Texas Football: Mookie Cooper bringing Longhorns interest back?
Positive news keeps falling for the Texas football program on the recruiting trail of late, with the most recent coming from Mookie Cooper.
Potentially the biggest detriment to the 2020 Texas football recruiting class thus far during the 2019 college football off-season was the decommitment of four-star St. Louis, MO, athlete Mookie Cooper. He decommitted from the 2020 Texas football recruiting class less than two months after he gave his original pledge to the program.
The original source it seemed that pulled Cooper away from his Texas football commitment was former Chicago Bears head coach Lovie Smith and the Illinois Fighting Illini. The decommitment from Cooper hovered around the same time between as a key visit to Illinois. The Fighting Illini are also present among his five finalist schools that were announced on June 4.
Cooper has finalist schools spread geographically all around the map. His other finalists, outside of Texas football and Illinois, include the Ohio State Buckeyes, USC Trojans, and Miami Hurricanes. Ohio State, Illinois, and Texas could emerge as a potential top three for Cooper too.
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There might not be a single player in the nation for the 2020 recruiting cycle that has more elusiveness, foot speed, and/or agility than Cooper. He’ll be able to make a load of opposing defenders look stupid right away when he makes the jump to playing college ball.
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The 247Sports Crystal Ball Predictions give Illinois the edge to land the commitment from Cooper ulimately. The schools that fell in line behind the Fighting Illini in the Crystal Ball Predictions included the Texas Longhorns football program, Ohio State, a two experts that were listed as “undecided”.
With the Crystal Ball Predictions appearing to be pretty unrefined now, Cooper could still be anyone’s prospect. Illinois and Texas hold previous ties to him, so those two could have a leg up right now. But Ohio State and Miami have a lot of momentum on the recruiting trail right now under respective first-year head coaches with Ryan Day and Manny Diaz.
However, Coopper did have a number of visits lined up lately, and still has one left for the month of June. USC will host Cooper for an official visit on June 21. Ohio State recently had Cooper on campus for an unofficial visit on May 18. The other programs that hosted Cooper of late for unofficial visits were the Oklahoma Sooners and LSU Tigers.
What could appeal to Cooper about landing with the Longhorns now is the fact that Bru McCoy up and went back to USC after putting his name in the NCAA Transfer Portal twice already this off-season. There is now a big opening in the receiving corps that wasn’t there when Cooper first gave his commitment to head Texas football coach Tom Herman.
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Overall, Cooper ranks as the nation’s No. 66 2020 high school prospect and the No. 12 wide receiver. This 5-foot-8.5 and 195 pound Trinity Catholic product had to trim out more than 25 schools to narrow down his decision to the five finalists he chose on June 4. Texas is still in the running for him, despite his weird recruiting timeline thus far.