Big 12 teams looking for an edge in recruiting

DALLAS - Gary Patterson has already enjoyed a successful tenure as the head football coach at TCU. After navigating the Horned Frogs through stints in four conferences and winning league championships in three of them, rarely is a critical word spoken of his program’s success.

In the opening address of the Big 12 Media Days on Monday, commissioner Bob Bowlsby noted that this upcoming season is the first where both TCU and West Virginia will be full beneficiaries in the conference’s revenue distribution. Last season, the other teams in conference that received a full payout were each awarded more than $30 million dollars.

The timing couldn’t be better for Patterson and the football program, which operate separately from the athletic department when it comes to building or upgrading facilities. The extra cash this season should do well to supplement new additions that have already been bought and paid for in the hopes of making TCU an even more desirable destination for personnel from the top-down.

“Everything we do we have to raise up front so I think the best thing about us going forward is we're going to be able to take care of our coaches better and take care of our athletes better,” Patterson said. “Our new stadium, weight room, locker room, training room, equipment room, indoor (facility), and our new recruiting room that we're putting up all has been raised with private money.”

Depending on the recruit, the order varies, but typically the top three things prospects consider while being recruited are facilities, relationships with coaches and level of comfort in their potential new environment. What is going on and going up at TCU could help them close the gap with more traditional conference powers that they often go head-to-head with on the recruiting front.

“All of those things make an impact on the kids,” Patterson said. “As soon as you start staying the same, you’re losing. You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse, so we’re always working on getting better.”

It’s not just the staffs at Texas and Oklahoma that he has to worry about fending off, either. Even with Baylor essentially relegating itself from major threat-status on the recruiting trail, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Kansas - despite not winning a game last season - have all been major players recruiting in Texas.

Jayhawks head coach David Beaty has been diligently trying to leverage his background as a former Texas high school coach in an effort to pull prospects from the state. He’s banking on Texas exports to jolt some life back into the Kansas football program.

“Texas high school football coaches have always been coaches I have idolized. I feel like a lot of them do could my job,” he said. “That gets me up every morning because those guys are on my heels. We call on those relationships because they’re some of the finest coaches in the area and we’re trying to get a Kansas identity as well.”

If Patterson and Beaty are operating on opposite sides of the spectrum as far as their recruiting impact in Texas, Kliff Kingsbury is somewhere in between. He admitted that over the course of the spring, he wasn’t necessarily impressed with the cost-benefit ratio of satellite camps, but being relatively geographically isolated in Lubbock, he was willing to give it a shot.

“For us, it's good because of where we're at geographically in the state to bring our product to San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas, East Texas, to get our brand out there,” he said. “From what I saw of those mega camps, I don't know if we're accomplishing what we want. When you’re talking about 800 kids at a camp, I don't know if that's a good thing for kids or parents.”

Whether part of the strategy is sprucing up the locker room, calling in favors or hosting off-site camps, all three coaches alluded to the notion that those must come in conjunction with one basic principle.

“Win; I think that's the best thing you can do,” Kingsbury said. “I think kids see that first and foremost. We feel like we've recruited well, we’re going on year four and we have great relationships across the state now, it's time to take that next step.”