Five-Step Drop: Recruiting Texas

FanHouse's college football staff provides you with a personal quarterback. We do the primary and secondary reads for you so you can properly start your day. FanHouse will do a Five-Step Drop several times a week during the summer and then daily once preseason practice starts.

1. Texas the school may not be terribly popular among other Big 12 Conference members right now. FanHouse's Clay Travis held nothing back with his thoughts about Texas recently. The school did appear to use its strength and influence to its advantage in keeping the league together (for now). But all the Big 12 schools love 'em some Texas the state when it comes to recruiting, as this piece by David Barron in the Houston Chronicle shows. Almost half -- 48.1 percent to be exact -- of the league's 287 high school signees come from Texas. That's 138 signees from the Lone Star State. Florida is No. 2 on the list, with 18. Oddly, it is the second year in a row that 48.1 percent of the league's signees have come from Texas. There are a lot of good facts and figures in that story.

2. And you thought the expansion talk would stop? Please. It may never stop. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News takes a look at the whole scene and offers up his winners and losers. Wilner doesn't really stick his neck out there with any of them but it is an interesting look at the whole saga. Not sure how many people are going to agree with his choice of Pac-10 (plus 2) commissioner Larry Scott as a winner. Scott went after a 16-team league and ended up at 12 only after "promoting" a school from the non-BCS ranks to get there.

3. Let's go to the Way Back Machine for this one. Soccer is all the rage after the United States' victory Wednesday in its World Cup match against Algeria. Here's a piece by Dave Schieber that ran in the St. Petersburg Times on July 27, 2004, about former Clemson and Tampa Bay Bucs kicker Obed Ariri. At the time, Ariri was a taxi driver in Tampa area. Ariri is in the Clemson Hall of Fame for his placekicking skills, though he came to the school from his native Nigeria to play soccer.

4. Someone going from soccer to football, like Ariri, isn't commonplace but it isn't unheard of, either. How about the other way? Can you think of anyone who gave up "American" football for soccer? We'll wait ... and then tell you about the only one we know about off the top of our head (though there have to be plenty more). Andrew Dyktstra, the goalkeeper for the Chicago Fire of MLS, was a two-sport star in high school who was recruited by Virginia Tech to play wide receiver. Dykstra opted instead to play soccer at Virginia Commonwealth University (which doesn't have football) before going on to the Fire.

5. Here's a guy who plans to double dip, but soccer isn't involved. Russell Wilson, North Carolina State's quarterback who was All-ACC as a freshman in 2008, signed with the Colorado Rockies after being drafted in the fourth round earlier this month, InsideTheRockies.com has reported (among others). Wilson (pictured above) will play short-season Class A ball this summer and plans to return and play football in the fall. He skipped spring football practice and hit .406 for the baseball team this spring. He also pitched 12 innings. The Rockies like ACC quarterbacks. Their first-round pick was Clemson's Kyle Parker, currently playing for the Tigers in the College World Series.