Texas Tech Football: Why McLane Carter is not the popular choice for QB

Carter was not a prized recruit

In the past decade, college football recruiting has become almost as popular as the game itself as die-hard fans follow their team’s efforts on the recruiting trail year-round.  As such, fans often develop an infatuation with top recruits long before those players ever step foot on campus.

For many fans, national signing day is a second Christmas.  But players that are not highly-rated recruits or, as in the case of McLane Carter, are unknown transfers that show up at the  bottom the the singing class roster without any fanfare are disregarded by the fan base as a whole.

Carter was a productive QB in high school who led his Gilmer, Texas squad to a 4A-Division II state title in 2014 but his best offer that year came from FCS weakling Incarnate Word. Compare that to the high school career of Jett Duffey who won a handful of the most prestigious awards in the state including the Tom Landry Award and was part of Nike Elite 11 QB completion in the summer prior to his senior season.

Likewise, Alan Bowman was far more touted as a prospect than Carter.  A top-100 recruit in the state in 2018, Bowman was ranked as a top-30 quarterback in the nation.

The point is not to take anything away from Carter simply because he was overlooked as a high school recruit.  In fact, that makes his story more compelling and should somewhat endear him to Red Raider fans.

But none-the-less, a lack of hype surrounding his arrival at Texas Tech made Carter nothing but an afterthought until last year when Nic Shimonek struggled in the second half of the season.  Fans that have been waiting for the Jett Duffey era to being since he committed to the Red Raiders in 2016 or who had come to follow the high school career of Alan Bowman want to see the players they’ve been tracking since high school finally realize their potential at the next level.

No one was anxiously awaiting the McLane Carter era.  When he transferred in from Tyler J.C., Carter was as anonymous as any recruit in the Kingsbury era.

We haven’t heard for years about Carter’s potential and we didn’t follow his high school career.  There has been no anticipation of what he could eventually bring to Texas Tech so it makes sense that fans who have been closely following Jett Duffey and Alan Bowman for months and even years are disappointed that they still may not get to see those one-time star recruits in action.