Rivals250 LB Chad Bailey on recent activity with LSU, Texas Tech

MISSOURI CITY, Tx. -- With coaches from Indiana, Michigan, Texas, and Texas A&M at his spring game on Wednesday night, it must have irked Rivals250 linebacker Chad Bailey that he was coaching one of Ridge Point’s teams, rather than playing for it.

Bailey has a number of attractive offers, but is still waiting for that first one from a bonafide powerhouse program. He’s picked up a few this spring - the most recent coming from Purdue - but it’s clear that he has his sights set on a couple of specific programs. He thinks if he hits a couple of personal goals this summer, more top offers will follow.

“I’m going to try and lose five-to-ten pounds,” he said. “I need to make sure I’m faster and work on my coverage.”

Bailey has been strong in his camp appearances this spring, where he’s held his own against slot receivers and running backs in pass coverage. The main factor that’s seemingly kept his recruitment from exploding has presumably been trepidation over his experience as an inside linebacker. Bailey is as prototypical an inside linebacker as there is and he thinks it’s just a matter of time before hesitant coaches all agree.

“I feel like I am better on the inside anyway,” he said. “I know that most outside backers are usually taller, so I have no problem playing inside. The hardest hitters play on the inside to me, so that’s no problem.”

Bailey visited LSU shortly after participating in the Dallas event of the Rivals Three Stripe Camps presented by Adidas, and also recently picked up an offer from Texas Tech as well, who may benefit from the other schools dragging their feet on offering him earlier.

Recapping his LSU visit

“It was cool meeting Coach (Dave) Aranda,” he said. “He’s a real cool coach and I understood a lot of the things he said. Coach (Ed) Orgeron is a nice coach too and I’m a big fan of his, so it was a nice visit.”

“He just told me that he wants me to switch from outside (linebacker) to inside just like every other coach,” he said. “He says that I have a different twitch for the game, that I can read guards faster than tackles, so he feels I’ll be better inside.”

“I think that they’ll offer sometime this summer,” he said. “In June, probably.”

On picking up his Texas Tech

“That was cool, I’m a big fan of Texas Tech,” he said. “They just had a player picked in the first round of the draft. Even though he was on offense, I know that I could come in there and play strong there too.”

“They say I am good run-stopper and that would help them out a lot,” he said. “They also said that I could come in and start right off the bat, and that’s a good feeling.”

“From the way it seems now, they’re hitting me up every day, DM’ing me every day,” he said. “Since I’m a high priority on their list, they’re a high priority on mine.”

Right now, it’s pretty clear that Bailey is doing everything he can to pick up that LSU offer, and said that he plans to camp there in June, as well as with Alabama if he can work it out. He already has SEC offers from Missouri and Ole Miss and certainly fits the mold of a throwback inside linebacker, but he’s more athletic than he’s getting credit for thus far. If it doesn’t happen sooner, Bailey will certainly be one of the more talked-about names in Texas by the fall.