Good stuff
Strong making inroads with Texas high school coaches
Jeff Traylor didn't know what it was like to have a month-long summer vacation. The first-year Texas tight ends and special teams coach worked through summers at his previous job as head football coach and athletic director at Gilmer High, an East Texas powerhouse.
And Traylor still doesn't know what it is like to have a lengthy break. He spent much of the Longhorns coaching staff's month off this summer facilitating dozens of telephone calls between coach Charlie Strong and Texas high school coaches. "We were on the phone almost every day," Traylor told The Inside Read. "He'll spend as much time with those guys as they want. They've been great. He's been great."
The latter has amazed many of those Texas high school coaches who have spoken with Strong since February's hiring of the highly respected Traylor, the winner of three state titles at Gilmer High. That's a significant development, especially in recruiting, for Strong, whose team opens at No. 11 Notre Dame on Saturday.
Since replacing glad-handing Mack Brown in January 2014, the humble Strong has battled an overblown perception as an inaccessible outsider in the Lone Star State. "He's actually very caring, kind and considerate," Traylor said. "I think because he's Charlie Strong, a big, tough defensive coordinator, people are very surprised by how kind he really is."
That's the reaction Traylor had when Strong visited him at Gilmer High shortly after Strong was hired in January 2014. He was amazed when Strong spent 30 minutes talking with his daughter, Jaci, who plays volleyball like Strong's daughters, and then took photographs with her. "It wasn't recruiting talk," Traylor said. "It was real talk. He genuinely cared about my daughter."
During another trip to Gilmer, Strong arrived when 150 of the school's athletes were leaving. Strong took photographs with each of them, according to Traylor.
"I don't know if enough people know all the stories about him," Traylor said. "He's not a guy that beats his chest. He does a lot of things behind-the-scenes that are really unbelievable for people and doesn't want anybody to know."
That's a stark contrast to the politically savvy Brown, whose goodwill efforts were constantly publicized long before the rise of social media. "Mack was so unbelievably friendly to Texas high school coaches that whoever the next guy was that came in, they weren't going to be as open to," Traylor said. "They were probably all afraid things were going to change, but there's nothing different."
Traylor points out that Texas's practices are open to high school coaches just like they were under Brown. And at last month's Texas High School Coaches Convention in Houston, Strong was perhaps more visible at the annual event than even Brown used to be.
Strong also brought Traylor and the rest of his assistants to the convention before Strong took one of the last flights to Dallas the night before his appearance at Big 12 media days. But even with his boss gone, Traylor was still hard at work with Texas high school coaches.
Over drinks at the convention's annual social hour, he shook plenty of hands and spent most of the evening delving into the X's and O's of tight ends play on napkins.
"I don't know any other way," Traylor said. "I didn't know there was such thing as a vacation."
https://www.campusrush.com/notre-dame-college-football-playoff-texas-charlie-strong-1324762670.html
