Kansas University’s football program on Saturday survived the second cut from highly recruited Hiawatha High standout Peyton Newell.
Newell, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound defensive tackle ranked by Rivals.com as the fourth-best prospect in Kansas in the Class of 2014, trimmed his top six schools to four via Twitter.
Making the cut were KU, Kansas State, Nebraska and South Carolina. Falling out of the running were Georgia and USC.
Newell’s new list is the second trimmed-down version of his original 34-school list. Of those 34 — dozens more showed interest early on — more than 30 were BCS programs, with nearly the entire Big 12 and Big Ten offering Newell scholarships.
Newell said the prospects of early playing time and quality relationships with the coaches played a key role in his recruitment to this point, and both were a big reason KU made the cut. Another thing that helped KU was the fact that Newell comes from a KU family. Both of his parents went to KU along with nearly 20 other relatives.
Newell plans to announce his pick on Aug. 30.
