Cougar14.2

I didn't say kids from WOS couldn't play at the bigger schools, I said off this specific team versus the one we put on the field last year. I think Justin Thomas is the best db to come out of the area since I've been on this board, that's DT and Tony Brown included. He would probably get serious NFL attention if he was taller. When your own coach says "it looks like the circus came through and dropped them off" it's very hard to project those kids against a higher level of competition when the only time they were on the field with similar athletes in a bigger class they got roughed up.

At Dayton only the stud starters do get to touch the field. They had about 30 kids on the team and played about 20. The depth I'm taking about isn't from backups, it's the drop-off from your best defensive player or offensive player to your worst. Cedar Park doesn't have a bunch of big time studs for 5A, but their drop-off from 1-11 on both sides of the ball is minimal even when compared to teams with more sought after individual talent. With Dayton, as well as other teams from around here, that difference could be drastic. That's the depth I'm speaking of, not how good the backup center is.

He would have to play over one of these kids, which I'm sure he wouldn't. Taylor Perry - #36 CB in the country - [Hidden Content] Joseph Pickney - 21-5A defensive MVP - [Hidden Content] * Pickney had a different set of circumstances, otherwise he would probably be rated higher than Perry. He was our best db this year but Taylor will be the one that ends up a four star. My opinion doesn't matter to the guys handing out schollys though, which reverts back to what I was saying about Phillips or Morris.

Well, Crosby had three players playing in bowl games this season. Merka played for TCU, Singleton was playing Utah and Donnie Starks was starting for K-State. Singleton and Starks were starting by the end of the season and Merka played mostly in double TE sets but did get in the endzone. Austin Walter rushed for about 500 yards this year as frosh for Rice which included a 100 game in his first NCAA appearance. Clayton Callicutt set San Angelo's all-time sack record and was named to the little All-America team, he'll have an opportunity to play in the NFL this upcoming season. Aaron Brown is in JUCO this year but will probably be one of the more sought after dbs in the ranks once it's time to transfer. We have other kids doing work too but most of the 30 we signed over the last three years are still young and breaking into their roles.

His page was put up recently with the majority of the other 2018's with no rankings yet. The reason I specifically named Dallas is because as highly thought of as he is in the area Phillips is still the only kid that came in with any notoriety on the recruiting scene.

I wasn't giving you my personal opinion, I was going off what the recruiters think. We all have our opinions, the people that get paid for their non-biased opinions think Phillips was the best for whatever reason. I watched the parts of the Foster game I could find and the entire Celina game, I wouldn't really say one stood out over the others but there's a reason Phillips has a 247 page and not even a player like Dallas does.

I actually think the reason the games have been close with Crosby is because of the defense, nobody has been calling defenses against Crosby longer than Hancock. Dayton probably has 7 takeaways from Crosby over the last three games, including a pick 6. I think the overall problem with Dayton's defense against other teams is the lack of depth and having to play kids both ways which eventually wears them down on this level. Even their young studs played heavy minutes both ways on the freshman team.

All I said was name one that would have and who he was moving out? Malick Phillips is probably the only player that could have moved one of our kids at db and I'm not sure at probably 5-8/160lbs even he had a real chance. All I said was name one, any one. When Grace tore his ACL, Craig Williams who's a 5star running back and the #3 APB in the country, took over the job. When I say seen the field, I mean start, not come in during stat padding time. Elite players are elite at their level most of the time, otherwise they would get recruited. Once more I ask, which elite WOS player would've moved a Crosby kid off of his job? When you're talking about a two class jump the statement I made was far from ridiculous. If you look at it a different way, CE King probably had only one kid that could start for North Shore for example. That's with their qb going to Tulane and their running back going to A&M. There is no fluff, the 4A-D2 title game probably didn't have one FBS player in it. Just one class up in the 4A-D1 title game La Vega had four by themselves, Argyle had one of the better tight ends in the country that signed with Clemson. The numbers increase as the classes rise. Foster beat King by 14 in the second round a couple of weeks after we beat them by almost 40, which elite players from WOS would start on the team they lost to by 28? My statement wasn't ridiculous at all when it's put in context, and that's in reference to a team I've repeatedly said doesn't play by the same rules due to their talent level comparable to their classification.

21 of the 22 kids that played on the semi-final team a couple of years ago have signed college scholarships. When you play 5A it's nice to have a bunch of studs, if you look at a team like Ridge Point's roster which we played in the second round with guys like Mustafa Muhummad, Terry Petry, Shyler Slaton(best cover guy I saw all year), Travis Bruffy, BJ Rainford, etc. I could go on but I think you get my drift. Those studs are normal teams when you get out of bi-district from this area. The majority of the good teams in Fort Bend county have just as much or more talent than Crosby, same for the Brazoria teams like Angleton and Manvel. I ask you though, which skill players would start? Remember our 5-star running back didn't even start before our three star tore his acl against Angleton in the first quarter. One receiver might be the best in the state, the other is a 6-3 three star with ridiculous hops, who already holds multiple offers. The other receiver is a stud that coach Babin said was the best back he saw all year, and that was with Williams having like three carries for about 140 on them in the first round. If you want to get in to dbs we have Tay'lor Perry who will probably get his 4th star after this Spring, Joseph Pickney was the 21-5A defensive MVP and signed with UTEP, probably would've had more opportunities with different circumstances. It's not being cocky, I'm just stating my opinion off the players I saw against Celina. Now I'm asking you who definitely would?

Lol, I've never disappeared. No we don't play east of the Trinity and I separate the two because of the more progressive approach at building programs teams over here take. If you ask anybody outside of the GT to name you a city in southeast Texas, Houston is the first one they would name. You ask somebody from Dallas or Austin where Beaumont is and the majority will tell you east Texas. Fact of the matter is that for now Crosby is in the SETX sports coverage area and we have the best wr core, none of your pyp crew would have even touched the field for us last year. You probably should've worded the question different to just include the Golden Triangle, that way you could also exclude teams like Newton and Jasper who are even further away than Crosby.

I think Crosby will be in the mix for one of the best 5A receiving cores in all of Texas. IMO Netherly is no worse than the third best receiver in the state and could potentially be the top ranked receiver in the state after Spring evaluations. If I'm not mistaken he holds more reported offers than any other receiver in Texas to this point. Jordan Hill, who plays opposite Netherly, also has multiple FBS offers and should pick up even more during the Spring. No doubt Netherly and Hill will have the most offers between them as far as SETX receiving cores go. We also have two more receivers who should get serious looks and will be college players. If everything shakes out Crosby could have two FBS kids on the outside and two FCS players on the inside. Pretty solid for 5A.

1. PAM - Biggest school with the best players. With addition of one of Crosby's coaches to their staff I think they'll backstroke through most of the district schedule, may have an off night and lose once though. 2. Nederland - For whatever reason y'all can't beat them over there. 3. Central - Second best athletes behind PAM, an efficient offense might have them district runner-up. 4. Ozen/PNG - Winner of this one probably gets 4th place. May come down to who's the healthiest when these two play. I think Suggs may have a slight coaching advantage over Fairclothe with even teams.

1. Crosby - 22-2 the last three years in district play. Only two losses have come to schools that are now 6A. Those two losses also happen to be Crosby's only two regular season losses the last three seasons. 2. Kingwood Park - Nasty on the underclass levels last year. Will be the second year in coach Maple's system. Could be a dangerous squad beyond district if they can figure out a way to stop people. 3. Dayton - I'm not very high on the Nations hire but that's just IMO. For the third year in a row Dayton will have to replace almost all of their offensive production. They have some studs coming up but very little depth, if the freshman qb from last year is forced to start on varsity they could be in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in a long time. 4. Porter - Just hired KP's old coach, Jim Holley. Porter has the same level of athletes and similar enrollment to KP. Holley's conservative, power running and defensive scheme could have Porter as one of the district's toughest outs by the end of the season. 5. Barbers Hill - All new everything . . . except athletes. I think they'll be improved but I think they'll find themselves in a lot of shootouts which they probably won't be equipped to handle yet. I think switching to the spread is a double edged sword for BH, if they make any noise this year it'll be due to a weak district and some excellent coaching moves. 6. Humble - I think their athletes alone win them four games, but their coaches cancel it out by losing them four games. Very frustrating to watch a team with the plethora of athletes Humble has not be able to get it together. Looks like for the third straight year it'll be "Terio left, Terio right". 7. New Caney - Now that all but one of their free agents graduated, Marte Allison, I expect them to fall back to being the New Caney of old. I put New Caney down here because I think last year was due more to the influx of transfers rather than it being the genesis of a solid program. 8/9. Caney Creek/Splendora - I don't expect either team to win more than one district game and that will come against each other. Caney Creek will be the largest school in 21-5A while Splendora will be the smallest by nearly 500 kids. 21-5A may need a refresher in mercy rules with these two team coming off an 0-13 combined record in district play last year, Caney Creek went winless last year at 0-10.

I don't think you can go with the overall number of athletes on a team. You have to look at their athlete/talent level comparable to the classification. PAM was at best 5th talent-wise in 21-6A this past year and the results showed. I bet they look different in 5A next year when they're in the proper class. Same for Central, they're talented but if you would've moved them one district over to 21-5A they probably come in 4th athlete-wise. It would be pretty similar to Crosby with their athletes moving into the new district with Manvel, Texas City, Shadow Creek, Elkins and Marshall. I agree the good coaches can get more out of the good athletes they're given though.

Kennedale also has a 300+lb defensive tackle who would probably be one of the tops in the state at his position if he was a couple of inches taller, he's pretty much unblockable on the 4A level and I believe he was the defensive MVP of their district. They also have a 6-3/6-4 defensive end who I would compare to little lighter version of A&M signee, Alton Robinson out of Converse Judson. I remember when I looked at Argyle's path that Kennedale also had another sophomore that also went about 300lbs on the defensive line. They lost both of their backs who combined for over 4,200 rushing yards last year but I'm pretty sure they have a couple of other kids they can plug in to rush for 1,500-2,000 yards apiece in that offense they run. They just can't get past Argyle right now.

Lol, don't get butt-hurt man. You're just delving into an area you know nothing about. That's clear when your response has dip to that of a petulant child. All kids have a chance, some are just born with inherently better odds than others. This is a football website so once again I'll tell you I'm not talking about non-athletes. Poor life choices are minimized through athletics, poor life skills are rectified through discipline learned in sports, "quitting on life" as you put it becomes less of an option when you have teammates counting on you. That character you spoke of can be improved by deciding if you want to get up and go to Summer workouts or not put forth the effort and be lazy. It's clear you don't get what I'm saying and that's fine, that's what makes us different. One last thing, about the "gasbag" comment. I just pm'd you my personal cell phone number so that we can meet up and we can find out who's just blowing hot air or are really about it.

IMO if you have a good superintendent in place like Crosby does with Dr. Moore, he figures out a way to work around people like my dad who will vote "no" on every bond but will gladly buy a ticket and spend $20 more at the merchandise area every Friday night once he gets in the stadium. I think the facilities should reflect the direction the community is heading, and sadly they do sometime in SETX.

The staff definitely has a hand in getting him where he's trying to go, I think Crosby does it the right way. I even got a text from one of his coaches about that specific issue last week. To a man though, I would tell you he would be a better player at his age if we lived 10 miles down the road in North Shore no matter who the coach was or what the facilities looked like. However, when we went to the opening of the stadium and watched the fireworks and the parachute guy fly in he looked over and said "I can't wait to score touchdowns in this stadium". He even mentioned watching himself run on the replay screen like the pros do, so I think the bells and whistles do give him motivation. As far as keeping up with the Jones' and the overspending, I fully agree with that. I haven't directly heard anything around town but I'm willing to bet you a paycheck there's someone from Crosby looking into what it would cost to put up the same type of facility BH just built. If you have to leverage yourself to keep up then it's not worth it, but you dang well better see what it cost to keep from falling behind too.

Who said anything about spending 20 million for a dozen kids to get scholarships? All we did was pay a coach and signed 40. Crosby used to have the crappiest stadium in the district. Now that we have a coaching staff in place and renovated the stadium so that more people can attend, the football program alone probably brought in $50,000+ per Friday night. So spending money on athletics grossed Crosby ISD a quarter million dollars in the first semester alone, and I would imagine that's on the low end. So the district is getting a return on it's investment. That's just in addition to the dozens of kids we've signed across the board in all sport recently. I did happen to work with a couple of guys that went to school on the GI bill though. One happens to be from Silsbee too. Every so often he would take off to go get shrapnel removed from his head as it came to the surface, it was still there from when his Hummer was hit by an IED and split in half with the other three occupants dying on scene. My other buddy is somewhat permanently crippled from an accident where his parachute didn't fully open on a training exercise and he did what he called a "burn in(?)" from 800 feet. It's not about always about the free part of it, it's the exposure part that kids might miss an opportunity on. Nobody is calling an average to below average student and begging them to come visit their university because it unlikely they'll even be admitted. However, schools will line up to fly that average to below average "student-athlete" to their campus and get them admitted to school if they can help them win. The average to below average student probably never goes to college and even less likely to graduate if they do. The exposure can change the course for some kids, it can be generation-altering for others that normally wouldn't look at that as an option like my son.

I think the SETX area is falling behind, but I think it's due more to the contraction/stagnation of the entire area in general. It's behind in enrollment, compensation, imagination, facilities and infrastructure as a whole. You can go to south and west Texas and find the exact same issues though. Other than the HISD schools I think the Houston area gets it as far as what it takes to compete. New Caney just built Texan Drive, Katy is building another monster, BH just built a college level indoor facility, Cy-Fair dropped about 60 mil on the Berry Center and even a place like Crosby there was a bond just passed that allocated multi-millions for athletic facilities/improvements. I think that was even after Crosby already spent about a million replacing the old turf with a new rug. Our problem down here is that we're heavy on single high school ISD's. When you have 30k+ students like Mansfield ISD or 50k+ students like Plano ISD then you have a huge tax base to fund a single stadium and more money for individual facilities on campus. Even an inner-city school like Galena Park, which is in the district with North Shore, has a nice facility behind their school where the players can walk straight out of the field house to a field turf practice field. That's because they have over 22k students in the district and a relatively low income, but huge tax base and therefore have nice facilities for a two high school district. At times the mentality in SETX is that "we did it this way in '76, so we can do it again the same way". Until the thinking down here becomes more progressive like that of the Dallas, Austin and Houston area suburbs SETX will be bringing up the rear. With all that being said though, I think WOS and North Shore showed you there's no replacement for a community producing great athletes.

"SOME" kids "ONLY" way, which is totally correct. You stretched it to an all-inclusive statement to cover "non-athletic" kids which plays more towards the soapbox rhetoric you're trying to get across. If they're "non-athletic" then they're not in the conversation and what you said is a moot/duh point. What about the kid like my son who's already 6'/180lbs and is the fastest kid in Crosby's freshman class though? He's from a middle class family and I'm telling you from the horse's mouth that the "ONLY" way he's making it "out" of Crosby is on the gridiron. He knows he's going to make $100k+ rather he steps foot on a college campus or not as long as he doesn't get into any trouble. It's not like that for all kids but for "SOME" it is. About 40% of middle class kids who start college don't finish anyway, however, about 80% of athletes that receive division one scholarships do. So looking at it that way your kid has a better shot at making it "out" if he has a jump-shot or a fast 40. How many more stats/facts would you like me to gather before I challenge you? I can specifically get the "inner-city" type data OzensFinest spoke about and post it but you would look dumb for even questioning it.

He didn't say their success can only be predicted on athletics. He stated his opinion and you stretched it. I have a bachelor's degree in economics with a real estate minor, my wife has a bachelor's in business with an MBA. We have three sons who we push academics on, two get it and one doesn't. I told the one that doesn't get it that the only way he was going to college is if he gets a football scholarship because I'm not paying. I have to press him just to be average. That's how its always been with him. Last night my youngest son wanted me to quiz him on adding two digit numbers that he learned in school yesterday. When I asked him to explain how you get the sums his explanation kind of shocked me. For my own amusement I asked him to apply those same principles to bigger numbers, after learning 10's that day he was adding four digit numbers in his head rather quickly for a first grader. He can also spell his 10 year old brother's advanced spelling words. He can make it out solely on academics, my oldest one can't. So I ask you, as a parent do I stress "academic achievement" to him or try to develop his athletic skills which will be more immediately important in achieving his goals? It's an extremely difficult reality to understand if you haven't experienced it first hand . . . hundreds of times. I wonder how many of the 40+ kids that Crosby has signed the last four years would have gone to college had they not been offered a scholarship?

Come on man, what player did A&M beat out Texas for when Texas was rolling. None of the Aggie stars were offered by Texas, not Johnny, not Von, not McNeal. I think maybe Micheal and Joeckel were the only ones that were offered and didn't come. Read up on Chis Daniels flip from OU and why he chose Texas, very similar to comments made a while ago by Clarence McKinney on why Sumlin connected with kids due to being from the South. Even further, the kids A&M was able to get in those classes you're talking about were never able to a conference title in the lowly Big 12. You usually tuck tail and run because you can't win, A&M didn't and they subsequently left. No other way to really look at it, saying it was a better move for monetary reasons is really admitting to not wanting to be in Texas' shadow. If A&M was the brand they think they are then they should've been able to build a cash cow like Texas has, but they couldn't. Now they're stuck in perpetual mediocrity in the SEC. Fact of the matter is A&M isn't going to get better players than the state school in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. You can definitely get a better class here or there, but take a look over in Baton Rouge. Les Miles was/is in the same situation as Sumlin and may have just signed his best class ever at LSU going off player averages. All the top prospects A&M wanted went to Ole Miss, including Lodge last year. All that while they ALREADY have better players and coaching than A&M. It's a dim reality. As far as Texas fans being happy, I think it's a given. Watching 59-0 against 'Bama, not being able to move the ball on Auburn, getting steamrolled by LSU backs, playing directional schools all are reality now. The difference in Texas, if you listen to the recruits like Cuffee, is that they all grew up watching Texas dominate and know it can be done again. They've never seen that from A&M, the selling point in College Station is that you get to play in the SEC and we have some nice gadgets. That's over now, kids are back to going where they feel like they have the best shot at winning.

What's interesting is that A&M is placing their faith in two qbs who are no longer at their past Big 12 schools because they couldn't earn a job or were beat out by younger players. I guess Knight and Hubanek weren't Big 12 good but they'll do for the SEC? Yet, of the three highest rated qbs A&M have ever landed, two transfer to the Big 12 and one goes to the AAC after experiencing College Station first hand. That has to be odd considering everyone wants to play in the SEC according to Aggy? What's even more weird is that although everyone wants to play in the SEC, all the top qbs from the state are committed to Big 12 schools. Beuchele and Ehlinger to Texas, Shawn Robinson to TCU and Kellen Mond to Baylor. I've said it many times on here, Kevin Sumlin made A&M a viable option for players that normally wouldn't consider College Station. I don't care if you do get Tom Herman to come coach, him or any other guy won't be able to recruit at the level that Sumlin is. Coaching may be a different story, but if you think running Sumlin out of town is going to get you more wins and better recruits I think you're sadly mistaken. When your own players use words like "gadgets" and "glitz" to describe your program you can almost bet there's no real substance, which I think everybody beside A&M fans saw when they tucked tail and left the Big 12.

I'll put it like this. Your FCS players are usually FBS players that are missing something. Height, weight, speed, grades, etc. I'm not really sure Alec is missing anything, his film just hasn't made the rounds yet. I think he's every bit as good as Collin Wilder or Travis Whillock from Katy who had 22 reported D1 offers between them.