http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/con...cid=765896

West needs to at least give it a try. This guy is a once in a lifetime receiver recruit. He sounds like he likes tennessee

I bet we go after him hard, just cant let a 5* from our city not get recruited by us....

Can't read the link w/o being a member. Can someone post the text here?

Marlon wants to play basketball too. Keith, is he playing with you guys this summer?

As a Harding alum, It would be great to have such an awesome receiver (and hoops star) playing for Memphis plus he might be our first 5 star football recruit ever. I agree we ought to at least try.

Though Michael Crabtree's monster freshman season has resulted in several top receivers giving Texas Tech a long, hard look, it remains to be seen whether any of them will be teaming up with this year's Biletnikoff award winner when the Red Raiders take the field next season. If Tech doesn't land one of the five or four star receivers they're in on, it could be due to the fact that Crabtree's explosion didn't take place until the 2008 class' senior season, by which time most recruits had already started to choose which schools they were considering.


Brown is one of the top wideouts in the country for 2009 and he has early interest in Texas Tech.
However, it doesn't look like Tech will have that problem with the Class of 2009. We told you earlier this week about four-star receiver Chad Bumphis, who is interested in the Red Raiders, but it looks like Bumphis isn't alone in his affinity for the Red Raiders.

Meet Marlon Brown, Rivals.com's 2nd ranked wide receiver prospect for 2009.

Brown, who stands at an imposing 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, has offers from all over the country, a trend that isn't likely to end soon.

"Let's see, I know right now I have offers from Auburn, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Stanford, Colorado, Clemson, and I think maybe a few others," he answered when asked which schools had extended scholarship offers his way. "I'm not 100% sure that they're the only ones, but those are the ones I know off the top of my head."

No, you didn't misread that, he does hold an offer from Stanford, a fact that doesn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows Brown, a standout student with a 3.4 GPA at a difficult private school.

When asked if there are any other schools that stand out to him, Brown had this to say.

"Yes sir there are," he said. "Schools like USC, Texas, and Texas Tech really stand out to me. Oh, and also Kentucky. They have a great basketball program as well and I think I'm going to try to play both basketball and football in college."

That's right, he's a basketball star as well, dominating the Tennessee high school ranks in both sports.

Speaking of Tennessee, some casual observers assume that the Volunteers have a leg up on the competition for Brown's services due to the fact that his mailing address ends in "TN," an assumption that Brown vigorously disputes.

"Oh, no sir, I'm not leaning towards them or anyone," he said. "I did grow up rooting for them when I was little, but I'm completely open. It doesn't need to be SEC country or anything like that, it just doesn't matter. I'll go wherever I have to to find the best place for me."

This is where we find out what our program is really made of. We get him, and we really are getting better and starting to be something. If he turns a cold shoulder to us or we don't even recruit him then we are the same old Memphis and need to start looking at our options....

Dak10 Wrote:This is where we find out what our program is really made of. We get him, and we really are getting better and starting to be something. If he turns a cold shoulder to us or we don't even recruit him then we are the same old Memphis and need to start looking at our options....

Personally, one player will not determine the direction of my program, nor its success. However, if you feel that way, then you should take whatever action you deem appropriate if we do not sign him or even recruit him.

We should at least try.

I didn't mean it that one person determined the direction of a program, but take a look at Deangelo Williams if you don't believe that it does. I mean it by if we don't even recruit someone of that caliber who is right in our back yard then we need to start thinking about some changes. If we do try and he doesn't even consider us in his top 5, then we still need to think about some type of changes because it means we are going nowhere anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, this years recruiting class has been pretty decent, especially if we got some of the big guys that were at the game today, but we need to be able to compete for big-time recruits in our own backyard.

Dak10 Wrote:I didn't mean it that one person determined the direction of a program, but take a look at Deangelo Williams if you don't believe that it does. I mean it by if we don't even recruit someone of that caliber who is right in our back yard then we need to start thinking about some changes. If we do try and he doesn't even consider us in his top 5, then we still need to think about some type of changes because it means we are going nowhere anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, this years recruiting class has been pretty decent, especially if we got some of the big guys that were at the game today, but we need to be able to compete for big-time recruits in our own backyard.

Look, it appears that you are just looking for an excuse to throw the football program under the bus. I have read your negative posts for some time. Go ahead and think what you want, and I'll do the same.

I feel we won't ever know exactly who we are after but if a kid tells me up front that he is not interested than I would thank him and give my attention to someone who is interested. Cal won't beg them and wouldn't expect Coach Tommy West to do so either. Given time perceptions can be changed.

He doesn't exactly "dominate" the TN high school ranks in basketball, as the article said.

Frankly, I doubt that he would be able to be anything more than a walk on, for the Tigers in basketball. I'm not as familiar with Marlon as a football player as I am with him as a basketball player. He is a quality young man and a terrific athlete, but he doesn't have developed basketball skills. He gets what he gets from his athleticism.

In hoops Marlon is the classic tweener, he's always been a post player, on the college level he'll have to play the wing. He's a great athlete. In football he's a big-time receiver.

covingtontiger Wrote:Look, it appears that you are just looking for an excuse to throw the football program under the bus. I have read your negative posts for some time. Go ahead and think what you want, and I'll do the same.

Your exactly right, I am doing whatever I can to try and throw this program under the bus. I wish we would just get rid of it and focus only on mens basketball. Are you serious? I was very negative about last season and had every right to be. We didn't come close to meeting the expectations TW gave us and had on 0-3 record vs. the sunbelt. All I'm saying is you have got to recruit this guy, and unless he has something against staying in his hometown to play football we should probably make his top five. I don't see how you can disagree with that....

I know from a source at Harding that the Memphis recruiting staff has not made any sort of contact regarding Marlon. Pete Carroll is coming from California but Tommy West can't drive 5 minutes to Harding? This annoys me and makes me fear that Memphis will never really be any good at football on a national level.

MetroChamp Wrote:I know from a source at Harding that the Memphis recruiting staff has not made any sort of contact regarding Marlon. Pete Carroll is coming from California but Tommy West can't drive 5 minutes to Harding? This annoys me and makes me fear that Memphis will never really be any good at football on a national level.

This is what I was trying to say. If we don't even try to get a guy USC is going after then we need to take a look at the direction of this program.

I was very negative about last season and had every right to be. We didn't come close to meeting the expectations TW gave us

If you say so. The team went to a bowl game to have any other expectations after a 2-10 season is foolish.

It is amazing how many folks can find "sources" that claim the Tigers aren't recruiting this guy or that guy yet some how we have tons of local kids on the squad.

And no, not all of them are Jake Kasser types. Most SEC schools would would like to have our receiving corps (all local). There are others, as well.

I don't get this infatuation with having local kids when they are so few who have made an impact anywhere in college football.
Besides Oher (who we tried to recruit) & Cooper, I could even make the argument that Duke Calhoun & Brandon Pearce have been the best players out of Memphis in the last 5 years.

marktheapostle Wrote:It is amazing how many folks can find "sources" that claim the Tigers aren't recruiting this guy or that guy yet some how we have tons of local kids on the squad.

And no, not all of them are Jake Kasser types. Most SEC schools would would like to have our receiving corps (all local). There are others, as well.

I don't get this infatuation with having local kids when they are so few who have made an impact anywhere in college football.
Besides Oher (who we tried to recruit) & Cooper, I could even make the argument that Duke Calhoun & Brandon Pearce have been the best players out of Memphis in the last 5 years.

I don't have to validate anything to you. Also I never said Memphis isn't recruiting local kids. I just think it's ridiculous to have a player that the USC's, Alabama's, and Oklahoma's are recruiting in your own backyard and your own coaches don't make an effort to even recruit him.

Maybe it's because they don't want to waste time with an elite player and would rather focus on the mediocre ones that they have a better shot at landing, but as the saying goes, you miss every shot that you don't take.

I don't know if Marlon Brown is an elite player, BUT I do know there are many "elite" players from this area who somehow never become elite college fb players.

Why should any coaching staff waste their time on a player they may think is over-rated. Maybe the coaching staff will be wrong, maybe they are recruiting him but your source doesn't see it. Maybe they found a player who they think has better potential (i.e Carlos Singleton) than many realize and is easier to get.
We may stink at recruiting DBs and other positions but I think we all can agree we have done very well with Mo Jones, Calhoun, Singleton, E. Williams, Black, & Robinzine.