State standout has faith in Mangino

By David Mitchell     Feb 5, 2003

John Randle has faith that Mark Mangino can turn Kansas University’s football team into a winner.

The all-state player from Wichita Southeast High feels so strongly about KU’s chances with the second-year head coach that he will sign a national letter of intent with the Jayhawks today, spurning scholarship offers from more established programs like Colorado, Michigan State, Kansas State and Missouri.

Randle narrowed his choices to Kansas and K-State before picking KU last weekend.

“I prayed about it,” Randle said. “I’m in church and things like that, and that’s what God gave me. That’s what it came down to. I know they’re not the best right now, but I have faith they’re going to come up and win some games. I want to be part of that.”

Signing Randle was important for Mangino, who has stressed the need for KU to recruit well in Kansas and the Kansas City metro area.

KU had an oral commitment from the top-rated player in the metro — Kansas City Schlagle’s Rashaad Norwood — at one time, but the tight end was one of five recruits who committed to Kansas and later changed their minds.

Oral commitments are nonbinding. Recruits are not tied to a school until they sign letters of intent, making today one of the most important days of the year for college coaches.

The top-rated player in the state, Conway Springs tight end Josh Barbo, picked Missouri over KU and others. Landing Randle gives KU the third-rated player in the state and the 31st-ranked cornerback in the nation, according to rivals.com.

“Randle is huge,” said Jon Kirby of rivals.com and Mo-Kan Football. “In the rivals.com rankings we were going back and forth back in the summer whether we would make Randle or Barbo the top prospect in the state. He’s a super athlete. He can play on either side of the ball. He has Big 12 (Conference) ability as a running back or defensive back.”

The recruitment of Randle pitted Mangino against his former boss, Kansas State head Bill Snyder. Both coaches made home visits in Wichita, but Randle said Mangino took a more active role in his recruitment.

Defensive coordinator Bill Young was KU’s lead recruiter on Randle, but Mangino also made calls to the Southeast standout.

“Coach Mangino called me personally, and that made me feel pretty good,” Randle said.

Randle also was swayed by the fact that Kansas has a law school, and he might be able to make an impact on the field earlier in his career with a rebuilding team.

“I was looking at K-State with bowl games, TV time, good academics,” he said. “They’ve got their program already stabilized. They’ve put a lot of people into the NFL. I was looking at all that, and it made it hard because at KU I felt more comfortable.”

Find out which players sign national letters of intent today to play for Kansas football coach Mark Mangino, in Thursday’s Journal-World.

It didn’t hurt that one of Randle’s best friends was his host on his December campus visit. He had played two years with KU freshman running back Jerome Kemp at Southeast.

Randle and Kemp both played running back and defensive back at Southeast and they could be competing for playing time again as Jayhawks.

“If we’re both good we’ll both be in there,” said Randle, who rushed for 1,757 yards as a senior. “KU has a lot of two-back sets. I don’t have a problem with that. The better person will play more, and we know that. We dealt with that at Wichita Southeast.”

Despite having a handful of recruits change their commitments, KU’s class was ranked 33rd in the nation by rivals.com Tuesday night. The Jayhawks had ranked as high as 29th before plummeting into the 40s after the string of decommitments.

“KU’s coaches put on a major rally this weekend and picked up five or six commitments,” Kirby said. “Now it looks like they have a chance of making a run back near the top 30.

“It’s unfortunate that the news breaks and there’s a few kids that decommit, and that’s kind of the news. That took away from how solid this class is. It’s extremely solid considering the fact Kansas is coming off a 2-10 season. If this is the type of recruiting effort these coaches are going to give and these are the types of players they can bring in during the staff’s first full year of recruiting, than I would say there are a lot of bright signs for the future of this program.”

Kansas signed two junior college transfers before the spring semester, and 10 of the 24 athletes expected to sign today are junior college players.

“They may have landed the best junior college class in the United States,” Kirby said.

PREV POST

Tigers 'really hung in there'

NEXT POST

2681State standout has faith in Mangino