Charlie McBride talks recruiting

My brother Scott sent this to me in an e-mail. It was from an interview in 2006. I am not sure of the source. The most impressive performance I have ever seen in the Red-White game was Terry Rodgers. This was before he got hurt.

Interesting quotes from old Charlie Mcbride... If anyone has forgotten:

HP: Do you have any recruiting stories about some of the athletes you
recruited?

CM: The best story I have is when I went to North High School in
Wichita, Kansas to recruit a young man who was a friend of ex-husker
Jeff Smith. Jeff now lives in Wichita and works in the justice system.
He's a parole officer. Through the years Jeff has gotten to be really
good friends with this one particular kid and, I didn't know this, but
the player came up to me and said, coach, I'm so and so and I really
want to go to Nebraska. He said Jeff has been one of my friends and he's
talked to me about Nebraska. He got his degree there and that's what I
really want to do. I looked at the kid and he was just a little guy. I
look at this film and I'm saying to myself, you know we need to
scholarship this guy. He was probably 155 ? 160 pounds, probably 5'9".
So I went back and showed Tom the film and he said, Charlie we can't
recruit him. He said we're bringing in Johnny Rogers' son and we cannot
take two small running backs. We just can't do it. So I went and turned
the kid down. His name was Barry Sanders. So I'm famous for turning
Barry Sanders down and a lot of people through the years called me a lot
of names, but of course after they read this segment, they may call me
more. It was bad because Johnny's son Terry got hurt and never really
played much. Barry Sanders was like trying to tackle an eel. The guy was
probably the best back I ever saw, as far as running the football.
We were at Oklahoma State and the teams both went to the same movie
theater. After the show Thurman Thomas, Oklahoma State's running back
actually came on our bus. Broderick Thomas and Neil Smith were sitting
up in the front of the bus. Thurman said "there's nobody on this bus
that can take me one on one." I remember Neil Smith saying, "Well we
believe that, but there's eleven of us that can". In the third quarter
he had seven yards rushing and they put Sanders in and he had 77 in the
fourth quarter. I looked at Tom and said "that's the guy we turned down"
and he just shook his head and said, "Yeah I see that." Then we had to
put up with him for the next three years or so.