Jaylen Ruiz had a breakout off-season since he performed so well at the Elite Lineman Challenge in Las Vegas and the Stanford NIKE Camp but his recruitment is still off to a slow start with only one offer so far.

The Fresno (Calif.) San Joaquin Memorial defensive end in the 2013 class has landed an early offer from SMU and said this upcoming season will be huge so more schools could take notice of his abilities.

After such a strong off-season it's expected Ruiz could pick up more offers soon.

"This season is going to be pretty tight," Ruiz said.

"I have people looking at me so I'm going to go even harder this year. I just want to make it out because nobody in my family has been to college so I just want to do that."

Cal, Michigan State and UNLV have been showing more interest in Ruiz, a 6-foot-3, 260-pound prospect who said the Golden Bears are an early favorite. He likes the area and the coaching staff and how they've recruited in the past couple classes.

Ruiz, one of the top overall players at the Elite Lineman Challenge, said he would really like to hear more from Cal's coaching staff.

"I'm looking at Cal a lot," Ruiz said. "I see they're recruiting so many people from the (Central) Valley and they're going to be pretty good the next couple years. They look good to me."

As far as his interest in SMU it's still undetermined since Ruiz admits he doesn't know too much about the program yet. There is still time to learn but so far he only has a rudimentary understanding of what SMU has to offer.

"I really don't know how I got the SMU offer," he said. "I think it was from Vegas. I don't really know much about them except Eric Dickerson went there."