Mike Gundy’s Recruiting (Part 4) – The Hits: OSU’s Areas of Highest Return on Investment

This is Part 4 of a six-part series on Oklahoma State recruiting that explores the relationships, the connections and the gold mines Mike Gundy has gone to over and over again in his time in Stillwater, USA.

Part 1 — The Road Map
Part 2 — Prospect Perspective
Part 3 — Hotspots in Recruiting

Tre Flowers could have been on “Friday Night Tykes.”

The popular Esquire documentary series began in 2014 and captures the “no joke” attitude of peewee football in San Antonio and the surrounding areas. So the now-senior safety at Oklahoma State would have been way too old, but he played in the league, too.

The documentary shows kids under 10 making vicious hits, taunting one another, cussing and sprinting after practice on 100-degree days. The coaches scream at their players and demand college-level excellence, and the parents get into it, too.

Reviews of the program have words like “disgusting,” “horrible” and “cruel and unusual,” describing it, but Flowers said that questionable league has helped lead the greater San Antonio area to become one of the most successful, concentrated football cities in the nation.

And there is evidence to prove it.

River Walkin’

Through OSU coach Mike Gundy’s 2017 recruiting class, there have been only 15 players who have come out of the five San Antonio counties (Jahmyl Jeter in 2018 makes that 16).

That’s 4 percent of all the scholarship-offered players Gundy has coached. But the yield on those 15 has been outrageous. Five of the 15 have gone on to earn All-Big 12 first, second or honorable mention team honors at OSU, meaning San Antonio’s “hit rate” is a ridiculous 33 percent. That’s the highest of any area OSU recruits heavily in Texas.

Players like Flowers, his former partner at safety Jordan Sterns and former middle linebacker Ryan Simmons have all come out of the area, and in fact, they are all from just one zip code away.

“I love it,” Flowers said. “I argue with all those Dallas kids. They pick what high school they go to. Me and Jordan Sterns went to schools on the same road. We’d have gone to the same school if they didn’t divide us up.”

Flowers said there is a surefire correlation between the youth league in San Antonio and the high-level prospects it produces when those players get to high school. He played for the Judson Junior Rockets as a kid, one of the teams featured on “Friday Night Tykes.” He said looking back at the roster from that team is absurd. All but a few went on to play Division I athletics, many of them in football.

Moving north, should improve OSU’s volume of recruits. And it does but not as much as you might think. The top prospects in D/FW most often don’t sign with Gundy’s squad. They go to the state schools or the national powers.

To Gundy and his staff’s credit, they appear on the D/FW list this year, having earned quarterback Spencer Sanders’ signature. But they don’t have another area until Tanner McCalister, a cornerback out of Rockwall. He’s the 88th-ranked player in the state, according to 247.

Although the Cowboys’ pull is strong throughout D/FW, it still can’t compete at the top of the list with the likes of Texas and Texas A&M. Interestingly given the data, Gundy’s pipeline weakens (in terms of volume) as he continues south toward Houston and San Antonio.

OSU was in on Caden Sterns, Jordan’s younger brother, and missed to UT. Mustapha Muhammad, a tight end from Missouri City, Texas, was probably always going to be a stretch, but he was on campus for junior day and he’s headed to Ann Arbor.

Of course it’s naïve to think the Cowboys fall completely off the landscape toward the south. Gundy has landed 33 from Houston, 10 from the hill country, 15 from San Antonio and eight from the gulf, and there are four more from those areas that signed for 2018.

But they rarely land big dogs. Take Jahmyl Jeter, the guy I mentioned earlier.

Rated as a three-star running back out of San Antonio, Jeter had already verballed before OSU had to pry him out in what can only be perceived as a bit of a scrambling move, at least from the way it looks. Gundy didn’t win Jeter away from the Longhorns or the Horned Frogs. He was committed to SMU.

Nonetheless, these figures present the results of a different argument that defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer said he is proud of.

“My name is out there, and I’ll never do anything to harm it,” Spencer said. “Those guys down there know that.”

Sprouting Flowers

When Flowers was getting recruited, he had offers from all over, but when Spencer came to Judson, he got nervous.

Former safeties coach Van Malone was Flowers’ main recruiter but Spencer wanted to come see a player already committed to Arizona State. It was bold, especially in the middle of the 2012 season.

Flowers was prepping for his track workout that afternoon. OSU was the offer he was looking for, even though he had Arizona State locked down and Utah, Mississippi State and Boise all in his back pocket. He said he knew he would flip to the Cowboys if he nailed this practice and earned an offer.

Spencer had a stopwatch in his hand and clocked Flowers’ times.

“It was meant to be,” Flowers said.

Spencer pulled the trigger on an already committed recruit who bombed his only test, and it turned out to be a hit that has catalyzed the Cowboys’ run of success in San Antonio since.

“I just got a good name down there,” Spencer said. “Success tends to lead to success.

Staying Home

Gundy has pulled twice as many players from Tulsa-area schools than those in Oklahoma City, but the recruits from the state capital have yielded a 20 percent higher hit rate than those in T-Town.

OSU is at a geographical disadvantage against the Sooners in OKC, which is why the Cowboys have leaned more heavily on Tulsa prospects to fill their recruiting classes. But when Gundy can scrape past OU to the south, those players have earned Big 12 honors 50 percent of the time.

Note: This includes scholarship-only players and does not include transfers from junior college like Calvin Barnett.

The names are outstanding: Dan Bailey, David Glidden and Daytawion Lowe. But Gundy only had to beat out Bob Stoops on one of those in Lowe. That is a credit to OSU’s player development, but recent classes have shown a steady decline in either Gundy’s interest or recruiting success in Oklahoma City.

In 2016, linebacker Calvin Bundage signed out of Edmond Santa Fe, and though offensive tackle Tramonda Moore committed from John Marshall High School, he was declared ineligible. After he qualified for Division I play, Gundy’s one-time star signing became a Sooner.

Other than those two, the most recent OKC-rooted player on scholarship at OSU was Glidden in 2011. If the Cowboys can get them, there is a 50/50 shot they will be some of the most successful players on the team. But as evidenced by the top 2018 OKC prospects’ decisions so far, just getting them on campus is a struggle.

To be fair, OSU has had success in the past at the top of OKC’s talent pool, landing Bundage in 2016. But for the most part, the Cowboys start hitting on area prospects once you start looking outside of the top five players.

That’s why you see a spike in D/FW signings. They are easier to get because there are far more of them to go around. And that’s also why the hit rate among D/FW prospects under Gundy is among the lowest in Texas (19 percent) and why it’s highest (33 percent) in a city (San Antonio) that’s has only a third of the population.

“I pick San Antonio over anybody,” Flowers said.

Based on the stats, it looks like Gundy should, too.