Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' recruiting analyst Ryan Brauninger joined TexAgs Live on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country presented by American Momentum Bank, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting and transfer portal trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Recruiting Country

• There’s nothing earth-shattering going on in recruiting. If you read my article yesterday, I mentioned that. If you're looking for any waves, you might need a beach vacation. Coaches are seeing players outside the state, and they're not in a hurry to press the pedal until the first week of June when camps start. Cade Draughon and Jason Howell have been on the road seeing kids in person.
   
• I thought it would be good to talk about how you and I would build a high school recruiting class in this current atmosphere of recruiting.
   
• Let's say we're signing 20 players. How that’s divided up positionally depends on who you have on campus, using A&M’s current roster as a blueprint. We also need a number for NIL. Let’s work off the entire roster costing $21.5 million, carving out $6 million for the freshman. How much do you pay your QB?
   
• We’re not using what’s really happening, just how we would build it. We are already struggling with how it’s going to look and the number to allocate. With our current roster, you look at the QB position, and we have a good one committed in 2026. $1 million to that leaves you with $5 million.
   
• Running Backs: You're going to lose Amari Daniels, Le'Veon Moss and EJ Smith. I think you only need two. You like Deondrae Riden and Jamarion Morrow. I’m not talking about Jonathan Hatton Jr‍. We need two running backs and have $5 million to allocate. Let’s say you give $250,000 to each running back, which leaves us with $4.5 million. 
   
• Offensive Line: $1 million on the O-line brings you down to $3.5 million. It gets late early in terms of spending money, I think it’d be much better to have a tier system, where your first 12 months on campus, you are only given X amount of money. Every freshman is capped in what they can make, but I realize you can't do that. We can talk about a solution to clean up the problem, but they're not real because if they are introduced in court, the precedent is to shut them down. Anytime anyone has a problem, they just file suit. Diego Pavia and other players are trying to get their years back. In that case, you may as well go down to Juco, so in non-revenue sports, that becomes advantageous to achieving your full potential.
   
• When you have no salary cap, it makes it hard to play this game. As soon as you can, you want to spend $1 million on your O-line, but if Alabama says they'll spend $1.5 million, you're recruiting the same players. Recruiting has always been competitive, but it has clouded foggy waters even more.
   
• I wouldn't even allocate for special teams. $6 million divided by eight position groups is $750,000. You’ve already gone above at quarterback, so where do you go down? Tight end has some margin. They're looking at two right now, Nate Boerkircher and Micah Riley, who could be here for multiple years. You have Kiotti Armstrong. Let’s say tight ends get $250,000.
   
• These are all pie-in-the-sky scenarios that do not include the potential of David Nuño and Christian and Cruz Nuño saying Texas offered to double his NIL. Now, we have to make a decision to overpay since you are so far down the line with a kid. I think what we’re doing is uncovering what coaches have to go through with these players on a weekly basis. Even if the house motion for change goes through, people will still go outside of that. You’re adding more red tape and bureaucracy to it.
   
• Doesn’t it lend more credence to the importance of the evaluation, not just the player? Is the family driven by NIL, or do they not talk about it? Do they talk about it differently with other schools? I used to have a willing ignorance that “these are innocent kids.” I do think kids are trying to make the best decision, but they are having so much more money thrown at them as 17-18-year-olds now.
   
• There is also the reality that your earning power may never be higher than now. I see both sides. I think I’d do the same thing with my kids. You know who gets paid the most money, the guys who play the best. Keep the main thing the main thing. I think that showing loyalty is more financially beneficial in the long run, especially at a place like A&M, networking and making connections with the fanbase. There is long-term value in loyalty.
   
• The new nature is that everybody will have money. I don't know what Kansas has allocated for football NIL. If they get an influx of $21 million, they will overpay. Now, they are in the market too. They keep taking the lid off of limitations with every step. Eventually, they'll have to cap it at some point.
   
• The people who are having to make decisions on roster management are in difficult positions right now.
   
• The world’s not fair. Baseball isn't the same as football. It's all to some level different. It’s always a moving target. As soon as you settle in, new legislation comes out or a curveball comes out from the locker room or your recruiting class.