'It put a chip on my shoulder': Texas A&M LB reflects on Texas recruiting snub

USA Today

a day ago

On Tuesday, Netflix released its much-anticipated college football series, "SEC Football: Any Given Saturday," which featured several SEC teams' journey during the 2024 college football season, including Texas A&M. While LSU, Vanderbilt, and South Carolina were heavily features, the revival of the Lone Star Showdown after the Texas Longhorns entered the SEC last summer was the primary focus during the second to final episode.
However, Aggie fans have correctly pointed out that, outside of LSU's 38-23 loss in Kyle Field, every game Texas A&M was featured in was one of the team's five losses, including South Carolina and Auburn, two games that essentially ended A&M's College Football Playoff hopes. Still, the player interviews alone are worth the watch, starting and ending with Texas A&M junior linebacker Taurean York, who has been the team's starting middle linebacker since his 2023 freshman season.
York finished the 2024 season with a team-high 82 tackles, 2.5 sacks, and his first career interception, and is considered one of the top defensive prospects in the 2026 NFL Draft.
As an underrated prospect in the 2023 recruiting class, the Temple, Texas native, grew up a little less than an hour away from Austin, Texas, but did not receive any attention or an offer from the Longhorns, which was further revealed during his Thanksgiving trip back home before facing Texas that Saturday night.
"(The game against Texas) for me, is extremely personal. I grew up 50 minutes away from the university of Texas. I was a top-1000 player. They never really called me, they never really showed me any attention. I had a high school teammate who was recruited by Texas and they flew a helicopter all the way down in Temple. My coach called me in there and sat in that meeting with them, those guys wouldn't give me the time of day. It put a chip on my shoulder for sure, but Texas A&M loved me through and through. They loved me for who I was as a player, as a person. That's when I closed the book on Texas."
That's recruiting in a nutshell, and even Mike Elko, who was entering his second season as Duke's head coach at the time, tried everything in his power to lure York to North Carolina, not knowing he would inherit the elite defender just a year later. Texas A&M will travel to Austin this season to face a Longhorns team ranked No. 1 in the first US LBM Coaches Poll, this time on Black Friday. The Aggies defeated Texas during two of the last three games in Austin (2006, 2010).
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