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The back story on Kyler Murray’s secret recruiting visit to UT

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The trip, tweet and turmoil of Kyler Murray’s secret visit to Texas

Jason Kersey and Max Olson 4h ago  16  
The tweets were sent three minutes apart on the afternoon of January 21, 2015. No text. No context. Just photos of white Texas jerseys.

Kyler Murray posted a picture of the jersey with the burnt orange No. 1 on his Twitter account. DaMarkus Lodge sent one right after him of a No. 18 jersey.

Their tweets set off a firestorm. Murray, one of the nation’s top quarterback recruits and the son of a former Texas A&M great, had been committed to the Aggies for nearly eight months. Lodge, a top wide receiver prospect, was still weighing his options after decommitting from Texas A&M months earlier.

The possibility of Murray and Lodge unexpectedly committing to Texas had the potential to not only alter the trajectory of the program’s rebuild under then-coach Charlie Strong, but also mark a seismic shift in the recruiting wars between the Longhorns and Aggies for years to come. The tweets caused utter panic — or glee, depending on your perspective — among fans and coaches alike, even prompting an intense Twitter fight between prominent Lone Star State media personalities.

And the tweets were, essentially, one masterful troll.

“We were like, ‘Man, let’s just go ahead and give the people something to talk about,’ ” Lodge told The Athletic. “We had already kinda made our decision. That’s why we tweeted the jersey pictures.”

To be clear: Murray and Lodge went on their secretive, mid-week visit with good intentions. They weren’t trying to waste anyone’s time. But at the end of their impromptu trip to Austin, the Texas high school superstars left sensing that teaming up as Longhorns probably wasn’t for them.

“Hey, you only get to do it one time,” Murray told The Athletic last week when asked about the visit. “Recruiting should be fun.”

On Saturday, Murray will find himself staring at that white Texas jersey yet again. Three years after his flirtation with the Longhorns, he’s a Heisman Trophy contender for Oklahoma and leading his undefeated and seventh-ranked Sooners into a bout with No. 19 Texas at the Cotton Bowl.

Thanks to his deal with the Oakland A’s and his future in baseball, this is Murray’s one and only chance to start against Texas. But for a few crazy weeks in 2015, he pondered a future spent on the other side of this rivalry.

This is the story of Murray’s mysterious Texas visit and the chaos that ensued.

They all wanted to play with the prodigy.

Kyler Murray was just that good. A 43-0 record at Allen (Texas) High School. Three state championships. National Player of the Year. Under Armour All-American in two sports.

“He was a legend in high school,” said Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who played at Foster High School in Richmond, Texas. “Everyone in Texas knew about him.”

But it wasn’t just that. There was a certain magnetism to Murray. Elite high school recruits throughout Texas — and especially in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex — wanted to team up with Murray in college.


As a high school football player, Murray was as magnetic as he was decorated. (Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)
He and Lodge were part of a large and long-running group text message between the best of the best, including linebacker Malik Jefferson, defensive tackle Daylon Mack, running back Soso Jamabo, cornerback Kris Boyd and others. They met at camps and on-campus visits early on and stayed in touch afterward. And they texted each other on a daily basis about where they might sign and the prospect of teaming up together.

Lodge, a four-star receiver at Cedar Hill High School, befriended Murray during their junior year. Lodge was committed to Texas A&M for three months in 2014, and he and Murray used to talk frequently about becoming the next great Johnny Manziel-Mike Evans duo in College Station. He remembers a kind of celebrity-level reaction the 17-year-old quarterback would evoke when they hung out in public.

“He would go places and you would think he was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys,” Lodge said. “Like, he couldn’t go to the outlet mall without having to take a million pictures, sign autographs, stuff like that. Just about every offensive player in Texas that I knew wanted to play with him. I definitely did.”

Murray has never been comfortable with the level of fame he earned. He did not particularly enjoy the attention that recruits of his level embrace and did not handle his recruitment like most. Even with his more than 50,000 followers, he posted on Twitter sparingly.

“Right now, everybody is ‘blessed’ to receive their 85th offer, stuff like that,” said Mesquite High coach Jeff Fleener, who was Murray’s offensive coordinator at Allen. “He was never like that. He really didn’t like all the media attention. The bad thing is that I think a lot of website guys kinda got put off, because they thought he was a prima donna. But he just didn’t want to do interviews. He didn’t want to have everybody in the middle of his business.”

Murray had long seemed destined to attend Texas A&M and follow in his father’s footsteps. Kevin Murray graduated in 1986 as the Southwest Conference’s all-time leader in passing touchdowns. He broke nearly every single-season school passing record and was inducted into the Aggies’ Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999. His son ultimately picked A&M in May of 2014 because he felt most comfortable there with the coaches and their offense.

“A lot can happen between here and February,” Kyler Murray said on the day he committed, “but I just felt I had all the information and I feel like it was right. Might as well do it.”

He tested out that feeling by taking an official visit to Oklahoma later that fall. He kept in touch with Oregon. He kept working to recruit others to join him at Texas A&M. He remained solid with his pledge.

But then along came Texas.

The trip was kept top secret. No recruiting reporters were alerted. Kyler Murray didn’t tell the Texas A&M coaches about the visit. Heck, Murray and Lodge didn’t even mention the trip to their buddies in the group text, which surprised Jefferson.

“They didn’t tell me at all, which I was kinda pissed about,” Jefferson told The Athletic. “But he didn’t want anyone knowing, basically.”

The appeal of Texas made sense. Jefferson, the five-star linebacker from Mesquite Poteet High, had already signed with Texas and enrolled. He wanted his friends to follow him there. The Longhorns had gone 6-7 in Charlie Strong’s debut season, but his first full recruiting class was shaping up to be an impressive one.

“Kyler and I were kinda like, ‘Man, we can go to Texas and change things around,’ ” Lodge said.

Murray and Lodge both say the decision to visit Texas was a spur-of-the-moment move. National Signing Day was two weeks away. If they were going to seriously consider Texas, they were running out of time. So Kevin Murray drove them down to Austin.

Texas’ coaching staff put on their best full-court press. Strong and then-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson talked with Murray and Lodge about their vision for moving to a fast-tempo spread offense. They had lunch with Texas legend Vince Young at his downtown steakhouse.

“Obviously, you know, it’s Texas,” Murray said. “We’re kids in Texas, we grew up in Texas. We grew up watching Vince Young, all those guys. We went up during the week. It was really low-key.”

All in all, it ended up being a quick trip, and Lodge says Strong did not go overboard with his sales pitch.

“He was one of those guys who just wanted to let the offense and the program speak for itself,” Lodge said. “He described the offense and all the freedom we’d have in it. He showed us around the facility, and that was kinda it. I actually kinda liked the approach he took because if a coach is selling too much, it can start to seem like they are lying.”

Former Texas staffers believe they had done a good job up to that point of keeping silent about the Murray recruitment. To this day, little is known about how long they had actually been quietly courting him. Any leaks might have quickly compromised their chances, so they played along in keeping the January visit a secret.

A pair of tweets changed all that.

“Kevin and I had talked about it not being something that needed to be real public, just because it would get everything stirred up,” Fleener said. “That was pretty much gonna happen — until he and DaMarkus got together and decided they’d try to break Twitter.”

Exiting the visit, Lodge believed they were on the same page. He sensed Texas wasn’t going to be the right fit for him and could tell Murray agreed. There wasn’t anything the Longhorn coaches did wrong, Lodge insists. This was just one of those gut feelings.

But they decided on a whim to post the jersey photos to Twitter. Murray hit send at 3:17 p.m., soon after they left campus. Why? As Lodge put it: give the people something to talk about.

The tweets went viral almost immediately. Lodge’s photo was retweeted more than 800 times. His phone was instantly overwhelmed by the notifications and kept freezing. He got a call from an Ole Miss assistant soon after who worried the tweet meant he’d just committed to Texas.

And Murray’s jersey tweet? That one garnered 5,100 retweets and evoked more than a thousand replies. The fanbases, the rival coaches, the recruiting experts — they had everybody stunned.

“We knew it would blow up,” Murray said.

Fleener said then-Texas A&M offensive coordinator Jake Spavital called him shortly after the tweets were posted. When asked last week if Texas A&M coaches were upset by the visit, Kyler Murray said: “Recruiting’s such a dirty game. I really didn’t care, honestly.”

For Texas’ staff, the tweets could be interpreted as an encouraging sign, as a declaration that two of the state’s top recruits were seriously intrigued.

“They thought we were all in and sold on it,” Lodge said with a laugh.

The tweets were sent to stir things up, but Murray and Lodge both stressed that the visit itself was not a stunt and their interest was genuine. Kevin Murray and Strong had known each other for 30 years. Strong was a grad assistant at A&M during Murray’s playing days. His son didn’t spend the day in Austin just to mess with everyone.

“I wasn’t wasting my time,” Kyler Murray said, “which I could have. A lot of kids just go places to have fun, and if I could go back in time, I might have gone one more place just to have fun.”

Murray and Lodge weren’t leaning toward Texas by the day’s end, but the general public didn’t know that. All anyone knew was that two elite recruits had just taken a secret visit to Texas. And the ensuing reaction broke the internet.

“I guess the main thing I learned that day,” Lodge said, “is that Texas fans and A&M fans really do hate each other as bad as they say they do.”

Billy Liucci remembers cringing when he saw the Kyler Murray tweet. Because he knew how upset Aggie fans would be.

Liucci, the executive editor of TexAgs.com, believed he was as plugged in as anybody on Murray’s recruitment. And he knew a total meltdown was coming on TexAgs’ message boards when the news of the Texas visit got out.

“There were a lot of people who thought there’s no way Charlie Strong is getting him,” Liucci told The Athletic. “They either didn’t take the bait or refused to believe that could happen. Maybe their defense mechanism was kicking in, like, ‘Nope, that can’t happen. Nope. Nope. Nope.’

“And then the other half kinda lost their minds at the thought of Kyler Murray in burnt orange.”

In the days that followed, there was conflicting reporting from both the Texas and Texas A&M sides about just how much of a chance Texas had of flipping Murray. Geoff Ketchum, the owner and publisher of Orangebloods.com, felt confident based on what he knew. When a subscriber on their board asked him for a percentage, he went so far as to put Texas’ odds at 85 percent.

Why did he do so? Ketchum told The Athletic he’d started hearing whispers in early December that suggested the Murray recruitment had been in the works for months. He saw Murray’s infamous tweet as validation of that intel. But the “smoking gun,” he says, arrived hours after the jersey tweet went live.

Ketchum says he received a phone call that day from a longtime Orangebloods subscriber who worked for Allen ISD and had a tip to offer: He claimed Kevin Murray had contacted someone at the school district and requested they prepare for an upcoming press conference. Ketchum vetted the source and is convinced the tip was legit. So while he can chuckle now and admit 85 percent was “obviously too aggressive” in hindsight, he believed it.

And what was Liucci’s response when he heard the “85 percent” prediction?

“It didn’t sound outlandish to me. I knew it was outlandish,” Liucci said. “Normally I would just roll my eyes and move on down the road. In this instance, I posted about it and said how ridiculous I thought it was and how off-base it was. I was very confident in saying that. But I think emotions were high and nobody wanted to be wrong.”

Ketchum found out Liucci was slamming his reporting on TexAgs and, five days after Murray’s visit, went on Twitter to publicly invite him to appear on his radio show. Liucci rejected that invite, sensing an ambush, and over a string of four tweets he got right to the point.

“I’m writing literally everything I know on the Murray recruitment so if u want my honest take, it’s all right there, cut-and-pasted on your board for all to see. There’s really nothing at all to hide: You think Kyler is a lock to go to Texas. I don’t. If I’m calling it today … I say 60/40 in favor of the Aggies but it’s obviously going to be a dogfight between now and NSD. My take.”

Ketchum responded by saying he never used the word “lock” to describe Murray to Texas and added: “I said it’s an 8.5 on the 10 point scale, but I leave open the possibility things can change.”

After some light bickering, Ketchum asked Liucci if he was taking direct orders from Kevin Sumlin. Liucci called it a “bullshit question.” And then it got personal. Ketchum went deeper, poking him about conflicts of interest, accusing him of drinking with A&M players and asking: “When did you first become the Wooderson of A&M athletics?” Liucci denied all of Ketchum’s accusations and replied: “You are officially the biggest bitch I’ve come across.” Now he was ready to confront Ketchum man-to-man and added: “If I see you again, we’ll have a real problem.” And this went on for more than 30 back-and-forth tweets (they’re all here).


Murray signed with Texas A&M at his high school on Feb. 4, 2015. (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Years later, Liucci says he does not regret the incident. He didn’t want to wage a war on Twitter but felt he had to respond to the personal attacks. Ketchum regrets escalating it the way he did, but he wasn’t going to stand for Liucci challenging his credibility.

“As you reach into your tool bag to respond in kind, you can grab the velvet sledgehammer or you can grab the real thing,” Ketchum said. “And I bypassed the velvet sledgehammer and went for the real thing. That’s how you end up with a Twitter spat.”

The two have made peace since then. And they do agree on one thing: They hate that a perception exists that they were fighting over where Kyler Murray should go to school. But that fight was also an oddly perfect reflection of the mood in the moment, of how tense and emotional and defensive everyone in Texas got over Murray’s decision.

“It was a perfect storm, it really was,” Ketchum said. “Kyler Murray was a bit of a tsunami in a perfect storm.”

The larger context is important to consider. Since Texas A&M left the Big 12 and these rivals refuse to schedule another meeting, this is where their battles now play out: head-to-head fights over recruits with both fanbases talking endless smack. The Aggies were still riding the high of the Manziel era and their jump to the SEC. Texas was trying to get back into contention, and Strong’s first recruiting class was a big part of that plan.

Those dynamics helped set the stage for the 2015 class to become an intense clash and a referendum on the championship potential of both programs. The players they were fighting over were hyped as program-changers. They were kids with big personalities, too, who smartly used Twitter to further feed that hype. And if they all teamed up and picked one school, it would be an utter disaster for the loser. Texas vs. Texas A&M recruiting battles are always serious. But this class just felt different.

And the missing piece for Texas — not just in its 2015 class but also its roster — was a stud quarterback. Strong had Tyrone Swoopes and Jerrod Heard and a verbal commitment from Zach Gentry, a 6-foot-8 passer from New Mexico. But Gentry had quietly backed out of his pledge days before Murray’s visit and ended up flipping to Michigan, where he’s now their starting tight end.

But beyond the quarterback need, the combination of Murray and Jefferson would have given Strong a chance to pull off a sweep and get all their buddies — Lodge, Mack, Jamabo — to follow them to Texas. It was worth a shot.

So the Longhorns took a big swing on Murray. And they missed.

Eight days after the Texas tweet, the Murrays hosted Sumlin for an in-home visit and got all their questions answered. Kyler reaffirmed his commitment that night and signed with Texas A&M the following week.

The close-knit recruits went their separate ways. Daylon Mack stuck with A&M. Kris Boyd picked Texas. Soso Jamabo picked UCLA. Jefferson went pro after three seasons and now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. And Lodge went with Ole Miss. He’s put up solid numbers there — 73 catches for 1,120 yards and 10 touchdowns — but has also had to endure NCAA sanctions and Hugh Freeze’s firing.

Lodge was recently scrolling back through his Instagram when he came across a photo from the 2015 U.S. Army All-American Game, one he took with Murray and Christian Kirk. “I was looking at that and thought, ‘Dang, we would have been very deadly together,’ ” Lodge said. “It still crosses my mind sometimes.”

Murray’s stint at Texas A&M lasted just seven months. When he left College Station, Strong and his staff were not interested in pursuing him again. Strong was fired at the end of the 2016 season. His struggles to find a program-changing QB made his job much tougher. Texas A&M fired Sumlin after 2017. And the rival schools’ new coaches are feuding over recruits and perception and ownership of the state like always.

And Murray is now at Oklahoma. As he looks back on all that happened around his crazy recruitment, he remembers a chance meeting with Lincoln Riley just a few days after the Texas visit.


There is no reason for Murray to look back, not with potential championships, records and even Heisman contention ahead of him. (Brett Deering / Getty Images)
Riley had just been hired as Oklahoma’s new offensive coordinator and was making the rounds with assistant Cale Gundy, meeting high school coaches and Sooners commitments. They stopped by Allen High School to check in on offensive tackle commit Bobby Evans. Murray had already ruled out the Sooners months earlier, when Josh Heupel was still offensive coordinator.

Riley sat down in Fleener’s office. They’d known each other since Riley’s days as a Texas Tech assistant coach. Riley asked about Murray. What was that tweet about? Was Murray really considering his options?

“I told him the tweet with the picture was just a kid being a kid,” Fleener recalled. “But I told Lincoln that I thought he needed to meet Kyler, just knowing both of them how I know them.”

So Fleener texted Murray and asked if he’d be interested in coming to his office and meeting the Sooners’ new offensive coordinator. The two immediately hit it off and spent a half hour talking football.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Murray said. “I had been committed for a while and I stayed with the commitment, but I do believe if he had been (at Oklahoma) before that, that definitely would have been a possibility.”

Added Fleener: “After Kyler left, Lincoln said, ‘Man, I bet that guy’s fun to coach.’ ”

All these years later, Murray is right where he wants to be. He’s become one of college football’s most thrilling and prolific playmakers. He’s playing for a 5-0 squad and College Football Playoff contender. He’s a top-10 MLB draft pick and a multi-millionaire with a bright future in pro baseball.

Back in January 2015, Murray certainly could not have foreseen the path he would end up on — the rocky freshman season, the transfer, the two years as a backup — but it still ultimately led him to an ideal destination and the kind of opportunities he always envisioned.

Like the one in front of him Saturday, a high-stakes legacy game against the program and fanbase he sent into a frenzy with one infamous tweet.

Jefferson wishes it didn’t have to be like this. He wishes he and Murray could have teamed up and won big together in burnt orange.

“He should’ve been in the Big 12 the whole time,” Jefferson said. “That’s one reason why I wish he would’ve just come to us. We would’ve been great. It would’ve been perfect.”

Contributing: Cody Stavenhagen

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RadiologyHorn

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26 minutes ago, Bruh Man said:

The trip, tweet and turmoil of Kyler Murray’s secret visit to Texas

Jason Kersey and Max Olson 4h ago  16  
The tweets were sent three minutes apart on the afternoon of January 21, 2015. No text. No context. Just photos of white Texas jerseys.

Kyler Murray posted a picture of the jersey with the burnt orange No. 1 on his Twitter account. DaMarkus Lodge sent one right after him of a No. 18 jersey.

Their tweets set off a firestorm. Murray, one of the nation’s top quarterback recruits and the son of a former Texas A&M great, had been committed to the Aggies for nearly eight months. Lodge, a top wide receiver prospect, was still weighing his options after decommitting from Texas A&M months earlier.

The possibility of Murray and Lodge unexpectedly committing to Texas had the potential to not only alter the trajectory of the program’s rebuild under then-coach Charlie Strong, but also mark a seismic shift in the recruiting wars between the Longhorns and Aggies for years to come. The tweets caused utter panic — or glee, depending on your perspective — among fans and coaches alike, even prompting an intense Twitter fight between prominent Lone Star State media personalities.

And the tweets were, essentially, one masterful troll.

“We were like, ‘Man, let’s just go ahead and give the people something to talk about,’ ” Lodge told The Athletic. “We had already kinda made our decision. That’s why we tweeted the jersey pictures.”

To be clear: Murray and Lodge went on their secretive, mid-week visit with good intentions. They weren’t trying to waste anyone’s time. But at the end of their impromptu trip to Austin, the Texas high school superstars left sensing that teaming up as Longhorns probably wasn’t for them.

“Hey, you only get to do it one time,” Murray told The Athletic last week when asked about the visit. “Recruiting should be fun.”

On Saturday, Murray will find himself staring at that white Texas jersey yet again. Three years after his flirtation with the Longhorns, he’s a Heisman Trophy contender for Oklahoma and leading his undefeated and seventh-ranked Sooners into a bout with No. 19 Texas at the Cotton Bowl.

Thanks to his deal with the Oakland A’s and his future in baseball, this is Murray’s one and only chance to start against Texas. But for a few crazy weeks in 2015, he pondered a future spent on the other side of this rivalry.

This is the story of Murray’s mysterious Texas visit and the chaos that ensued.

They all wanted to play with the prodigy.

Kyler Murray was just that good. A 43-0 record at Allen (Texas) High School. Three state championships. National Player of the Year. Under Armour All-American in two sports.

“He was a legend in high school,” said Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who played at Foster High School in Richmond, Texas. “Everyone in Texas knew about him.”

But it wasn’t just that. There was a certain magnetism to Murray. Elite high school recruits throughout Texas — and especially in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex — wanted to team up with Murray in college.


As a high school football player, Murray was as magnetic as he was decorated. (Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)
He and Lodge were part of a large and long-running group text message between the best of the best, including linebacker Malik Jefferson, defensive tackle Daylon Mack, running back Soso Jamabo, cornerback Kris Boyd and others. They met at camps and on-campus visits early on and stayed in touch afterward. And they texted each other on a daily basis about where they might sign and the prospect of teaming up together.

Lodge, a four-star receiver at Cedar Hill High School, befriended Murray during their junior year. Lodge was committed to Texas A&M for three months in 2014, and he and Murray used to talk frequently about becoming the next great Johnny Manziel-Mike Evans duo in College Station. He remembers a kind of celebrity-level reaction the 17-year-old quarterback would evoke when they hung out in public.

“He would go places and you would think he was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys,” Lodge said. “Like, he couldn’t go to the outlet mall without having to take a million pictures, sign autographs, stuff like that. Just about every offensive player in Texas that I knew wanted to play with him. I definitely did.”

Murray has never been comfortable with the level of fame he earned. He did not particularly enjoy the attention that recruits of his level embrace and did not handle his recruitment like most. Even with his more than 50,000 followers, he posted on Twitter sparingly.

“Right now, everybody is ‘blessed’ to receive their 85th offer, stuff like that,” said Mesquite High coach Jeff Fleener, who was Murray’s offensive coordinator at Allen. “He was never like that. He really didn’t like all the media attention. The bad thing is that I think a lot of website guys kinda got put off, because they thought he was a prima donna. But he just didn’t want to do interviews. He didn’t want to have everybody in the middle of his business.”

Murray had long seemed destined to attend Texas A&M and follow in his father’s footsteps. Kevin Murray graduated in 1986 as the Southwest Conference’s all-time leader in passing touchdowns. He broke nearly every single-season school passing record and was inducted into the Aggies’ Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999. His son ultimately picked A&M in May of 2014 because he felt most comfortable there with the coaches and their offense.

“A lot can happen between here and February,” Kyler Murray said on the day he committed, “but I just felt I had all the information and I feel like it was right. Might as well do it.”

He tested out that feeling by taking an official visit to Oklahoma later that fall. He kept in touch with Oregon. He kept working to recruit others to join him at Texas A&M. He remained solid with his pledge.

But then along came Texas.

The trip was kept top secret. No recruiting reporters were alerted. Kyler Murray didn’t tell the Texas A&M coaches about the visit. Heck, Murray and Lodge didn’t even mention the trip to their buddies in the group text, which surprised Jefferson.

“They didn’t tell me at all, which I was kinda pissed about,” Jefferson told The Athletic. “But he didn’t want anyone knowing, basically.”

The appeal of Texas made sense. Jefferson, the five-star linebacker from Mesquite Poteet High, had already signed with Texas and enrolled. He wanted his friends to follow him there. The Longhorns had gone 6-7 in Charlie Strong’s debut season, but his first full recruiting class was shaping up to be an impressive one.

“Kyler and I were kinda like, ‘Man, we can go to Texas and change things around,’ ” Lodge said.

Murray and Lodge both say the decision to visit Texas was a spur-of-the-moment move. National Signing Day was two weeks away. If they were going to seriously consider Texas, they were running out of time. So Kevin Murray drove them down to Austin.

Texas’ coaching staff put on their best full-court press. Strong and then-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson talked with Murray and Lodge about their vision for moving to a fast-tempo spread offense. They had lunch with Texas legend Vince Young at his downtown steakhouse.

“Obviously, you know, it’s Texas,” Murray said. “We’re kids in Texas, we grew up in Texas. We grew up watching Vince Young, all those guys. We went up during the week. It was really low-key.”

All in all, it ended up being a quick trip, and Lodge says Strong did not go overboard with his sales pitch.

“He was one of those guys who just wanted to let the offense and the program speak for itself,” Lodge said. “He described the offense and all the freedom we’d have in it. He showed us around the facility, and that was kinda it. I actually kinda liked the approach he took because if a coach is selling too much, it can start to seem like they are lying.”

Former Texas staffers believe they had done a good job up to that point of keeping silent about the Murray recruitment. To this day, little is known about how long they had actually been quietly courting him. Any leaks might have quickly compromised their chances, so they played along in keeping the January visit a secret.

A pair of tweets changed all that.

“Kevin and I had talked about it not being something that needed to be real public, just because it would get everything stirred up,” Fleener said. “That was pretty much gonna happen — until he and DaMarkus got together and decided they’d try to break Twitter.”

Exiting the visit, Lodge believed they were on the same page. He sensed Texas wasn’t going to be the right fit for him and could tell Murray agreed. There wasn’t anything the Longhorn coaches did wrong, Lodge insists. This was just one of those gut feelings.

But they decided on a whim to post the jersey photos to Twitter. Murray hit send at 3:17 p.m., soon after they left campus. Why? As Lodge put it: give the people something to talk about.

The tweets went viral almost immediately. Lodge’s photo was retweeted more than 800 times. His phone was instantly overwhelmed by the notifications and kept freezing. He got a call from an Ole Miss assistant soon after who worried the tweet meant he’d just committed to Texas.

And Murray’s jersey tweet? That one garnered 5,100 retweets and evoked more than a thousand replies. The fanbases, the rival coaches, the recruiting experts — they had everybody stunned.

“We knew it would blow up,” Murray said.

Fleener said then-Texas A&M offensive coordinator Jake Spavital called him shortly after the tweets were posted. When asked last week if Texas A&M coaches were upset by the visit, Kyler Murray said: “Recruiting’s such a dirty game. I really didn’t care, honestly.”

For Texas’ staff, the tweets could be interpreted as an encouraging sign, as a declaration that two of the state’s top recruits were seriously intrigued.

“They thought we were all in and sold on it,” Lodge said with a laugh.

The tweets were sent to stir things up, but Murray and Lodge both stressed that the visit itself was not a stunt and their interest was genuine. Kevin Murray and Strong had known each other for 30 years. Strong was a grad assistant at A&M during Murray’s playing days. His son didn’t spend the day in Austin just to mess with everyone.

“I wasn’t wasting my time,” Kyler Murray said, “which I could have. A lot of kids just go places to have fun, and if I could go back in time, I might have gone one more place just to have fun.”

Murray and Lodge weren’t leaning toward Texas by the day’s end, but the general public didn’t know that. All anyone knew was that two elite recruits had just taken a secret visit to Texas. And the ensuing reaction broke the internet.

“I guess the main thing I learned that day,” Lodge said, “is that Texas fans and A&M fans really do hate each other as bad as they say they do.”

Billy Liucci remembers cringing when he saw the Kyler Murray tweet. Because he knew how upset Aggie fans would be.

Liucci, the executive editor of TexAgs.com, believed he was as plugged in as anybody on Murray’s recruitment. And he knew a total meltdown was coming on TexAgs’ message boards when the news of the Texas visit got out.

“There were a lot of people who thought there’s no way Charlie Strong is getting him,” Liucci told The Athletic. “They either didn’t take the bait or refused to believe that could happen. Maybe their defense mechanism was kicking in, like, ‘Nope, that can’t happen. Nope. Nope. Nope.’

“And then the other half kinda lost their minds at the thought of Kyler Murray in burnt orange.”

In the days that followed, there was conflicting reporting from both the Texas and Texas A&M sides about just how much of a chance Texas had of flipping Murray. Geoff Ketchum, the owner and publisher of Orangebloods.com, felt confident based on what he knew. When a subscriber on their board asked him for a percentage, he went so far as to put Texas’ odds at 85 percent.

Why did he do so? Ketchum told The Athletic he’d started hearing whispers in early December that suggested the Murray recruitment had been in the works for months. He saw Murray’s infamous tweet as validation of that intel. But the “smoking gun,” he says, arrived hours after the jersey tweet went live.

Ketchum says he received a phone call that day from a longtime Orangebloods subscriber who worked for Allen ISD and had a tip to offer: He claimed Kevin Murray had contacted someone at the school district and requested they prepare for an upcoming press conference. Ketchum vetted the source and is convinced the tip was legit. So while he can chuckle now and admit 85 percent was “obviously too aggressive” in hindsight, he believed it.

And what was Liucci’s response when he heard the “85 percent” prediction?

“It didn’t sound outlandish to me. I knew it was outlandish,” Liucci said. “Normally I would just roll my eyes and move on down the road. In this instance, I posted about it and said how ridiculous I thought it was and how off-base it was. I was very confident in saying that. But I think emotions were high and nobody wanted to be wrong.”

Ketchum found out Liucci was slamming his reporting on TexAgs and, five days after Murray’s visit, went on Twitter to publicly invite him to appear on his radio show. Liucci rejected that invite, sensing an ambush, and over a string of four tweets he got right to the point.

“I’m writing literally everything I know on the Murray recruitment so if u want my honest take, it’s all right there, cut-and-pasted on your board for all to see. There’s really nothing at all to hide: You think Kyler is a lock to go to Texas. I don’t. If I’m calling it today … I say 60/40 in favor of the Aggies but it’s obviously going to be a dogfight between now and NSD. My take.”

Ketchum responded by saying he never used the word “lock” to describe Murray to Texas and added: “I said it’s an 8.5 on the 10 point scale, but I leave open the possibility things can change.”

After some light bickering, Ketchum asked Liucci if he was taking direct orders from Kevin Sumlin. Liucci called it a “bullshit question.” And then it got personal. Ketchum went deeper, poking him about conflicts of interest, accusing him of drinking with A&M players and asking: “When did you first become the Wooderson of A&M athletics?” Liucci denied all of Ketchum’s accusations and replied: “You are officially the biggest bitch I’ve come across.” Now he was ready to confront Ketchum man-to-man and added: “If I see you again, we’ll have a real problem.” And this went on for more than 30 back-and-forth tweets (they’re all here).


Murray signed with Texas A&M at his high school on Feb. 4, 2015. (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Years later, Liucci says he does not regret the incident. He didn’t want to wage a war on Twitter but felt he had to respond to the personal attacks. Ketchum regrets escalating it the way he did, but he wasn’t going to stand for Liucci challenging his credibility.

“As you reach into your tool bag to respond in kind, you can grab the velvet sledgehammer or you can grab the real thing,” Ketchum said. “And I bypassed the velvet sledgehammer and went for the real thing. That’s how you end up with a Twitter spat.”

The two have made peace since then. And they do agree on one thing: They hate that a perception exists that they were fighting over where Kyler Murray should go to school. But that fight was also an oddly perfect reflection of the mood in the moment, of how tense and emotional and defensive everyone in Texas got over Murray’s decision.

“It was a perfect storm, it really was,” Ketchum said. “Kyler Murray was a bit of a tsunami in a perfect storm.”

The larger context is important to consider. Since Texas A&M left the Big 12 and these rivals refuse to schedule another meeting, this is where their battles now play out: head-to-head fights over recruits with both fanbases talking endless smack. The Aggies were still riding the high of the Manziel era and their jump to the SEC. Texas was trying to get back into contention, and Strong’s first recruiting class was a big part of that plan.

Those dynamics helped set the stage for the 2015 class to become an intense clash and a referendum on the championship potential of both programs. The players they were fighting over were hyped as program-changers. They were kids with big personalities, too, who smartly used Twitter to further feed that hype. And if they all teamed up and picked one school, it would be an utter disaster for the loser. Texas vs. Texas A&M recruiting battles are always serious. But this class just felt different.

And the missing piece for Texas — not just in its 2015 class but also its roster — was a stud quarterback. Strong had Tyrone Swoopes and Jerrod Heard and a verbal commitment from Zach Gentry, a 6-foot-8 passer from New Mexico. But Gentry had quietly backed out of his pledge days before Murray’s visit and ended up flipping to Michigan, where he’s now their starting tight end.

But beyond the quarterback need, the combination of Murray and Jefferson would have given Strong a chance to pull off a sweep and get all their buddies — Lodge, Mack, Jamabo — to follow them to Texas. It was worth a shot.

So the Longhorns took a big swing on Murray. And they missed.

Eight days after the Texas tweet, the Murrays hosted Sumlin for an in-home visit and got all their questions answered. Kyler reaffirmed his commitment that night and signed with Texas A&M the following week.

The close-knit recruits went their separate ways. Daylon Mack stuck with A&M. Kris Boyd picked Texas. Soso Jamabo picked UCLA. Jefferson went pro after three seasons and now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. And Lodge went with Ole Miss. He’s put up solid numbers there — 73 catches for 1,120 yards and 10 touchdowns — but has also had to endure NCAA sanctions and Hugh Freeze’s firing.

Lodge was recently scrolling back through his Instagram when he came across a photo from the 2015 U.S. Army All-American Game, one he took with Murray and Christian Kirk. “I was looking at that and thought, ‘Dang, we would have been very deadly together,’ ” Lodge said. “It still crosses my mind sometimes.”

Murray’s stint at Texas A&M lasted just seven months. When he left College Station, Strong and his staff were not interested in pursuing him again. Strong was fired at the end of the 2016 season. His struggles to find a program-changing QB made his job much tougher. Texas A&M fired Sumlin after 2017. And the rival schools’ new coaches are feuding over recruits and perception and ownership of the state like always.

And Murray is now at Oklahoma. As he looks back on all that happened around his crazy recruitment, he remembers a chance meeting with Lincoln Riley just a few days after the Texas visit.


There is no reason for Murray to look back, not with potential championships, records and even Heisman contention ahead of him. (Brett Deering / Getty Images)
Riley had just been hired as Oklahoma’s new offensive coordinator and was making the rounds with assistant Cale Gundy, meeting high school coaches and Sooners commitments. They stopped by Allen High School to check in on offensive tackle commit Bobby Evans. Murray had already ruled out the Sooners months earlier, when Josh Heupel was still offensive coordinator.

Riley sat down in Fleener’s office. They’d known each other since Riley’s days as a Texas Tech assistant coach. Riley asked about Murray. What was that tweet about? Was Murray really considering his options?

“I told him the tweet with the picture was just a kid being a kid,” Fleener recalled. “But I told Lincoln that I thought he needed to meet Kyler, just knowing both of them how I know them.”

So Fleener texted Murray and asked if he’d be interested in coming to his office and meeting the Sooners’ new offensive coordinator. The two immediately hit it off and spent a half hour talking football.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Murray said. “I had been committed for a while and I stayed with the commitment, but I do believe if he had been (at Oklahoma) before that, that definitely would have been a possibility.”

Added Fleener: “After Kyler left, Lincoln said, ‘Man, I bet that guy’s fun to coach.’ ”

All these years later, Murray is right where he wants to be. He’s become one of college football’s most thrilling and prolific playmakers. He’s playing for a 5-0 squad and College Football Playoff contender. He’s a top-10 MLB draft pick and a multi-millionaire with a bright future in pro baseball.

Back in January 2015, Murray certainly could not have foreseen the path he would end up on — the rocky freshman season, the transfer, the two years as a backup — but it still ultimately led him to an ideal destination and the kind of opportunities he always envisioned.

Like the one in front of him Saturday, a high-stakes legacy game against the program and fanbase he sent into a frenzy with one infamous tweet.

Jefferson wishes it didn’t have to be like this. He wishes he and Murray could have teamed up and won big together in burnt orange.

“He should’ve been in the Big 12 the whole time,” Jefferson said. “That’s one reason why I wish he would’ve just come to us. We would’ve been great. It would’ve been perfect.”

Contributing: Cody Stavenhagen

 

Thanks.

Sorry didn’t realize it was behind a paywall.

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stork642

stork642 4,511

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23 minutes ago, futureman said:

who can summarize it in 140 characters or less?

I'll try...Murray is an Ewok, Ketchum is not skinny, and Liucci is a total hair faced douche.  The lesson in all this is that these 9.95s know less than nothing about what is truly going on behind the scenes.  

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Skipper

Skipper 6,412

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6 minutes ago, deech said:

Great call Ketch.  Why don't you fabricate some more stories 

In Ketch's defense the Texas staff probably agreed with him at the moment although maybe not quite that high.  The visit had been in the works since early December so there was a lot of perceived momentum when it actually occurred.    I was in DC with clients when KM reaffirmed his commitment to A&M and it ruined my damn night.  Amazing to think how so many things might have played out differently if he came here.

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solamente73

solamente73 1,147

Posted
Posted

And 9 months and 3 days after those tweets, he knew his mistake:

43248478620_e3234650ed_z.jpg

I still remember that game - final score doesn’t reflect the domination of ole miss over aggy.

i don’t think murray even played in the game, but he was done with aggy.  A month later, he announced that he was transferring to blowu.

i want him to have that same look on Saturday after we decidedly end ousux’s playoff bid and end any heisman hopes.

fuck methlahoma.

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kopp0e

kopp0e 1,135

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2 hours ago, Bruh Man said:

The trip, tweet and turmoil of Kyler Murray’s secret visit to Texas

Jason Kersey and Max Olson 4h ago  16  
The tweets were sent three minutes apart on the afternoon of January 21, 2015. No text. No context. Just photos of white Texas jerseys.

Kyler Murray posted a picture of the jersey with the burnt orange No. 1 on his Twitter account. DaMarkus Lodge sent one right after him of a No. 18 jersey.

Their tweets set off a firestorm. Murray, one of the nation’s top quarterback recruits and the son of a former Texas A&M great, had been committed to the Aggies for nearly eight months. Lodge, a top wide receiver prospect, was still weighing his options after decommitting from Texas A&M months earlier.

The possibility of Murray and Lodge unexpectedly committing to Texas had the potential to not only alter the trajectory of the program’s rebuild under then-coach Charlie Strong, but also mark a seismic shift in the recruiting wars between the Longhorns and Aggies for years to come. The tweets caused utter panic — or glee, depending on your perspective — among fans and coaches alike, even prompting an intense Twitter fight between prominent Lone Star State media personalities.

And the tweets were, essentially, one masterful troll.

“We were like, ‘Man, let’s just go ahead and give the people something to talk about,’ ” Lodge told The Athletic. “We had already kinda made our decision. That’s why we tweeted the jersey pictures.”

To be clear: Murray and Lodge went on their secretive, mid-week visit with good intentions. They weren’t trying to waste anyone’s time. But at the end of their impromptu trip to Austin, the Texas high school superstars left sensing that teaming up as Longhorns probably wasn’t for them.

“Hey, you only get to do it one time,” Murray told The Athletic last week when asked about the visit. “Recruiting should be fun.”

On Saturday, Murray will find himself staring at that white Texas jersey yet again. Three years after his flirtation with the Longhorns, he’s a Heisman Trophy contender for Oklahoma and leading his undefeated and seventh-ranked Sooners into a bout with No. 19 Texas at the Cotton Bowl.

Thanks to his deal with the Oakland A’s and his future in baseball, this is Murray’s one and only chance to start against Texas. But for a few crazy weeks in 2015, he pondered a future spent on the other side of this rivalry.

This is the story of Murray’s mysterious Texas visit and the chaos that ensued.

They all wanted to play with the prodigy.

Kyler Murray was just that good. A 43-0 record at Allen (Texas) High School. Three state championships. National Player of the Year. Under Armour All-American in two sports.

“He was a legend in high school,” said Oklahoma wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who played at Foster High School in Richmond, Texas. “Everyone in Texas knew about him.”

But it wasn’t just that. There was a certain magnetism to Murray. Elite high school recruits throughout Texas — and especially in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex — wanted to team up with Murray in college.


As a high school football player, Murray was as magnetic as he was decorated. (Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)
He and Lodge were part of a large and long-running group text message between the best of the best, including linebacker Malik Jefferson, defensive tackle Daylon Mack, running back Soso Jamabo, cornerback Kris Boyd and others. They met at camps and on-campus visits early on and stayed in touch afterward. And they texted each other on a daily basis about where they might sign and the prospect of teaming up together.

Lodge, a four-star receiver at Cedar Hill High School, befriended Murray during their junior year. Lodge was committed to Texas A&M for three months in 2014, and he and Murray used to talk frequently about becoming the next great Johnny Manziel-Mike Evans duo in College Station. He remembers a kind of celebrity-level reaction the 17-year-old quarterback would evoke when they hung out in public.

“He would go places and you would think he was the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys,” Lodge said. “Like, he couldn’t go to the outlet mall without having to take a million pictures, sign autographs, stuff like that. Just about every offensive player in Texas that I knew wanted to play with him. I definitely did.”

Murray has never been comfortable with the level of fame he earned. He did not particularly enjoy the attention that recruits of his level embrace and did not handle his recruitment like most. Even with his more than 50,000 followers, he posted on Twitter sparingly.

“Right now, everybody is ‘blessed’ to receive their 85th offer, stuff like that,” said Mesquite High coach Jeff Fleener, who was Murray’s offensive coordinator at Allen. “He was never like that. He really didn’t like all the media attention. The bad thing is that I think a lot of website guys kinda got put off, because they thought he was a prima donna. But he just didn’t want to do interviews. He didn’t want to have everybody in the middle of his business.”

Murray had long seemed destined to attend Texas A&M and follow in his father’s footsteps. Kevin Murray graduated in 1986 as the Southwest Conference’s all-time leader in passing touchdowns. He broke nearly every single-season school passing record and was inducted into the Aggies’ Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999. His son ultimately picked A&M in May of 2014 because he felt most comfortable there with the coaches and their offense.

“A lot can happen between here and February,” Kyler Murray said on the day he committed, “but I just felt I had all the information and I feel like it was right. Might as well do it.”

He tested out that feeling by taking an official visit to Oklahoma later that fall. He kept in touch with Oregon. He kept working to recruit others to join him at Texas A&M. He remained solid with his pledge.

But then along came Texas.

The trip was kept top secret. No recruiting reporters were alerted. Kyler Murray didn’t tell the Texas A&M coaches about the visit. Heck, Murray and Lodge didn’t even mention the trip to their buddies in the group text, which surprised Jefferson.

“They didn’t tell me at all, which I was kinda pissed about,” Jefferson told The Athletic. “But he didn’t want anyone knowing, basically.”

The appeal of Texas made sense. Jefferson, the five-star linebacker from Mesquite Poteet High, had already signed with Texas and enrolled. He wanted his friends to follow him there. The Longhorns had gone 6-7 in Charlie Strong’s debut season, but his first full recruiting class was shaping up to be an impressive one.

“Kyler and I were kinda like, ‘Man, we can go to Texas and change things around,’ ” Lodge said.

Murray and Lodge both say the decision to visit Texas was a spur-of-the-moment move. National Signing Day was two weeks away. If they were going to seriously consider Texas, they were running out of time. So Kevin Murray drove them down to Austin.

Texas’ coaching staff put on their best full-court press. Strong and then-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson talked with Murray and Lodge about their vision for moving to a fast-tempo spread offense. They had lunch with Texas legend Vince Young at his downtown steakhouse.

“Obviously, you know, it’s Texas,” Murray said. “We’re kids in Texas, we grew up in Texas. We grew up watching Vince Young, all those guys. We went up during the week. It was really low-key.”

All in all, it ended up being a quick trip, and Lodge says Strong did not go overboard with his sales pitch.

“He was one of those guys who just wanted to let the offense and the program speak for itself,” Lodge said. “He described the offense and all the freedom we’d have in it. He showed us around the facility, and that was kinda it. I actually kinda liked the approach he took because if a coach is selling too much, it can start to seem like they are lying.”

Former Texas staffers believe they had done a good job up to that point of keeping silent about the Murray recruitment. To this day, little is known about how long they had actually been quietly courting him. Any leaks might have quickly compromised their chances, so they played along in keeping the January visit a secret.

A pair of tweets changed all that.

“Kevin and I had talked about it not being something that needed to be real public, just because it would get everything stirred up,” Fleener said. “That was pretty much gonna happen — until he and DaMarkus got together and decided they’d try to break Twitter.”

Exiting the visit, Lodge believed they were on the same page. He sensed Texas wasn’t going to be the right fit for him and could tell Murray agreed. There wasn’t anything the Longhorn coaches did wrong, Lodge insists. This was just one of those gut feelings.

But they decided on a whim to post the jersey photos to Twitter. Murray hit send at 3:17 p.m., soon after they left campus. Why? As Lodge put it: give the people something to talk about.

The tweets went viral almost immediately. Lodge’s photo was retweeted more than 800 times. His phone was instantly overwhelmed by the notifications and kept freezing. He got a call from an Ole Miss assistant soon after who worried the tweet meant he’d just committed to Texas.

And Murray’s jersey tweet? That one garnered 5,100 retweets and evoked more than a thousand replies. The fanbases, the rival coaches, the recruiting experts — they had everybody stunned.

“We knew it would blow up,” Murray said.

Fleener said then-Texas A&M offensive coordinator Jake Spavital called him shortly after the tweets were posted. When asked last week if Texas A&M coaches were upset by the visit, Kyler Murray said: “Recruiting’s such a dirty game. I really didn’t care, honestly.”

For Texas’ staff, the tweets could be interpreted as an encouraging sign, as a declaration that two of the state’s top recruits were seriously intrigued.

“They thought we were all in and sold on it,” Lodge said with a laugh.

The tweets were sent to stir things up, but Murray and Lodge both stressed that the visit itself was not a stunt and their interest was genuine. Kevin Murray and Strong had known each other for 30 years. Strong was a grad assistant at A&M during Murray’s playing days. His son didn’t spend the day in Austin just to mess with everyone.

“I wasn’t wasting my time,” Kyler Murray said, “which I could have. A lot of kids just go places to have fun, and if I could go back in time, I might have gone one more place just to have fun.”

Murray and Lodge weren’t leaning toward Texas by the day’s end, but the general public didn’t know that. All anyone knew was that two elite recruits had just taken a secret visit to Texas. And the ensuing reaction broke the internet.

“I guess the main thing I learned that day,” Lodge said, “is that Texas fans and A&M fans really do hate each other as bad as they say they do.”

Billy Liucci remembers cringing when he saw the Kyler Murray tweet. Because he knew how upset Aggie fans would be.

Liucci, the executive editor of TexAgs.com, believed he was as plugged in as anybody on Murray’s recruitment. And he knew a total meltdown was coming on TexAgs’ message boards when the news of the Texas visit got out.

“There were a lot of people who thought there’s no way Charlie Strong is getting him,” Liucci told The Athletic. “They either didn’t take the bait or refused to believe that could happen. Maybe their defense mechanism was kicking in, like, ‘Nope, that can’t happen. Nope. Nope. Nope.’

“And then the other half kinda lost their minds at the thought of Kyler Murray in burnt orange.”

In the days that followed, there was conflicting reporting from both the Texas and Texas A&M sides about just how much of a chance Texas had of flipping Murray. Geoff Ketchum, the owner and publisher of Orangebloods.com, felt confident based on what he knew. When a subscriber on their board asked him for a percentage, he went so far as to put Texas’ odds at 85 percent.

Why did he do so? Ketchum told The Athletic he’d started hearing whispers in early December that suggested the Murray recruitment had been in the works for months. He saw Murray’s infamous tweet as validation of that intel. But the “smoking gun,” he says, arrived hours after the jersey tweet went live.

Ketchum says he received a phone call that day from a longtime Orangebloods subscriber who worked for Allen ISD and had a tip to offer: He claimed Kevin Murray had contacted someone at the school district and requested they prepare for an upcoming press conference. Ketchum vetted the source and is convinced the tip was legit. So while he can chuckle now and admit 85 percent was “obviously too aggressive” in hindsight, he believed it.

And what was Liucci’s response when he heard the “85 percent” prediction?

“It didn’t sound outlandish to me. I knew it was outlandish,” Liucci said. “Normally I would just roll my eyes and move on down the road. In this instance, I posted about it and said how ridiculous I thought it was and how off-base it was. I was very confident in saying that. But I think emotions were high and nobody wanted to be wrong.”

Ketchum found out Liucci was slamming his reporting on TexAgs and, five days after Murray’s visit, went on Twitter to publicly invite him to appear on his radio show. Liucci rejected that invite, sensing an ambush, and over a string of four tweets he got right to the point.

“I’m writing literally everything I know on the Murray recruitment so if u want my honest take, it’s all right there, cut-and-pasted on your board for all to see. There’s really nothing at all to hide: You think Kyler is a lock to go to Texas. I don’t. If I’m calling it today … I say 60/40 in favor of the Aggies but it’s obviously going to be a dogfight between now and NSD. My take.”

Ketchum responded by saying he never used the word “lock” to describe Murray to Texas and added: “I said it’s an 8.5 on the 10 point scale, but I leave open the possibility things can change.”

After some light bickering, Ketchum asked Liucci if he was taking direct orders from Kevin Sumlin. Liucci called it a “bullshit question.” And then it got personal. Ketchum went deeper, poking him about conflicts of interest, accusing him of drinking with A&M players and asking: “When did you first become the Wooderson of A&M athletics?” Liucci denied all of Ketchum’s accusations and replied: “You are officially the biggest bitch I’ve come across.” Now he was ready to confront Ketchum man-to-man and added: “If I see you again, we’ll have a real problem.” And this went on for more than 30 back-and-forth tweets (they’re all here).


Murray signed with Texas A&M at his high school on Feb. 4, 2015. (Cal Sport Media via AP Images)
Years later, Liucci says he does not regret the incident. He didn’t want to wage a war on Twitter but felt he had to respond to the personal attacks. Ketchum regrets escalating it the way he did, but he wasn’t going to stand for Liucci challenging his credibility.

“As you reach into your tool bag to respond in kind, you can grab the velvet sledgehammer or you can grab the real thing,” Ketchum said. “And I bypassed the velvet sledgehammer and went for the real thing. That’s how you end up with a Twitter spat.”

The two have made peace since then. And they do agree on one thing: They hate that a perception exists that they were fighting over where Kyler Murray should go to school. But that fight was also an oddly perfect reflection of the mood in the moment, of how tense and emotional and defensive everyone in Texas got over Murray’s decision.

“It was a perfect storm, it really was,” Ketchum said. “Kyler Murray was a bit of a tsunami in a perfect storm.”

The larger context is important to consider. Since Texas A&M left the Big 12 and these rivals refuse to schedule another meeting, this is where their battles now play out: head-to-head fights over recruits with both fanbases talking endless smack. The Aggies were still riding the high of the Manziel era and their jump to the SEC. Texas was trying to get back into contention, and Strong’s first recruiting class was a big part of that plan.

Those dynamics helped set the stage for the 2015 class to become an intense clash and a referendum on the championship potential of both programs. The players they were fighting over were hyped as program-changers. They were kids with big personalities, too, who smartly used Twitter to further feed that hype. And if they all teamed up and picked one school, it would be an utter disaster for the loser. Texas vs. Texas A&M recruiting battles are always serious. But this class just felt different.

And the missing piece for Texas — not just in its 2015 class but also its roster — was a stud quarterback. Strong had Tyrone Swoopes and Jerrod Heard and a verbal commitment from Zach Gentry, a 6-foot-8 passer from New Mexico. But Gentry had quietly backed out of his pledge days before Murray’s visit and ended up flipping to Michigan, where he’s now their starting tight end.

But beyond the quarterback need, the combination of Murray and Jefferson would have given Strong a chance to pull off a sweep and get all their buddies — Lodge, Mack, Jamabo — to follow them to Texas. It was worth a shot.

So the Longhorns took a big swing on Murray. And they missed.

Eight days after the Texas tweet, the Murrays hosted Sumlin for an in-home visit and got all their questions answered. Kyler reaffirmed his commitment that night and signed with Texas A&M the following week.

The close-knit recruits went their separate ways. Daylon Mack stuck with A&M. Kris Boyd picked Texas. Soso Jamabo picked UCLA. Jefferson went pro after three seasons and now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals. And Lodge went with Ole Miss. He’s put up solid numbers there — 73 catches for 1,120 yards and 10 touchdowns — but has also had to endure NCAA sanctions and Hugh Freeze’s firing.

Lodge was recently scrolling back through his Instagram when he came across a photo from the 2015 U.S. Army All-American Game, one he took with Murray and Christian Kirk. “I was looking at that and thought, ‘Dang, we would have been very deadly together,’ ” Lodge said. “It still crosses my mind sometimes.”

Murray’s stint at Texas A&M lasted just seven months. When he left College Station, Strong and his staff were not interested in pursuing him again. Strong was fired at the end of the 2016 season. His struggles to find a program-changing QB made his job much tougher. Texas A&M fired Sumlin after 2017. And the rival schools’ new coaches are feuding over recruits and perception and ownership of the state like always.

And Murray is now at Oklahoma. As he looks back on all that happened around his crazy recruitment, he remembers a chance meeting with Lincoln Riley just a few days after the Texas visit.


There is no reason for Murray to look back, not with potential championships, records and even Heisman contention ahead of him. (Brett Deering / Getty Images)
Riley had just been hired as Oklahoma’s new offensive coordinator and was making the rounds with assistant Cale Gundy, meeting high school coaches and Sooners commitments. They stopped by Allen High School to check in on offensive tackle commit Bobby Evans. Murray had already ruled out the Sooners months earlier, when Josh Heupel was still offensive coordinator.

Riley sat down in Fleener’s office. They’d known each other since Riley’s days as a Texas Tech assistant coach. Riley asked about Murray. What was that tweet about? Was Murray really considering his options?

“I told him the tweet with the picture was just a kid being a kid,” Fleener recalled. “But I told Lincoln that I thought he needed to meet Kyler, just knowing both of them how I know them.”

So Fleener texted Murray and asked if he’d be interested in coming to his office and meeting the Sooners’ new offensive coordinator. The two immediately hit it off and spent a half hour talking football.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Murray said. “I had been committed for a while and I stayed with the commitment, but I do believe if he had been (at Oklahoma) before that, that definitely would have been a possibility.”

Added Fleener: “After Kyler left, Lincoln said, ‘Man, I bet that guy’s fun to coach.’ ”

All these years later, Murray is right where he wants to be. He’s become one of college football’s most thrilling and prolific playmakers. He’s playing for a 5-0 squad and College Football Playoff contender. He’s a top-10 MLB draft pick and a multi-millionaire with a bright future in pro baseball.

Back in January 2015, Murray certainly could not have foreseen the path he would end up on — the rocky freshman season, the transfer, the two years as a backup — but it still ultimately led him to an ideal destination and the kind of opportunities he always envisioned.

Like the one in front of him Saturday, a high-stakes legacy game against the program and fanbase he sent into a frenzy with one infamous tweet.

Jefferson wishes it didn’t have to be like this. He wishes he and Murray could have teamed up and won big together in burnt orange.

“He should’ve been in the Big 12 the whole time,” Jefferson said. “That’s one reason why I wish he would’ve just come to us. We would’ve been great. It would’ve been perfect.”

Contributing: Cody Stavenhagen

Ha, I would give a guess that Billy Liucci "cringes" whenever A&M runs low on time and points in any SEC game too...

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SwanderedTalent

SwanderedTalent 5,761

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Murray and Lodge went on their secretive, mid-week visit with good intentions. They weren’t trying to waste anyone’s time.

Stopped reading right there. Typical coddled "couldn't get into Sam Houston State if not for football" dipshits. I hope Lodge finds someone to read the article to him, maybe he'll get a kick out of it.

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Bill Lumbergh

Bill Lumbergh 7,351

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The article really doesn't make sense all together. 

It talks about how Murray entered college as a superstar expected to dominate wherever he went. 

Instead he went to a&m, didn't start, transferred, was part of getting his coach fired, sat on the bench for two years behind Mayfield, and now is finally starting in his last year of school, and the article sums this up by saying that he has nothing to regret?  Yeah, for a guy expected to light up the college headlines, that sounds like a completely fulfilling college career. 

Kyler Murray, this man would like a word with you... 

1n78if.jpg

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CurlyDumps

CurlyDumps 4,664

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19 hours ago, futureman said:

who can summarize it in 140 characters or less?

“Strong and then-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson talked with Murray and Lodge about their vision for moving to a fast-tempo spread offense. “

TLDR; Texas had no shot.

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