Wild Boys - UT Style!!
Prospects warm up to UT shirt-ripping stunt
By Drew Edwards (Contact)
Originally published 02:49 p.m., March 2, 2009
Updated 03:05 p.m., March 2, 2009
As one of the elite prospects in the Class of 2010, tight end Brian Vogler is already busy with the business of recruiting.
Last week, he attended Alabama’s junior day in Tuscaloosa before making the trip to Knoxville this weekend as Tennessee hosted some 80-90 junior prospects.
The two experiences couldn’t have been much more different.
“Yeah, I would definitely say they’re two completely different types of junior days,” said Vogler, a 6-foot-7 tight end from Brookstone School in Columbus, Ga., in a telephone interview Monday afternoon.
Tennessee’s junior day took a divergent path when UT’s coaches brought the prospects into a large meeting room on Saturday afternoon. As parents boarded buses for a tour of Neyland Stadium, UT coach Lane Kiffin spoke the prospects before introducing UT’s special teams coaches.
“They started talking about how important special teams was to winning games, and next thing you know, one of the assistant special teams coaches is just ripping his shirt off like Superman,” Vogler said. “Some of the other coaches were ripping their shirts off. They did it three times, I think.”
At first, Vogler and the others were a bit confused.
“Nobody really knew how to respond so the coaches were like telling us to stand up,” Vogler said. “We were all standing up, and they told us, ‘We can do better than that.’”
As Vogler tells it, two or three coaches left the room and the lights were dimmed in the meeting room.
“They came running through the door and everybody left from their seats and came to the middle, starting jumping around, yelling ‘UT! UT!’ Then they said it was pretty good, but we probably could have done better,” he said. “So Coach O (recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron) goes up there to start talking and then about halfway through the coaches come busting through the door again, and everybody does the same thing.”
Vogler, who already has about 14 scholarship offers including ones from Tennessee, LSU and Alabama, said he and his fellow visitors warmed to UT’s enthusiasm.
“We didn’t know how to react (at first),” Vogler said. “We were all just standing there like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’ We all got pretty hyped up at the end of it.”
Vogler said about 15 current UT players were in the room at the time, including All-America safety Eric Berry. By the end, those players were chanting with the recruits as well.
“When all that took place, all the coaches taking their shirts off and stuff, there were players in the back of the room with us, and they came running up there with us when we went up there,” Vogler said. “Eric Berry, he talked and I guess he ended up sticking around for most of the day because he was in there with us.”
Despite the initial shock at the move, Vogler, who hopes to commit before his junior season, said the experience opened his eyes toward Tennessee.
“For me, I didn’t really know all that much about Tennessee,” Vogler said. “Them coming in with all these new coaches, you don’t really know what to expect. I would definitely say it’s beneficial for me going up to that junior day. I learned a lot about the school, I learned a lot about the coaches, got to meet some of the players.
“It was just really beneficial for me. I think that really helped them out a lot with that junior day, how it was run.”
That seemed to be the case for other prospects in town for UT’s junior day, including defensive lineman Garrison Smith from Douglass High School in Atlanta.
“I loved it especially when that coach ripped off his shirt like The Incredible Hulk,” Smith said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “It was high intensity. I enjoyed the whole day. They (Tennessee) definitely moved up on my list.”
|
/
Wild Boys - UT Style!!
