Home away from home

TUSCALOOSA | When the day finally arrived in 2005, Baron Huber could only roll his eyes when the principal of Powell High School in Knoxville put a University of Tennessee cover over the desk where he would sign his letter of intent for the University of Alabama.

He probably should have seen it coming. When then-Crimson Tide coach Mike Shula had visited the school, most of the teachers made sure to wear orange.

Even Huber’s father, Kevin, kind of looked at him a little funny and asked, “Are you sure?” when his son first told him he wanted to play football for that rival, and dreaded, school from the South. Huber’s response was that his parents had to go with him to the Capstone, just one time, to understand why.

“When we got back, they said, ‘If you don’t go there, you have a problem,’” Huber said with a laugh.

So much for the Naval Academy, where he seemed destined to attend and play for coach Paul Johnson, especially after growing up in a family with Navy ties.

“That was kind of big for my family,” Huber said. “But I couldn’t offer to pass up an offer from Alabama.”

Huber isn’t alone. Alabama has four other players who hail from Tennessee: defensive back Tremayne Coger (Columbia), linebacker Brandon Fanney (Morristown), linebacker Darren Mustin (Brentwood), and linebacker Travis Sikes (Nashville). Defensive lineman Alex Watkins (Brownsville) is longer on the team, effective this week, or it would have been a fifth.

It wasn’t long ago that seeing a recruit cross that state border wasn’t considered much of a big deal, especially since Memphis is considerably closer to Tuscaloosa than Knoxville. However, more often than not it’s been the other way around, guys heading north, primarily due to necessity on the part of the Volunteers.

Tennessee simply doesn’t have the same number of prime recruits as many other states, like Alabama, where many of the UT coaches have longstanding ties.

“There’s such intertwined relationships for so long, that’s obviously part of the whole scenario,” Volunteers coach Phillip Fulmer said.

This year’s squad alone boasts players from 23 states and the District of Columbia, and last year’s recruiting class had commitments from California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. In similar fashion, so far UT’s Class of 2008 has more out-of-state names than those homegrown.

With numerous neighboring, or at least nearby, states with talent to harvest, Tennessee has traditionally had a lot of territory to target. Many of the program’s biggest names originally hail from elsewhere, like John Michaels (Pennsylvania), Gene McEver (Virginia, although he was born in Birmingham), and Ed Molinksi (Ohio).

But look again at those states. They include South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois, which all have college football programs on the rise, in addition to well-established recruiting strongholds like Georgia and Alabama.

No longer are they, or cities like Atlanta and Mobile, considered prime raiding ground for the Volunteers, thanks in part to the hiring of coaches like Steve Spurrier and Mark Richt, who immediately tried to clamp down on the departure of local talent.

Tennessee has had some recent success in Alabama, especially when the Crimson Tide was on probation, including offensive lineman Aaron Sears from Russellville, wide receiver Jayson Swain from Huntsville, defensive back Jason Allen from Muscle Shoals, and defensive tackle Wes Brown out of Athens

“Living in Alabama and growing up a Tennessee fan, I have heard it all of my life,” Brown told Rivals.com after giving his commitment. “They have just tried to start a bunch of stuff like telling me they heard this or that about Tennessee.”

But Brown is one of only three Alabama natives on the current Volunteers’ roster.

On the flip side, Alabama naturally hits its own turf the hardest, where it already has to compete with Auburn on a daily basis, never mind trying to keep top recruits from making a run for the border to play for the competition.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with Tennessee,” UA coach Nick Saban said. “We’re going to recruit in a five-hour radius, and that certainly includes a large part of Tennessee. We feel there are good football players there. We’re going to do the best we can to try to sell our program to them.

“They’ve got tradition and they do a lot of national recruiting, so we want to do a good job of having a good program so that the players in our state can see that they have a great opportunity to play in their home state at a great institution that has great football tradition that’s going to have a successful football program. I think all those things are important to be successful in recruiting.”

Consequently, Alabama is in the running for Barrett Jones, who is expected to visit the Capstone this weekend. The offensive lineman (6-foot-5, 271 pounds) from Evangelical Christian in Memphis is considered by many to be his state’s top prospect. In addition to Alabama, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, Florida and North Carolina are also thought to be in the mix.

However, Alabama didn’t exactly beat out Tennessee for most of its veteran players who happen to hail from the Volunteer State.

“Tennessee didn’t even offer me a scholarship,” Fanney said. Considering he had to go the prep school route to become academically eligible, most friends and family at home don’t give him too much lip service about playing for the Tide.

“Everyone’s just happy that I’m in school still,” he said.

It’s a little different for Mustin. Among his 13 brothers and sisters, his older sister Dametria graduated from Tennessee in 2003, and one of his little brothers still roots for the Volunteers.

“She starts talking about it, I just go: ‘OK, bye,’ he said. “She says she’s a Darren fan and a UT fan. I’m still trying to figure out what that means. She’ll come and have my jersey on, and UT socks or something. She does that every week.

“I love her to death, but I just want to win so I can tell her to her face. We’ll see.”

Mustin used to visit his sister on the UT campus, and although he liked the parties never found himself becoming a Vols fan. He wasn’t recruited by Tennessee, and attended Middle Tennessee State before transferring to Alabama.

“All the games have been important to me, but this one’s huge in my book,” he said. “Everywhere you go, it’s either orange … or orange in Tennessee.”

Huber was recruited some by Tennessee, but not nearly as strongly as Alabama, even after making a high-profile switch between Knoxville high schools after his junior year. It actually brought a lot more grief from football fans than signing with the Tide.

“Coach [Sparky] Woods came to my school looking for another player, and my high school coach was, ‘You really need to take a look at him.’ Huber said. “He gave him my number and he called me and invited me down for a camp. I was down here for a whole day and we practiced twice, and afterward he said I think we’re going to offer you a scholarship. I sent him some film and two weeks later I had the official offer.

“Even though we might not have always liked Alabama, we always respected [the players] for the way they played, how hard they played and the sportsmanship they always showed. It’s just great to be part of this tradition now.”

As a junior, Huber was a defensive end for Central High School, where he made 112 tackles and two interceptions, and forced six fumbled with one recovery. After switching to middle linebacker at Powell, he had comparable numbers with more than 120 tackles, six forced fumbles and three recoveries.

But that’s also when Huber got his first taste of playing fullback. Playing in short-yardage situations, he scored five touchdowns — four receiving and one rushing.

“The hardest thing was learning how to block,” he said. “It’s easy to run up and hit someone on defense. On offense there’s a lot of technique involved, there’s where do you put your head on a block when you run certain plays, to be able to let the back see a seam differently. There’s a lot more involved than I thought, because in high school I was just running a lot and hit someone as hard as I could and put them on their back. It’s not like that in college.. You have bigger players and you have to work your technique to put on a good block.”

A final selling point was when Shula took time away from his family to meet with Huber’s. It made a strong impression, and the family went home to Knoxville and sold all their Tennessee gear in a garage sale.

“It’s pretty fun when I go home because I know everybody up there and everyone up there is a Tennessee fan,” he said. “Everybody in my family is pretty much an Alabama fan, I have one uncle that we’re still working on. Of course, some people get mad and go, ‘Why didn’t you go to Tennessee?’

“I always make sure I wear my Alabama stuff so people know I’m in town. It doesn’t matter where you go, you walk into a grocery store and five or six people are, ‘What are you doing with that Alabama shirt on.’ It sticks out like a sore thumb.”

Reach Christopher Walsh at christopher.walsh@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0196.