New receiver must produce early

Of all the BYU football recruits harvested this week, Texas prep receiver McKay Jacobson will come under the earliest scrutiny.

He's already onboard doing offseason workouts on campus and going to school after graduating early from 5A Texas champion Southlake Carroll High School.

This recruiting deal is an interesting game. Fans are interested. Coaches work hard doing it. Nobody ever admits they had a stinky recruiting effort. Never seen a press conference with that as the theme.

We see lists created by recruiting services that place stars by names of players, categorizing them like beef in a market locker. Hatched from spring and summer camp databases, created by so-called experts and tweaked after recruiting coordinators say off-the-record what they think of players, the tags are often meaningless.

What really counts is two or three years down the road when we can really see who is good and who isn't; what big linemen who dominated undersized high school prey can actually do among guys their own strength and size.

Still, anyone can be hyped. It's that season.

Jacobson will weigh in during BYU's spring football practice. Early as it is, he'll be under the microscope. In the absence of graduating Todd Watkins, he'll get a crack at playing time at wideout — if he can carry his high school resume and convert it to Division I action out of the chute.

Jacobson didn't get to be the Texas 5A receiver of the year beating up on weaklings. This side of Florida, Texas football is played at a different level than the rest of America. Jacobson's Dragons went 16-0 last year, beating Katy High in Texas Stadium on national TV last December. Southlake Carroll was declared national high school champion for the second straight year by six of seven polls that designate such a thing.

While playing for Southlake, Jacobson's Dragons went 63-1 since turning 5A. The last time they lost was to Katy in 2003 by one point, 16-15, in the state championship game. As a sophomore, Jacobson caught 67 passes for 952 yards and eight touchdowns. In his junior year, shortened by injury, he had 35 catches for 459 yards and three TDs. This past year he rebounded as a senior, leading Southlake with more than 99 catches for 1,631 yards and 19 touchdowns.

Defenders he went up against went to national champion Texas, Texas A&M, MWC champion TCU and other schools in the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10. His quarterback, Greg McElroy, reportedly de-committed to Texas Tech and signed with Alabama.