OMG! I'm defending June Jones....I think

[Big Easy Pony]

Get the best players available.
Period.

[Mitch McConnell]

Regarding Texas, perhaps the coaching staff is still confronting some barriers -- as a whole -- and back-to-back bowl appearances still doesn't lend itself to getting the program in serious contention for the top players.

Again, I have absolutely no problem with them going into California because there are a ton of good players there, June appears to have a lot of contacts there, the California kids only see SMU's recent success and are intrigued and don't know the history about how much the program was a dust bowl since 1989. That might be easier to sell to them.

There could be more to overcome in Texas than we believe. I don't know. And the consistency of the actions in terms of wins, bowl games will connect with the Texas kids better.

And the other thing is that the Texas recruiting may only turn when the Mustangs knock off TCU or A&M or something to that effect. One wonders had this program defeated UCF in the CUSA title game how much of a difference that would have made.

Just throwing that out there.

[ponyinNC]

Big-time Texas recruits will not be available to us until we start winning. There are just too many other options for these Texas kids, and too long of a history of losing at SMU. And don't give me the usual TCU balogna, about how they only recruited Texas and how that has brought them to where they are now. It took them 10 years...and if I had to equate where we are compared to their run, I'd say we are like TCU was 6-7 years ago.

Thus, we are making inroads where our coaches have the most pull, and where SMU is sort of a newer option...a cooler option. Klemm owns Cali, and so we have a strong presence. JJ is a west coast guy, and his name seems to have a bit more cache there as well. reinbold has poached some great players in La. as well.

If people want to complain about the lack of Texas offers, I understand and agree that we should be out there more, getting on these kids. But by no means should we limit ourselves, especially when we lose most of the battles for the top kids in Texas to UT, TAMU, TT, TCU and Baylor...not to mention the national schools that recruit here.

LAST POINT- In Cali, we have routinely been beating out USC, Oregon, OSU, UCLA, and many other Pac 12 schools for top level talent (Levingston, Moreland, Lewis), and we are in a lot of current kids top 3 along with those traditional powerhouse schools. ASK YOURSELF- When was the last time that we were beating out UT, TAMU, OU, TT, TCU for Texas kids?? answer- 1980's.

[couch 'em]

Somehow I suspect we'll be recruiting more Texas players when Texas players aren't laughing at our offer. Cali kids don't know we are a joke. They only know June Jones is for real.

[PK]

Maybe it is the Hawaiian shirts scaring Texas kids off.

[Stallion]

a lot of excuse making on here for a Super-Star 2 Million Dollar, nationally visible Coach in his 4th year who didn't bother to hire Coaches with strong Texas ties. Is June Jones admitting he can't do what it took Franchione/Patterson 1/2 year to get rolling in Texas with their coaching staffs filled with experienced Texas recruiters. Despite what uninformed posters state TCU was beating some of the top BCS programs in the Southwest for many of its top recruits in Recruiting Year 1. I've posted on several occasions articles from 1998-2000 showing that TCU was bringing in top rated classes from the beginning filled with Texans. June is coming off 2 bowl games starting Year 4 and still can't turn the heads of Texas recruits. Everybody has excuses for not getting the job done in recruiting.

[ponyboy]

Ignoring where our recruits are coming from, are we not gettting the job done?

[Mexmustang]

It has nothing to do with states or geography. According to Rivals we have one assistant coach with 21 offers out (17 in California, 2 in Texas and 2 in Ohio). The rest of the staff has only 9 active offers out in Texas. Nine offers! That's almost half of what the big schools have in commitments! You can't reap what you don't sow! Even if June wants to personally approve every offer, you still need to contact, evaluate and sell the school before you can get the approvals to make an offer! That is less than two offers per position coach! Some coaches need to get motivated or get going! This isn't a plan to ignore Texas, this is simply lack of motivation.

[ponyboy]

How many non-Texas offers do the guys other than Klemm have out? How comfortable are you that these numbers reflect reality?

[Mexmustang]

We have: Florida 6 (Odum); LA 2 (coach not listed); Michigan1 (RB Line); and Nevada 1 (Klemm, need to bump his totals to 22). The problem with FL and LA of the three inteviews I read on Rivals (and to be fair I only read three), the kids all said that they "had yet to meet the coach and didn't know much about SMU". Essentially, these would be "blind" offers!s
So one coach has 22 including 2 from Texas, the rest of the staff 18, of which 9 are from Texas.

[Stallion]

I actually counted 25 offerees yesterday for Klemm when I went behind the numbers to check the stories on those recruits who don't have a "Recruited by "Coach listed in their profile page

[Mexmustang]

Do you have a summary of his offers by state?

[Stallion]

Yeah I got all 17 Californians, 1 Nevadan, 2 Ohio(the twins) and 5 Texans (Anthony, Fuller, Jenkins, Marrs, and Wheeler)-I thought he also offered that A&M Commitment Dennis Smith too but may be mistaken on him-that would be 26

[Stallion]

make that 26 or 27-Klemm recently offered the big kid Simon Goines

[Mexmustang]

We have 8 assistants, excluding Mason. So one coach has 27 offers out, 5 in Texas, 3 net (2 committed to other schools); the rest, the other seven, have 16 offers out, 7 in Texas, 5 net (2 have committed to other schools). Basically we have only 8 active Texas offers outstanding, Klemm has 3 and the rest 5! The numbers are worse than I thought! The others have less than 1 Texas offer per coach.