Recently, I read the transcript of an interview with West Virginia University football coach Dana Holgorsen following a spring practice.
What I found interesting was when the subject came to recruiting.
Holgorsen mentioned just two states - and he mentioned them several times - Florida and Texas.
Welcome to a new era in Mountaineer football recruiting.
Holgorsen knows if you are going to go for the gold, you must go where the gold is.
So he plans to make concerted efforts to mine talent-rich Texas and Florida, while still trying to pluck the best players from traditional recruiting areas such as western Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and the occasional D-1 talent in the Mountain State.
The timing couldn't be better. West Virginia got a lot of mileage out of its dominating win over Clemson in the Orange Bowl.
The Mountaineers regularly are appearing in preseason top 10 lists for this fall.
Recruits want to play for a winner. They want to play in a major bowl game. WVU offers both.
The other good news that came out of the interview is the continued progress of Parkersburg lineman Josh Jenkins, who is doing well in spring drills.
Jenkins missed all of last season, which would have been his senior year in Morgantown. Now, he's back for what will be his senior season and that is a major boost for the offensive line, where he was a fixture until getting injured in last year's spring game.
Speaking of WVU players from Parkersburg, when Holgorsen was asked about special teams, he quickly focused on longsnapping and heaped praised on Parkersburg South graduate Cody Nutter, who flawlessly performed that duty. Let's hope Nutter's successor is as talented and goes as unnoticed as did Nutter. The only time the longsnapper gets a lot of fan and media attention is when a snap goes wrong, which Nutter's never did.
Leach said Monday the only person who has expressed an interest in the position is assistant coach Gary Porter.
Porter not only would be an extremely popular choice with South fans, but he also would be able to keep together coach Paul Jackson's staff.
There have been many rumors regarding this high-interest position.
It's likely there will be many more.
I was going to do that this week, but there is no need for me to do so, because Kerry's picks are the same as mine: the Rays to win the East, the Tigers to run away with the Central and the Angels to win the West and the AL pennant.
