My interest in recruiting started with the Chris Simms/Big 3 class. I remember seeing all of the hoopla over Mack flipping Simms from Tennessee on tv and with all of the hype I had to find more info on those dudes. I found this amazing article on the Big 3’s recruitments and saw Roy Williams being compared to Moss and B.J. Johnson was being compared to Peter Warrick (in hindsight this is kinda funny) which caught my attention since Warrick was my favorite player. I had to follow their careers at that point.
Naturally I became interested in the next year’s crop. I tried espn but I found their rankings kinda janky and I thought their head guy at the time, Tom Lemming, was trash at his job. I remember looking at his old rankings and being unimpressed at the hit rates and the dealbreaker was his ranking of a guy from Houston Milby named Derrick Arnold. This idiot had Arnold ranked top 100 in the country. For context, Arnold probably should’ve been ranked a fringe 3/4 star back.
I found rivals which was somewhat new at the time. Bobby Burton did good work and his old rankings aged better than Lemming’s. Additionally, Ketch was on rivals getting his lone star recruiting site up and I forget which guy(s) specifically but there was an aggy site too (websider?). Ketch’s state rankings were more accurate than the aggy site. Aggy site was biased towards prospects being recruited by aggy. Ketch was less biased and more importantly really fukking good at identifying underrated guys that were ranked 75-150 in the state.
So I rolled with Ketch for state rankings. On his message board there was cross promotion of other Texas sites and that’s were I found hornfans. Turned out hornfans was THE spot for UT athletics in the early 2000s. It was like the coli for Longhorn fans with a bunch of sports and entertainment sub forums. Anyway hornfans had a recruiting section too. All recruiting info related to UT flowed through that board. The admins didn’t follow recruits like Ketch but they had an in with someone in the athletic department and they had access to the same recruiting film that the coaches would show donors at signing day dinners. So you could go on hornfans and watch recruiting highlights of Texas signees. I’m 99% sure they were the first place to upload highlights on prospect’s profile pages. Each recruit had 3-5 QuickTime clips on their page. I actually found those clips a few years ago and the links were dead.
I used those sites to follow the Cedric Benson class. I thought it was dope seeing how prospect’s values fluctuated before signing day. I saw how Benson went from being a solid 4 star with questions about his explosiveness to a consensus 5 star. That was also the first year of the all American bowl before the army started sponsoring it. Guys like Derrick Johnson and Cedric Griffin played in that game. So after reading about guys, finally watching some of them on tv in the playoffs, watching them play in all star games, and eventually getting their highlights on signing day I was hooked.
Then there was Billy Bob that I discovered on hornfans. Dude was Ketch before Ketch became synonymous with UT recruiting. He was actually my favorite recruiting guy to follow at the time. He’d go out to high schools to scout prospects. He had exclusive video, pics and interviews... for free. Basically everything these pay sites do nowadays he was doing back then for free. Billy Bob recognized that there was a transcendent talent playing qb down in Houston before the rest of the guys in the state. He was on the “VY is the best player in the state” wave long before anyone outside of Houston. I believe Reggie McNeal had a little more clout at the time because Madison just couldn’t beat Katy in the playoffs while Reggie and Lufkin were making runs.
Anyway, Billy Bob went to a Houston Madison practice and did a great piece on VY, Courtney Lewis, Bennie Swain, and the rest of the guys they had. Dude had video of Vince running routes too. As dope as it was to watch Benson’s stock rise, seeing Vince go from being viewed as an athlete, to a qb, to the best player in America was special. His army bowl performance wearing his doo rag was also fun to watch
.
Billy Bob ended up going rogue. Dude scammed a bunch of Texas exes with an away trip to watch a game in Waco. Breh took their money and never showed up. Matter of fact I honestly don’t remember anyone on the message boards saying they could get in contact with dude. Threw away his career for that lick. At that point rivals was starting to do everything that I’ve mentioned. They obviously did rankings, they started doing more stories, scouting reports and they added videos to recruit profiles just like hornfans. At some point Ketch started orangebloods although it had a different name at the time (the-university?). It was free and eventually he started the premium section maybe around 03-04.
Most ppl didn’t fw the premium shyt at first because info eventually leaked out. The 05 class imo was the class that made premium recruiting sites relevant at least in this region. The Perrilloux drama lasted forever it seems. Ppl with premium access would constantly drop hints that things weren’t on the up and up. Then he befriended Bennett who was a Texas kid with an... aloof, unpredictable personality. Then they both befriended a wild Florida nikka named Rouse. shyt was like a hit reality tv show that came on a channel that your cable provider didn’t carry.
As time passed it became clear the premium sites had good info and the hints ppl were dropping started to appear true and the army game that is where it became impossible to ignore. You couldn’t ignore the recruits telling reporters that Perrilloux was recruiting them to LSU despite being a Texas commit. The rumors of a Rouse being a silent commit sure looked believable when he caught a pass and got up doing the horns sign on national tv.
So the end of the 05 recruiting class cycle is when I joined Ketch’s site. Basically from 2000 to about 2012 I followed recruiting through burnt orange lenses. Wasn’t until Sumlin’s run at Houston did their recruiting sites take off so it never felt worth it to roll with someone else until then because as I said earlier Ketch is really good at identifying 3 star talent. Plus rivals has some real competition from 247 these days.
Ossai and Coburn. 
Have to give props to how Herman has handled this.