In the nation's hottest recruiting border war, Oklahoma snatched the cream of the high school crop from Texas
By most standards Mack Brown had a signing day worthy of a champagne toast. By 9 a.m. on Feb. 4 the fax machine in the Texas coach's office was spitting out a steady stream of high school players' official commitments. An hour later, as the last scrawled signature arrived, a healthy 19 of the 24 recruits who'd made official visits to Austin had pledged allegiance to the Longhorns. But that day Brown fielded as many questions about the in-state players who had slipped away to archrival Oklahoma as about his new class. "The first thing you have to say is that OU runs a great program," Brown said. "Some of the good players, especially in the northern part of the state, are gonna go up to Oklahoma."
Make that the best players, this year. While co-national champions USC and LSU topped the major recruiting experts' rankings, the most decisive victory--for control of talent-rich Texas--was scored by Oklahoma. In 1999, a year after he arrived in Austin, Texas coach Mack Brown hauled in the country's best recruiting class, studded with the state's best talent, including Cory Redding, now of the Detroit Lions. In each of the next three years the Longhorns signed the consensus top Texas senior and ranked among the top five recruiting classes nationwide. But this year, on the heels of the Longhorns' fourth straight loss to Oklahoma, a 65-13 rout in October, Brown watched the state's two best prospects head across the border: Palestine High tailback Adrian Peterson, who has drawn comparisons with Eric Dickerson, and Grand Prairie High quarterback Rhett Bomar. "Oklahoma pulled a lot of great high school players out of Texas back in the '70s," says Jerry Bomar, Rhett's father and high school coach, "but the talk around here is that this has to be the first time the Sooners stole the state's top running back and top passer."
Texas did its best to land the two. Brown and his assistants started sending letters to Bomar during his sophomore year, after he had attended a football camp in Austin, and they called his house at midnight last May 1, the first day coaches were allowed to telephone '04 recruits. In talks with Bomar, who has a 4.3 GPA, Brown stressed the vast business connections of Texas alums. "They played the Texas card quite a bit," says Jerry, a former safety at Texas Tech. "At one point Brown said, 'C'mon, Rhett. You even have a Southern name, a Texas name. Don't turn your back on your home state.'" In one meeting with the Longhorns' coach, says Rhett, Brown "wouldn't stop hugging me. He was such a nice guy. But in the end that stuff didn't make too much of a difference."
If Brown's personal touch didn't win over the nation's top quarterback and his father, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops's focus on football did. After a visit to Grand Prairie last spring, Stoops and three assistants talked strategy with Jerry and his staff for hours. In a phone call Stoops, who coached Heisman-winning quarterback Jason White last season and runner-up Josh Heupel in 2000, told Rhett he could be the next Sooner in line for the trophy. Throughout the recruiting process Stoops scoffed at the notion that players were under any obligation to play in their home state. "Bob had a great line," Jerry recalls. "'What's going to happen down the road when you're drafted to play for New England?'"
The argument to stay home didn't resonate with Peterson either. Two days after a Texan named Russell Norton bought a full-page ad in the Feb. 2 edition of the Palestine Herald-Press encouraging Peterson to remain in his home state, the nation's No. 1 tailback signed with the Sooners. "OU keeps beating them," Peterson told The Dallas Morning News. "That's why players want to go there."
Brown did bring in enough talent--all from Texas--to finish with the No. 2 recruiting class in the Big 12, and he rationalized the loss of the state's top two players. "We have a sophomore quarterback [Vince Young] set to start and a starting senior running back [Cedric Benson] returning, and I'm sure that made a difference," says Brown. "As Lou Holtz once said, 'You've got to worry about the players you do get, not the players you don't get.' I'm worried about getting better in spring practice and getting Texas its first national title since the 1970s."
That might be what's needed to shut the door on Oklahoma recruiters. "Mack Brown has been touted as a recruiting giant recently, but what does he have to show for it?" says Jerry Bomar. "Stoops had a national champion in 2000 and one of the top teams in the country ever since. OU's proof is in the pudding."
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