Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

Jake Bequette is a prime example why fans, sportswriters and amateur recruiting analysts should leave the business of recruiting and evaluating to the people paid for its eventual success or failure: college coaches.

Forget for a minute that the name Bequette is famous in Arkansas Razorback annals, though bloodlines are always a consideration in evaluating a recruit.

For if someone simply watched Little Rock Catholic football games in 2005-06 and didn’t know anything else about Jake Bequette or his bloodlines, all that person would have seen was a gangly 6-foot-5 kid who didn’t start playing football until ninth grade and who didn’t always know his way around the field as a defensive lineman or tight end.

Future defensive star in the best college conference in the nation? No way, one surely would have said.

Bequette didn’t make the All-Arkansas high school all-star lists for his play, and the national recruiting services didn’t bestow four- or five-star honors on him either.

College recruiters, such as Arkansas recruiting coordinator Tim Horton, who was at Kansas State when Bequette was in high school, don’t base their judgment on one Friday night, or even a series of them, especially when it comes to linemen.

Factors such as frame, strength and the speed that may not be evident to a fan sitting in the stands come into play. Some recruiters have a knack of spotting the right work ethic away from the field, and some can make a great guess at the size of a young man’s heart and desire.

Then, of course, coaches look at the genetics, which in Jake Bequette’s case meant a father, Jay, who was All-Southwest Conference as a center in the 1980s, and an uncle, Chris, another outstanding UA offensive lineman. Grandfather George began the Bequette legacy as a Hog as well.

They term all that as “projection” when it comes to recruiting, and to Horton, Jake Bequette projected well. That’s why Kansas State offered Bequette a scholarship after his junior year at Catholic High. J.B. Grimes, who was at Mississippi State then but had coached the offensive line at Arkansas in the early 1990s, also offered the young, unproven Bequette, who had all but arrived in the world wearing a Hog jersey.

“My father was a very good player up here,” Jake said recently. “He was always on my side, no matter what, wherever I wanted to go. We both came to the decision that if Arkansas ever offered, I would commit the next day. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Horton would land on Houston Nutt’s last staff in 2007, then stay when Bobby Petrino was named head coach in December 2007, and he’s glad now that Bequette was one K-State recruit he didn’t get. Nutt, Bequette remembers, had a No. 54 jersey waiting for him — “I thought, ‘Man, I’m probably going to be an offensive guard or something,” he said — but Bequette’s speed for defensive line was undeniable. All that was needed was for his body to catch up and for the defensive light to turn on.

After redshirting in 2007, Bequette was thrown to the wolves as a second-year freshman defensive end against powerful Alabama. A year later, in the second half against Alabama, he says he felt everything come together in terms of how to play: “low-pad level, playing fast,” he said.