ESPN: Eyes on Texas prospects

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Football bigger, but that doesn't mean players from Texas more likely to succeed

Monday, January 30, 2012
Eyes on Texas prospects
By Mitch Sherman
ESPN RecruitingNation

Mario Edwards, a ferocious, gravity-defying defensive end, and Johnathan Gray, a record-setting, workhorse running back, on Wednesday make official their college decisions.

Edwards plans to sign with Florida State, Gray with Texas.

They are the best of the best, Nos. 1 and 2 in the ESPNU 150, seemingly destined for stardom at the college level and beyond.

Johnathan Gray, the nation's No. 2 prospect and top running back, says where you come from doesn't matter. It's who is willing to put the work in to succeed that is the key.
Edwards and Gray grew into these uber-prospects as products of the same Texas culture -- Edwards from Denton's Billy Ryan High School north of Dallas and Gray from Aledo High west of Fort Worth.

The football environment across their home state fosters such growth of its native sons. The sport, in particular at the high school level, impacts the lives of Texans in ways that outsiders do not -- cannot -- comprehend.

"It reminds me of a religion," said Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville, who spent just one of his more than 40 years playing and coaching football in Texas before 2010. "The allegiances to the high schools are just unbelievable."

New-age stadiums that seat 10,000 or more dot the Texas landscape like pump jacks above the oil fields. Crowds of 30,000 for neutral-site, rivalry games gather regularly.

Football is year-round, from the state finals at Cowboys Stadium in December to spring practice and the state-sanctioned 7-on-7 championships in July. Most high school programs mirror the big colleges in how they structure activity, and many of the high school coaching staffs grow larger than their college counterparts, limited to nine assistants by the NCAA.

In Texas, ultimately, it's not about winning. It's not about the competition. It's not about earning a college scholarship.

It's about fitting among the culture, said Tony Heath, coach at 2010 5A champion Pearland High School, south of Houston.

"When we play, it's more than football," said Heath, who came to Pearland in 1997 and has made 12 straight playoff appearances at a school that averaged one win per year in the six seasons before his arrival. "It's the whole atmosphere.

"The core is football. Kids want to be a part of this program, because they don't want to be known as the one who didn't get the job done."

Last season, 340 boys played football at Pearland. Even at a school once accustomed to disappointment, the appetite for football is insatiable.

It's no wonder, then, that Texas turns out prospects every year like Edwards and Gray.

"People play harder in Texas," said TCU-bound linebacker Devonte Fields, the No. 73-rated prospect nationally out of Arlington's James Martin High School.

This, though, is unexpected: When it comes to elite recruits, throw out your conceptions about the importance of learning the game in a football hotbed.

http://espn.go.com/espn/print?id=7516563&type=story