The one that got away.

[famoustitles]

Who in your opinion is the best recruit that we've had a verbal commit from and ended up going somewhere else?

 

(Can include silent commits if there aren't that many. I just saw that Lamar Jackson was a silent to usc and it got me curious.)

[Red Five]

Some good ones from the 08 class when Cally got fired

 

Blaine Gabbert

Jonas Gray

Dan Hoch

Riley Reiff

Trevor Robinson

[gbr93]

Blaine Gabbert. Would have won a BCS championship in '09 if he would have stuck with us.

[famoustitles]

I was trying to remember a speedy wr from Louisiana who we had a verbal from that ended up at TCU. I think his name was Curtis carter. I'm pretty sure he never contributed at TCU though.

[famoustitles]

Blaine Gabbert. Would have won a BCS championship in '09 if he would have stuck with us.

That '09 team just needed a pulse on offense and they could have been great

[Redux]

Bubba Starling

[Red Five]

Did Emmett Smith ever officially commit?

[Savage Husker]

Carl Crawford. Lord would have played safety instead, CC would run the option, and more depth across the board.

[hskerholic]

Deion Jones

Haloti Ngata

[84HuskerLaw]

Reggie Bush - though he never really got away - Frank rejected him. But, he certainly was a special player that woulda, coulda, shoulda.

[OH HSKR FAN]

Osborne tried recruiting Marshall Faulk to play defensive back.

[theknife]

I can't imagine what the defense would have looked like in 09 if Jason Pierre Paul has chosen us over South Florida.

[C N Red]

Barry Sanders.

 

Story from a Charlie Mcbride interview from Huskermax. Sorry, just found it with a google.

 

DM: Do you have any recruiting stories about some of the athletes you recruited?

 

CM: The best story I have is when I went to North High School in Wichita, Kansas to recruit a young man who was a friend of ex-husker Jeff Smith. Jeff now lives in Wichita and works in the justice system. Hes a parole officer. Through the years Jeff has gotten to be really good friends with this one particular kid and, I didnt know this, but the player came up to me and said, coach, Im so and so and I really want to go to Nebraska. He said Jeff has been one of my friends and hes talked to me about Nebraska. He got his degree there and thats what I really want to do. I looked at the kid and he was just a little guy. I look at this film and Im saying to myself, you know we need to scholarship this guy. He was probably 155 160 pounds, probably 59. So I went back and showed Tom the film and he said, Charlie we cant recruit him. He said were bringing in Johnny Rogers son and we cannot take two small running backs. We just cant do it. So I went and turned the kid down. His name was Barry Sanders. So Im famous for turning Barry Sanders down and a lot of people through the years called me a lot of names, but of course after they read this segment, they may call me more. It was bad because Johnnys son Terry got hurt and never really played much. Barry Sanders was like trying to tackle an eel. The guy was probably the best back I ever saw, as far as running the football.

 

We were at Oklahoma State and the teams both went to the same movie theater. After the show Thurman Thomas, Oklahoma States running back actually came on our bus. Broderick Thomas and Neil Smith were sitting up in the front of the bus. Thurman said theres nobody on this bus that can take me one on one. I remember Neil Smith saying, Well we believe that, but theres eleven of us that can. In the third quarter he had seven yards rushing and they put Sanders in and he had 77 in the fourth quarter. I looked at Tom and said thats the guy we turned down and he just shook his head and said, Yeah I see that. Then we had to put up with him for the next three years or so.

[Red Five]

Reggie Bush - though he never really got away - Frank rejected him. But, he certainly was a special player that woulda, coulda, shoulda.

 

I don't buy this for one second. As many faults that Frank had, he would not have rejected a 5* RB.

[Mavric]

Osborne tried recruiting Marshall Faulk to play defensive back.

 

We were trying to recruit him at RB but he wasn't sure we were really going to give him a chance. When he was on campus, one of the defensive coaches/staff met him in the hallway and said something to the effect of "there's our new DB" and that was kind of the end of it.