a promising wide receiver. I’m not saying UNT is going to be the next TCU, but I will tell you this — McCarney saw something that worked and emulated it. There’s a lot worse ways to go than that. If I were a parent with a good looking football player for a kid, I would take a good, hard look at North Texas in coming years. –Travis Stewart

3) We got a great question in the middle of our UIL Realignment chat yesterday on TexasFootball.com, asking us what the first thing we looked for when the alignments were released. I guess I’d never really considered it, but I found myself seeking out three things in particular when the UIL website stopped crashing. I sought out Stephenville and La Marque (two premier Class 4A teams dropping down into 3A); I sought out the alignment for the premier 3A teams (including District 16-3A, which found a way to get even tougher, if that’s possible); and I sought out how many 9+-team districts there were. Every two years, we hear the same bellyaching from some fans who think that nine teams in a district is too many. And, well, I tend to agree: nine-team (or, in some case, ten-team) districts are not ideal. But the bottom line is that the UIL is tasked with an enormous job in breaking up the teams into classifications and districts, and in a lot of instances, a nine- or ten-team district is simply the only way to do things. Yes, the teams out in west Texas – teams like Abilene, Midland Lee and Odessa Permian – are now in a nine-team district. And yes, there are a few other huge districts scattered hither and yon. But the UIL’s job is not to cater to one or two groups, but to do what is the most fair for everyone. I feel as if, once again, they succeeded in that task, though nine-team districts aren’t ideal. -GT

4) I think Southlake Carroll proved to everyone near the turn of the century that 4A-turned-5A programs were more than capable of being competitive in their first year in their new digs. Programs like Cibolo Steele and Denton Guyer only hammered the point home. But 2012 may give us yet another new-look DII title game in Class 5A, as Lake Travis looks like a good bet to reach a sixth-straight state title game. We’ve talked about the Cavs a lot recently, so we’ll put them on hold for the time being. But the other half of the bracket could be intriguing, too — though Katy looks locked into a DII destiny and will be favored to reach a state semi, you have to keep an eye on fresh-faced 5A Manvel, who played into the 4A DII state finals in 2011. If there’s one thing the young Mavs offer, it’s size — they’re huge in the trenches, and there’s enough talent left over from last season’s run to make it two shots at a crown in a row. Seems hard to imagine right now, sure; but it was a shock when Guyer and Steele played for a 2010 trophy, too. Anything is possible. –TS

5) As I mentioned before, we’ll dive head-first into all things recruiting next week, but there is one recruiting class that sparked my interest more than anyone on National Signing Day: the Houston Cougars. One would expect the Coogs to have perhaps a down recruiting year, what with losing head coach Kevin Sumlin to Texas A&M and promoting assistant Tony Levine to head coach. But instead of falling back to the pack…Houston made huge strides on Signing Day. The big coup for Levine and company was convincing California WR Deontay Greenberry to spurn his longtime verbal commitment to Notre Dame to instead come play in Houston; that’s an impact move that could have longstanding benefits for the Houston program. But though Greenberry’s the big catch, the class as a whole is awful impressive as well: Lufkin DL Tomme Mark, Spring Dekaney DB Jarrett Irving, Edna OL Mac Long and Diboll RB Terrence Taylor, among others, are worth getting excited about in Houston. And considering the University of Houston’s students also voted in support of a fee to help pay for a new football stadium, it’s hard to imagine anyone’s having a better week than Tony Levine. --GT