 
Mack Brown Signing Day press conference transcript
General comments: This is always a fun and exciting day because you are talking about your future. At one point we even compared it to new children in the family and obviously there are some mothers who wouldn’t think that way, but this is an extended part of our family. Your future is based not only who you recruit, the character of the guys you recruit, guys that can stay in school and make sure they can improve, but how much they pull together as a team and how well we do coaching them between the start and the finish. It is obvious that today's group is one of the best groups in the country based on who they are against high school competition. The true evaluation of this group will be how this class does over a four or five-year period and how much they improve and how they compete with the best college teams across the country and that is where it gets a little bit confusing sometimes for high school programs. There were 25 signees today and it's really an accumulation of two years of work because now you are starting to look at these guys in their sophomore year. You watch them through their sophomore year and their junior year and a lot of these guys were committed last year in this month and you have to hang with them for a year. We ended up bringing 28 guys to campus for official visits. All 28 committed, three changed their mind and 25 stuck with us. One of those 25 guys, Matt Nader, had the medical incident with his heart and had the mechanism put in his heart for security in the future and will not be able to play. We thought at the time that he would count in our scholarship numbers, but since that time we have learned that he will not. So we wanted Matt to sign today, we wanted Matt to be part of our program today. He will come to Texas and he will help us coach as a student coach over the next four or five years and be on scholarship like the other teammates that he would have played with. We are still really excited about him and want to make sure that he understands that he can still be a big help to our program and our just glad that he is alive. Things have changed a lot with early commitments. It is different. It is more difficult to evaluate than at times in the past when you could see them in spring practice and you could watch the guys at summer camp. You just had more time. The high school coaches' evaluation and trust are even more vital now than ever before because we have to trust that this guy is a guy we would like with his family, his character and his effort even in many cases before we get to spend a lot of time with them. We will have a number of juniors coming in this weekend and we try to protect signing day for our seniors. We would rather not talk about juniors before these guys have a chance to sign because this is their day. We would rather keep this as their day for the future as much as we possibly can. Early admits are different. We just had a team meeting at 2 p.m. downstairs and six of our 25 guys are already in school. They are in the off-season program and our working hard with our team. All of them had their families with them today and sat them down and had a mock signing in front of the team and we videotaped it. Five sets of parents of the six young men were here. Andre Jones' family could not be here so Mike Tolleson stood in as an extended family member for him. We were able to sign all of those guys downstairs and the team hooped and hollered for them and that was really unique for them. Then we showed the highlights of the entire signing class to the team. Then we showed some shots of Tony Dungy's press conference after the super bowl talking about team and integrity and playing together as a group and how it may not be the most talented team they have ever had at Indianapolis, but it was sure the best team and where this team needs to continue to build. Then we had Cory Redding finish it talking about character and what he learned at Texas and the things that he has learned in the NFL. He answered a number of questions for our guys. Tomorrow our coaches will be in Dallas and Houston; I'll be here, a coach will be in San Antonio taking the highlight film of the 25 guys and showing them at booster lunches and talking to the groups about all of these young guys and answering their questions. Then on Sunday, a number of young guys will come in for our first junior day and get ready to start working more personally on next year's recruiting class. We've studied hard with the juniors; we've gotten all the transcripts in of the young guys that will be here Sunday. We've watched film on 97 or 98 percent of those guys, so we feel we're in a great position to start moving forward and our team is working really hard in our off-season program at six in the morning. The guys have a great attitude, no one has missed, they're working hard and Coach Mac Duff is learning more about his guys. We're continuing to talk about personnel changes that are potential changes for spring and you guys all got some rumors for me, but we haven't gotten that far yet so we'll talk about that more as the weeks go through, but we haven't made any decisions to change a guy in his position as of right now. How has the attention from the National Championship affected things? You never know for sure, obviously the attention you get that month is priceless; you're on TV; you're in the newspaper everyday; you're on the Internet everyday, so the sitting and watching the month leading up to Florida-Ohio State this year you can see what an impact it has because you're in those homes at a time when nobody else can be in there. So it probably had a lot to do with it, but I think more than anything else, we've been here nine years, these 17-year-old guys were in middle school or something around there. They're really young and they've seen us win each year, and I look at more prospects now, linebackers wearing number 11 and running backs wearing 34, defensive backs wearing 7, so a lot of our great players have had such an influence on these young people's lives because we've been to a bowl each year and we've won each year and the National Championship being apart of that, but even the last six years we've won 10-plus games so if you take even through their high school and junior high years, we've been very successful. We think it's more of that we've won over the time of their sports life, that they've been watching and they had interest in Texas for that reason. Will early enrollees have a better opportunity at early playing time? It's always hard to say because you never know anymore who will be too heavy, who will be homesick, who will respond better to the pressure of two-a-days. It usually takes until mid-season. We should know a lot more about these six players this spring and then this summer we hear from the kids more, but we can't really have a good indicator of what's going to happen. Our guys are already doing some 7-on-7 by themselves at this point, they've never done that this early and it's probably Colt (McCoy) and the receivers getting them out there. So we have some indications during the summer when the guys come and talk to us, but I would think that there would be more guys from this class playing than most, this class is probably more like the one in 2002 than some others that we've had. I was asked a few minutes ago if this is the best class or the impact players in this group and who in this group or what position in this group would have a better chance to play earlier than others. Really and truly at our place we need to win 10-plus games every year and we need to be playing for a chance at the end every year, and to do that, you have got to have solid recruiting classes every year. Your rating may be different to the numbers that you sign, because I still think that there is a better way, and I think we're doing this better now, but if there's a way for people to rate each player and rate him as a person instead of an entire class with numbers. If someone signs 30 people that class is going to be higher ranked than someone that signs 16, and it may not be as good of a class. So I'm not sure that our ratings are fool proof, in fact I'm sure they're not, but if you look at the impact of each player on your squad, we have to bring in really good players each year. We had more injuries this year than ever before and because we have really good players and good depth, we were able to survive it. In our first year, we couldn't have survived this year and had a winning season probably, so we can't afford to have a lesser recruiting year than really good each year to maintain what we're doing. What did you need in this class? When you go back and look at our philosophy in recruiting we try to replace our juniors and maybe our seniors. You would rather not have it where, and we do not take junior college players, so you would rather have it where a freshman would not be forced to start in the opening ball game if he's not ready because that's probably not fair to him or your team, but you would rather him grow in and earn the right to have that position even if it's mid-season or throughout. So what we try to do in the beginning is, Bruce Chambers, our staff, and I sit and look very closely at the upperclassman and who's leaving. For instance, we are losing three defensive linemen this year and then Roy Miller next year. So we're losing the four defensive linemen who have really played a lot for us over the next two years. We're losing three linebackers over the next two years, so we need linebackers for next year because we have some young ones at this point and we only signed one this year. We lost five offensive linemen or seven I guess over the last two years that played a lot so we need young offensive lineman coming in, and usually you can find offensive linemen in our state, you can usually find the skill guys, but the very difficult positions for us interestingly enough have been linebackers, defensive line, and defensive ends since we've been here, and we'll continue to look for those as we go through, and we will possibly have to look more out of state than we have some too. All of these kids but one are from the state of Texas, two of the three kids that de-committed were out of the state of Texas, but we know we have the best high school football in the county, we love our coaches, but we also need to do a better job if we can't find the perfect fit for us in-state of going out of state and making sure we can get the national guy that wants to come. Does Texas dominate in-state recruiting? Well, I would first say absolutely not, that’s not true. There are 350 guys on the average, 325 to 350 that sign division 1-A football scholarships out of the state of Texas every year. All we can do is take 18 to 25 that we fill fit our program or needs, we don't even know that those are the best 18 to 25 guys, and they may not be the best for all the other programs or to fit their needs, but they may be the best ones that we feel like that fit in Austin with us and for our needs. So number one when there are 350, nobody is going to own it because there's going to be 325 sign with someone else that we play against every year and that’s the good and the bad of this program. Now we're being asked to evaluate those kids in some cases before we meet them, so evaluation is so very difficult, there may be a hundred that are all good enough to play and if you get 25 of those 100 there are still 75 out there that you're playing against. The greatest thing about this state is that it is full of really good, well-coached, passionate football players. The negative thing about this state is that you are only going to take a few of them and you're going to be playing against the rest of them and most of them are mad at you for not taking them. That’s the public relations with the high school coaches and the families, letting people understand you're good enough, you're approved, we would take you, we just don't have enough numbers. It's not about you, it's about where we are with our program or we've got too many at this position, it’s just not a year where we can take that many guys. A&M will always have good players, Tech will always have good players, the Tech recruiting is not talked about as much as ours, or A&M's, or Oklahoma's, but every year, I look out there and their receivers look as good as anybody's in the country and they have a big and strong offensive line, and they can run, and I always say, 'Where did they get these guys?' No one ever talks about them and they look great. And Miami used to be that way, nobody ever heard about them and recruiting, but they always had great players. I really feel like recruiting is another season, we're a team that gets a lot of publicity in recruiting, we're a team that in some cases if we commit a guy he'll move up on the recruiting charts, which probably isn't fair to us or him in some cases, but I don't think that we own anybody. The thing we have done, is we've been here longer than all of the other programs, we've been here as a staff longer than anyone else in the Big 12 so we have really good continuity right now with our coaches in this state, we have been successful and a lot of our coaches have not changed so they have really good relationships. What's the biggest benefit with the early enrollees? It's interesting because we have six this year and four last year. We asked all six in separate rooms, 'Why did you come early?' because we didn't ask them to and there are some positive and concerns about it, but all six said when you make a decision of this magnitude, it changes your life and we're ready to go with that change right now because we're ready to be Texas student-athletes on the football team. So why not go because we can? They felt like it motivated them to do better in school and finish more rapidly, and thirdly, they felt that this would be more like the fall with the routine of school and practice and getting up early than it would be in the summer. So they wanted to get ahead with their academics, but also with their opportunity to play in the fall. All six came up with the same thoughts and all were good thoughts. It’s a thing that we feel like, unless you really want to do it, it doesn't work. A coach can't make you do it because you'll miss track, you'll miss basketball, you'll miss something in your senior year of high school that you'll never get back. Now most of these guys will go back to their high school banquet, their high school prom, some even go back for graduation to be seen there and be around so there are goods and bads. I think that because people are so hungry to play and graduation rates are being talked about more and it's just an extra year of school I think we'll be seeing more guys trying to graduate early. Why is recruiting out of state a little more difficult? Number one, one is 35 miles from Gainesville and dad played there and uncle's an All-American there and a quarterback there, and they won the National Championship so you understand that. The other had a relationship with Butch Davis in Springdale, Ark. Butch was there all year and he could sell him on coming in as a split tight end and throw the ball to him, and we have a pretty good young tight end right now catching the ball, so both of those you understood. The thing we are getting right now is when we do go out of state people are so negative about us being primarily filled with student-athletes from the state of Texas that it’s harder for an out-of-state guy to make it here, but that’s not true because in most cases, the out of state guy that we've gotten is really good player. We can do a better job of managing that than we have, but to be honest there are so many good players here we don't look very hard out of state and that's a philosophy we have because we like players form the state of Texas, we know they love putting on that burnt orange jersey and that white hat with the longhorn on it. A lot of the guys that we've gotten from out of state have ties to us. If you go to Studdard and Sendlein and start looking at some of the out of state guys that came, but you've had Bo Scaife, Major Applewhite, and Chris Simms, there's a huge list of guys that have played really well that weren't from our state. We can go back and show guys that there is a lot of success from out-of-state guys -- Ricky Williams -- there are a lot of guys that played well. Would you rather not have this early of recruiting? Yes, we would rather not have it, when we first got here, what we were use to in the east was you would go to the school in the spring, you would talk to the counselors and coaches, the teachers, you would watch the young man in spring practice. Then you would usually see him in your summer camp and that would tell you how interested he was if he would come spend the day or three days with you. Then after that you had a pretty good feel after watching his junior film, watching him either on the basketball court or on the field in spring practice once or twice and then in a camp and got to meet him and spend some time with the family. I thought that was better for all of us because it let everybody get to know the deal better. It think what we’re going to see is probably more mistakes being made because people are going so early now, and we'll see more people with the potential to change their minds because they're going to make a decision without as much information as they use to have at the end of the summer. Does UT have a rule that they won't offer a guy until they meet him? We do and a large amount of the time we can stand by the rule, but sometimes it's been pressed a little bit about the last year or so. We have also this year really tried to keep the integrity for the seniors of today about them because this is the only time they will sign and signing day has been huge in the past for these seniors, so we would rather not be talking about juniors so they don't get their fair dues and all of a sudden no one is talking about their class, they're always talking about the future and we need to look at now too, and today is a really special day for us and we did not want offer to talk about junior before this day.
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