On Christmas Day, The New York Times published an excellent story about the recruitment of Jamarkus McFarland, a high school defensive lineman from Texas. The story gave a "behind the scenes" look at the college football recruiting process, and focused on the battle between OU and Texas for the services of the Top 100 five star super recruit who is the current focus of most of James Hale's wet dreams.
The best of part of the article was where Jamarkus described some of activities involved in his recruitment, and what took place during his official visits.
McFarland made four official visits during his recruitment "” to Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana State and Southern California.
He said he saw everything from flat-screen televisions in Texas Coach Mack Brown's bathrooms to L.S.U.'s recruiting hostesses sitting on the laps of prospects.
But the best summation of his experience might have come from a paper he wrote for his English class comparing Oklahoma and Texas. The paper, "Red River Rivals Recruit," includes a description of a wild party hosted by Longhorns fans at an upscale hotel in Dallas after the Oklahoma-Texas game on Oct. 11.
"I will never forget the excitement amongst all participants," McFarland wrote. "Alcohol was all you can drink, money was not an option. Girls were acting wild by taking off their tops, and pulling down their pants. Girls were also romancing each other. Some guys loved every minute of the freakiness some girls demonstrated. I have never attended a party of this magnitude."
He continued: "The attitude of the people at the party was that everyone should drink or not come to the party. Drugs were prevalent with no price attached."
He compared that with a house party hosted by a sorority at Oklahoma.
"Drinks were plentiful, but not to the extent they were" at the Dallas party, he wrote. "Some people were tipsy, but in control of themselves."
Hey, I've been an OU football fan since I would crawl. I went to my first Sooner game when I was six, and my favorite book as a kid was Bootlegger's Boy. All that being said, I am officially giving my verbal commitment to the University of Texas. I have no clue what I'm committing to "“ maybe they have a College of Blogging or something "“ but sign me up and get me on the bus, I want to be a Longhorn.
Seriously, after reading the Times article, I wonder how we get any recruits to come to Oklahoma. At other places, they have hostesses on your laps, humvee limos taking you to parties, and girls "romancing" each other. At OU, we just send our head coach over to your house to set the dinner table and watch bad comedies. Hell, even OU's sorority girls are annoying.
