Saturating Texas

In his weekly recruiting column, Dudley E. Dawson catches up with Arkansas recruiting coordinator Tim Horton to talk about how the Razorback staff was in 11 states last weekend and will saturate Texas on Friday. This story is free and sponsored by the Arkansas Toyota Dealers. Click on the Arkansas Toyota.

Arkansas football staff went out and overachieved last weekend.

The Razorbacks had hopes of getting into at least nine states on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

“It went great for us,” Arkansas recruiting coordinator Tim Horton said. “We were able to get into 11 states and were meet with the coaches and see a lot of committed guys play. You are not able to visit with them, but you could sure put your eyes on them and see them play.”

Arkansas had coaches in its own state plus all throughout the Midwest and South.

“We have such a great staff of recruiters and they are really working hard and getting a lot done,” Horton said. “We have guys who are calling us because of the success and publicity we have gotten this season and that is always a positive.”

This week the coaches will saturate Texas while the Razorbacks are in that state to play Texas A&M Saturday afternoon at Cowboys Stadium.

The Razorbacks have 26 players on their roster from Texas and are looking to add such prospects as tight end Chris Barnett and linebacker Anthony Wallace.

“We felt real good about it and are going to be able to get out in Texas this weekend,” Horton said. “The last 10 days have been very good to us when it comes to recruiting.”

Included in that is the commitment of Scottsdale (AZ) Saguaro linebacker Brock Haman (6-3, 230, who committed to the Razorbacks Sunday night over Arizona, Arizona State and Oregon State.

Haman is the first linebacker of the 20 public commits that Arkansas has in its 2011 class.

The Razorbacks have the 20th best class in the country according to Scout.com.

That’s 7th-best in the SEC behind Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Auburn and Mississippi, who the Razorbacks have been tracking down.

Following Arkansas in the Scout.com rankings are Mississippi State, Tennessee. Kentucky, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

It should come as no surprise with 7 teams in the top 20 that the SEC is atop of Scout.com conference rankings – which has the Big 12 in its runner-up spot.

“It really is a great start for us,” Horton said. “I don’t even know how we are rated, I don’t know if we are rated that high, but I do know we feel good about all of our commitments.”

While recruiting classes are limited to 25 initial grants per class, the Razorbacks will be able to count a few signees back to 2010 since three players in that class did not meet academic standards.

You can do that as long as the players enroll in January, which the Razorbacks could have as many as 4-6 doing in this 2011 haul.

“We will sign more than 25 because we can count some back,” Horton said. “So I’m thinking we will sign 27 or 28. There is a few other there that the public may not know about and will feel really good about them. It really is shaping up to be a great, great class for us in terms of what we wanted and what we needed.”