OXFORD— Ole Miss' recruiting fortunes in the Memphis area seem to be turning around, and the timing couldn't be better.
When the Ole Miss football team takes the field Saturday for its season opener against Memphis in the Liberty Bowl, it'll be doing so without any players who attended Memphis-area high schools on the roster. Ole Miss hasn't signed a player from within Memphis city limits since kicker Gary Wunderlich in 2014, despite the less than 80 mile distance that separates Oxford and Memphis.
But what about the surrounding areas? Surely Ole Miss has recruited the metro Memphis area in the last five years?Well, not really.
Let's classify the metro-Memphis area as the city limits plus the surrounding cities in southwest Tennessee, eastern Arkansas and northern Mississippi. By this standard,junior defensive tackle Hal Northern (Tunica) and freshman defensive back Jalen Jordan (Lake Cormorant)are the only scholarship players on Ole Miss' 2019 roster from the metro-Memphis area.
And it's not as if Ole Miss hasn't had players to target. Between the 2015 and 2019 recruiting cycles, there were 77 players ranked as three-star or better recruits from Memphis and its surrounding cities in the 247 sports composite rankings. Nineteen of those players went to high school in north Mississippi in places like DeSoto and Tunica County.
Let's put this into perspective: The metro area most comparable in population size to Memphis is Oklahoma City. Between 2015 and 2019, Oklahoma City produced just 53 players rated three-star or better in the same rankings, more than 30 percent fewer than Memphis.
"Still one of the top factors in recruiting is distance," Ole Miss coach Matt Luke said Monday. "And with Memphis being an hour away, I think it's really important. There will always be really good players in Memphis and it'll always be one of our top areas because of location."
This renewed focus on recruiting the Memphis area has already netted Ole Missa few quality commitments. For the class of 2020, Ole Miss already has three recruit from north Mississippi and one commitment from inside Memphis city limits.
The value of Memphis
The Rebels almost always have a coach whose sole responsibility is to develop relationships in and around the Memphis area, the nearest metro zone to Oxford. Over the past couple seasons, former Ole Miss linebackers coach Jon Sumrall handled that responsibility.
But after Sumrall left to coach at Kentucky this offseason, the responsibility fell to Ole Miss cornerbacks coach Charles Clark. As Brian Stewart, the head coach at Briarcrest Christian School in Memphis says, the emergence of Clark as the Rebels' Memphis liaison has been a beneficial one.
"Coach Clark came on the scene," Stewart said."He's been very diligent about coming on to campus when he can and when it's legal for him to be here. When I talk to my two players who are being heavily recruited by them, they're always in contact doing the normal recruiting things."
The two players are three-star running back Jabari Small, whocommitted to Ole Miss on July 28, and four-star defensive tackle Omari Thomas. The Rebels were among the earliest schools to offer a scholarship to Thomas, who tweeted news ofhis Ole Miss offer near the end of his sophom*ore season in December 2017. As is the case with Small, Clark is listed as one of Thomas' primary recruiters.
Ole Miss is also double-dipping its 2020 recruiting efforts at Horn Lake. The defending Mississippi 6A state champions sent two recruits to SEC schools last season, but neither ended up at Ole Miss;five-star linebacker Nakobe Dean chose Georgia and four-star athlete Raydarious Jones chose LSU.
This season though? Two of Horn Lake's finest are siding with the Rebels. Four-star defensive tackle Josaih Hayes, a Clarion Ledger Dandy Dozen, is committed to Ole Miss, as is three-star outside linebacker Jakivuan Brown. He committed to Ole Miss in April, and Hayes— the No. 2 rated player in Mississippi— followed suit in June.
Horn Lake coach Brad Boyettesaid he feels Ole Miss has done a "tremendous job" of making its presence known in the area. He said the Rebels have had coaches at Horn Lake as often as NCAA guidelines allow and have done a good job building relationships with the players and coaches in his locker room.
That said, Boyette also acknowledges that one reason players from Horn Lake, DeSoto County and the greater Memphis area at large have been wary of Ole Miss for the past half-decade could be the looming weight of the NCAA investigation that dominated discussion about the Rebels for season after season.
"When the NCAA strung out that investigation for it seemed like about four years, there was just a cloud there year-in and year-out that they were about to be on probation," Boyette said."I think that scared some kids away from them. Now that I think that program's on the other side of that, I think you're going to see a lot more players starting to choose Ole Miss as opposed to going to Alabama, Auburn, whatever it may be."
Too much talent
Ole Miss' recruiting successin the Memphis area is coming at a great time. Consider star rankings as your guide.
The class of 2015 produced 17 players from the metro Memphis area who were rated three-star talents or better according to the 247 Sports composite rankings.That number dippedto 11 players apiece in 2016 and 2017, but it jumped back up to 18 in 2018. Last season, the talent pool seemed to peak with animpressive mark of 24 such players.
The only problem? That wasn't a peak. For the class of 2020, the Memphis area accounts for 31 such recruits. And while it's likely that a handful of those three-star recruits may be downgraded before the recruiting cycle is over, the overall talent increase, especially in north Mississippi, isn't lost on the coaches in the area.
As Boyette points out, six of the 12 players listed in the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Dandy Dozen rankings of the best high school football players in the Memphis area came from DeSoto County this season.
Stewart raved not only about the level of talent in north Mississippi, which he attributed to the general size of the high schools and impressive coaching staffs and strength programs, but the wealth of talent inside city limits this season. Stewart had a tough time explaining why a year such as this one happens. It doesn't seem likely that so many schools in the city should have stellar senior classes at the same time.
But the point remains that 17 of the 71 Tennessee seniors rated as three-stars or higher hail from the Memphis metro area. This includes five of the 11 players rated as four-stars or better. And all five of those four-star talents have reported offers from Ole Miss.
With 23 players already committed for the class of 2020, Ole Miss is running out of spaces for this recruiting cycle. But it wouldn't be shocking for the Rebels to treat the Memphis metro like it's an in-state priority as the recruiting cycle comes to a close.
The wall?
One argument for why Ole Miss should continue to play games in Memphis is the high volume of alumni who live in the area.For years, the stereotype has been that Ole Miss graduates move to Memphis to find jobs once they'redone with school. And as with many stereotypes, that assessment is founded in some reality.
In his weekly press conference Monday, Luke talkedabout how excited he was to showcase his team forOle Miss fans in the Memphis area.
When it comes to SEC allegiances, Stewart said he thinks it's fair to call Memphis, and west Tennessee by proxy, an Ole Miss area. After all, Oxford is only 85 miles away from Memphis. By comparison, a trip from Starkville to Memphis is almost 100 miles longer, Nashville is 212 miles from Memphis and it's probably wiser to fly the 391 miles that separate Knoxville and Memphis.
As a result of this proximity, Stewart said he's been a part of many a conversation regarding the hometown Tigers' upcoming matchup against the almost-equally-hometown Rebels.
"There's tons of people that are talking about it," Stewart said. "It's a big game. There's no doubt Ole Miss needs to win this football game, and Memphis has been really, really good...But who knows? I think it'll be a great game. I think it'll be great for Memphis to have a game of this magnitude. And that Liberty Bowl, there'll be so many people there for that football game and people will be excited."
Obviously, the Rebels' main objective for Saturday is to win. The difference between 1-0 and 0-1 is pretty notable for a team as young as Ole Miss.
But if the second objective is to woosome of the high school talent in the city along the road to victory, the Rebels would probably accept a few more commitments from Memphis too.
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.
