Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Radio on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Recruiting Country

• My phone and Jason Howell's phone were pretty busy. From the time the firing of Jimbo Fisher was announced on Sunday morning until noon, I was in the hundreds of text messages. It certainly caught the nation by suprise. We will talk about what has happened since then on the recruiting front.
   
• With coaching changes, at the day of the day, I am drained. There are a lot of people visiting our site or tuning into this program for the first time because they are interested in what is going on. That gives me a lot of adrenaline to stay on top of things. It's going to be a hectic couple of months.
   
• When Texas A&M fired Kevin Sumlin and hired Fisher, an incredible amount of recruiting news happened at the TexAgs Christmas party. You fast forward a couple of years later, in the 2022 signing class, a ton of stuff happened during the Christmas party. I remember Josh Oelze singing karaoke and having to walk into the closet to take a call. If things go as they have in the past, I am expecting our Christmas party to be hectic in terms of news that will come out.
   
• To be really candid, I was getting ready to leave my house and meet Miles O'Neill‍ and his father for an interview that I had set up the night before. The news broke, and I did not know what to do. O'Neill was supposed to be meeting with Fisher at 9 a.m., and that news came out right before. Obviously, that meeting didn't happen. I told his dad to take a couple of days to gather your thoughts, and we will reach back out and set something up. It wasn't just O'Neill. There were probably seven or eight commits on campus. Jordan Pride‍ was on an official visit.
   
• I dont want to reach out to a kid after something big like that happens just to get a quote. You know it will be an emotional response. We had to speed our process up because of the job Elijah Robinson did on Sunday. As exemplary as you could have ever hoped for, for a guy who got a lot dumped on his plate Sunday morning. Can you imagine walking up there and thinking it's another normal day?
   
• Robinson is a rock star. That is not just me saying that. That is multiple kids, parents and sources talking about the job he did. He is a calm, steady ship for these kids. He answered a ton of questions from the kids and parents. For the commits that were not on campus, he made sure he reached out to them late at night after his day was done. He was calling people.
   
• I talked to one of the commits and his father, and the dad told me they are 100 percent confident in the direction Robinson will take in this position. He gave a ton of belief in the kids. You see it in the tweets from Dominick McKinley‍, Myles Davis‍ and Tyanthony Smith‍. I got a quote from Ashton Funk‍.
   
• I don’t know what is going to happen. My opinion does not matter once to the decision makers over there, but if you can keep Robinson on this staff, it gives you big Terry Price vibes. You know TP would be over the moon excited for him.
   
• They will give A&M a chance. That's what Robinson has done. He has communicated with the commits, recruits and targets. They are keeping these guys in a state where they are willing to see what A&M is going to do.
   
• I talked to a very reputable source on Drelon Miller‍ that said even though A&M let the head coach go, they are still very much in this thing, and they are very interested in seeing what A&M will do with the head coaching hire.
   
• In terms of where things are at right now and the immediate aftermath, it's about as good as you hoped for.
   
• Funk was bewildered by the news but had time to think about it, and things have not changed, He will enroll in January.
   
• Sure, this intrigues people more, especially for the offensive players. Miller wanted to see the offense evolve. When he demommitted, it was when the offense had not. He visited for the South Carolina game and scored 30, and it did not look all that great. There will be offensive players who will be intrigued to see what happens because there is no hope on that side of the ball. Conversely, on the defensive side, things have been working.
   
• Ohio State had started to blow up Myles Davis‍' phone. He shut everything down and said he was 100 percent locked in.
   
• We were tired of hearing how close A&M was. If all these games are close, the issue was not on the field. Continuing to bring in that caliber of player with the right message, maybe that is all you need. You do not have to blow it up and start over. The life of a program is recruiting. You can catch lighting like TCU did, but the life will go out when you are lining up against Georgia in a national championship game.
   
• Fisher recruited better than anyone has here and showed the next guy that it can be done here. A lot of people have come together to make this a destination spot for top recruits, and that has to continue.
   
• You have to keep the talent you have here. The second people the new head coach needs to impress are the recruits. The next people are the high school football coaches.