LIKE IT IS : Petrino, staff hustle up a solid recruiting class

After the majority of faxes had been received from recruits, Bobby Petrino voluntarily made the rounds on talk radio shows around the state.

He was open, honest and candid. He was also direct and to the point with little if any levity, which seems to be his mode of operation, and that’s OK, too.

When he goes on the greenbean banquet tour this spring, expect to like the guy.

As far as talking about his first Arkansas recruiting class, one of the questions he was asked on Sportsrap was how much attention does he pay to the ratings of prospects.

“We go more on our own evaluations than those of others,” he said.

While at Louisville, where he won the Orange Bowl, he signed a lot of two- and three-star players and won with them.

When you consider that 57 of the first 100 players taken in the 2007 NFL Draft had been a three-star player or less coming out of high school, you understand why he has to trust his and his staff’s eyes more than those of recruiting sites.

In fact, there was some very real discrepancy this year among the top three in ranking the classes in the SEC.

On Tuesday, the day before signing day, our man Richard Davenport, the Recruiting Guy, was asked if the Razorbacks ’ class was in the top third, the middle third or the last third in the SEC.

“Definitely in the middle, but in the top half of that,” he said.

He was right according to two of the three recruiting sites.

Tom Lemming of CSTV. com had the Razorbacks a very solid No. 6, as did Scout. com.

Rivals, though, had the Hogs No. 9. Maybe those guys who do the national rankings are Atlanta Falcons fans, which would explain why they ranked this class 37 th in the country compared to No. 26 by Lemming, No. 23 by Scout and No. 18 by ESPN.

If you took the combined rankings of all three just in the SEC, the Razorbacks were a strong No. 6, ahead of South Carolina, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Kentucky and Vanderbilt.

Which still seems a little amazing considering Petrino was hired by the Hogs on Dec. 11, just three days before recruiting was virtually shut down by the NCAA for the holidays and bowls.

Yet, Petrino, Tim Horton and Petrino’s brother Paul went into overdrive, and what they did was lay the foundation to recruit a very good class, not just salvage one.

Granted, this was an exceptional year in the state of Arkansas. It isn’t every year the Natural State has 15 naturally gifted athletes like this one.

Almost as soon as Houston Nutt resigned, Camden and Warren were suddenly on every major college’s radar. Yet, every young man Petrino made an in-home visit with signed with the Razorbacks on Wednesday.

Whether the class was ranked fairly at No. 6 or awfully at No. 9, what Petrino and his staff did was recruit for need.

The Hogs have a lot of holes to fill before next fall.

“We knew what we needed, and that’s what we focused on,” said recruiting coordinator Horton, who also made the rounds on talk radio.

So the first class was solid, and now the battle begins for Petrino to get the returning players to understand that he and his way are different.

The mandatory breakfast rule was a start, and wearing coats and ties on road trips was a move in the direction of a Florida, Alabama, Auburn or Georgia.

They probably need to know there won’t be a lot of clowning around on flights, either.

Petrino appears to be a football coach 24-7-365. That obviously appealed to the recruits, and it should to the returning lettermen, too.

By the way, in response to a question about this being his 10 th stop in a 24-year career, Petrino declared: “This is a beautiful state and the people have been unbelievable.” Lastly, Petrino is from Montana, not Wyoming, like someone (me ) wrote Wednesday.