Gulliver 5-star WR Jalen Brown gears up for busy end to June. ‘It’s a pretty open book’
At one point, Jalen Brown hoped these would be something close to the final days of his recruitment.
The process has gone on for a long time for the elite recruit from Gulliver Prep. He got his first scholarship offer — from the hometown Miami Hurricanes — before he even started high school. He saw coaches leave from some of his favorite schools and recruiting landscape change with the rise of name, image and likeness deals. The five-star wide receiver was ready to be done with it by the end of the summer, hoping to knock out most of his official visits in June and have a decision made by the start of his senior year.
“It’s a pretty open book,” said Brown, who’s Miami-Dade County’s No. 1 prospect in the 247Sports.com composite rankings for the Class of 2023.
A run to the Class 2A championship in track and field, and then a trip to Las Vegas with the Miami Immortals for the inaugural OT7 7-on-7 tournament over weekend meant Brown hasn’t been able to spend the spring crisscrossing the United States like he hoped. He’ll finally get to start this weekend as he wraps up June with a pair of official visits in the next two weeks.
First up will be a trip to Louisiana to visit the LSU Tigers. He’ll then close out the month by taking another official visit with the Michigan Wolverines during the weekend of June 25.
It’ll leave Brown with three more official visits to use in the fall and he said he doesn’t have any of those locked in yet. The Hurricanes, Florida State Seminoles, Florida Gators, Georgia Bulldogs, Texas A&M Aggies, Tennessee Volunteers and Texas Longhorns are all contenders for those final three trips, he said.
“It’s a pretty good list,” he said. “I’ve got time to figure it out.”
Miami is still the frontrunner, according to 247Sports’ Crystal Ball, and he was back in Coral Gables for an unofficial visit Wednesday, running some routes in the 1-on-1 portion of a Mario Cristobal Football Camp at Greentree Practice Fields.
Although Brown hasn’t committed to an official visit with the Hurricanes, no one gets the 6-foot-1, 170-pound wideout on campus more frequently than Miami. The visit Wednesday was his second of June and he also visited the Hurricanes at least once in April, at least three times in March and at least twice in January.
Michigan is probably the out-of-state school he’s most familiar with at this point, having gone up to Ann Arbor multiple times already.
Instead, the real meat of his recruitment is just beginning. The visit later this month will mostly be about just solidifying his comfort level, especially since former offensive coordinator Josh Gattis was long his primary recruiter before he left for the same job at Miami in February.
“I”m pretty comfortable,” Brown said. “I’ve been there like two or three times already.”
At LSU, Brown has to learn about how an all-new coaching staff is acquitting itself in Baton Rouge after the Tigers plucked coach Brian Kelly away from the Notre Dame Fighting Irish late last year.
LSU actually gave Brown his second offer back in 2019 and Brown has some familiarity with Kelly because he was recruiting him at Notre Dame, but Brown is still viewing this weekend as a learning experience.
“It’s a whole new coaching staff,” he said.
Although Brown’s busy spring means he’ll likely wait until at least late summer to make a decision, the blue-chip receiver still said he’d like to commit “probably sooner rather than later, so we can get everything situated with the college process — the outside-of-football college process.”
He also has a hard deadline of December because he plans to early enroll, which means he’ll sign during the early signing period.
“My family — they pretty much gave me the green light at any time,” Brown said, “so whenever I feel like that’s the school I want to go to, then I’ll make the decision.”
