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Meet recruiting coordinator Reggie Mitchell

By Jayson Jenks

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

In the corner of recruiting coordinator Reggie Mitchell’s office sits a row of small, inconspicuous boxes that might contain the next Todd Reesing.

Each box is filled with DVDs featuring selected plays from high school recruits around the country. And Mitchell watches each one.

“Every film that’s over here,” Mitchell said, grabbing a random tape, “every one of these high school coaches said these kids can play in Division I football. And then some kids even send you the film.”

If it sounds overwhelming, Mitchell concedes that sometimes during the season it can be.

But the hours of analyzing film aren’t the biggest grind in the demanding recruiting world. The hardest part is the close-calls – the recruits who seem destined to sign with a school only to change their mind.

What’s often lost when a recruit declares his intentions by picking up a hat on national television is the man left behind the scenes: the other school’s recruiter.

“You always think that you’re in it,” Mitchell said. “The hardest thing is you put all this time and effort into it, and then you lose a kid. It’s an emotional roller coaster.”

This is the world Mitchell calls home. In recent years, as subscription websites such as Rivals.com and Scout.com have developed larger followings, recruiting has also grown in scale.

People track a recruit’s official visits online, and nationally-televised press conferences are held when a highly regarded recruit decides to make a decision.

During his nearly 30 years in college football, Mitchell’s most memorable signing day experience occurred in 2003, when he was the recruiting coordinator at Michigan State. At that time, he was pursuing a talented linebacker also considering Michigan.

On signing day, Mitchell thought he had the linebacker, LaMarr Woodley, lined up with Michigan State. Instead, he signed with rival Michigan.

Woodley, who is currently with the Pittsburgh Steelers, earned First-Team All American honors as a senior in 2006.

“When that happens,” Mitchell said, “in the back of your mind you’re saying, ‘What could I have done better? What did I do to screw this up?’”

Mitchell insists that’s the way he always thinks after losing a recruit.

In a business that is competitive, never-ending and features vastly diverse characters, part of the battle is simply coming to peace with your own personality traits and quirks.

USC’s Lane Kiffin’s in-your-face public persona may work with recruits, so, too, may Alabama’s Nick Saban’s strictly business approach, but Mitchell prefers a more laid back approach.

“That’s the one thing I don’t think people get in recruiting,” Mitchell said. “They see this guy be successful because he’s flamboyant and he’s outgoing and he’s flashy. But if that’s not you, you can’t. You have to be comfortable in your own skin.”

Sitting in his office on a sunny afternoon, Mitchell is direct and up front with each answer. No time is spent overdramatizing or underplaying an aspect of a world in which most people only gather knowledge from Rivals or Scout – the tips of the recruiting iceberg.

The e-mails, phone calls and time spent connecting with recruits are generally done without much public knowledge.

“So many times through the process, kids want you to tell them what they want to hear,” said Mitchell, who is also Kansas’ running backs coach. “And you have to do that to a certain extent, but you also need to be honest and up front with them.”

And it’s those traits that current and former Mitchell recruits insist they most respect.

“Say that you’re in college and things aren’t going the way you want them to go – well, with me being from Kansas City, I’m 45 minutes from my house so I can go back home,” said Dexter McDonald, a defensive back recruited by Mitchell for the 2010 class. “But on other terms, you want to be able to go to someone you can trust and someone that can really care for you besides just on the football field. And I know he is that person.”

During conversations with recruits, Mitchell insists, he never discusses other schools. Instead, Mitchell said his pitches focused solely on the benefits of coach Turner Gill and the University.

Darrian Miller, a running back who verbally committed to Kansas for 2011, said Mitchell talked about past running backs he coached and the things Miller could accomplish at Kansas.

“I wanted to be close to the running back coach and me and coach Mitchell hit it off from the start,” Miller said. “He’s just a straight up coach and doesn’t sugar coat anything.”

For now, Mitchell spends most of his afternoons dissecting possible recruits.

There are plenty of tapes left to be watched. More will certainly arrive when the football season gets closer.

That’s just the nature of the business – one that Mitchell is certainly comfortable with.

“The best form of advertisement is word of mouth,” Mitchell said. “If you’re honest and up front with them on the front end, they’re going to say, ‘Everything he told me was going to happen, happened.’”

— Edited by Kirsten Hudson

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