Q: What are the major needs in recruiting this year for the Aggies?

Cassidy: The fact we're losing three of our four secondary people, (defensive backs) would be a priority for sure. And the fact you lose two starting corners and a free safety who have played a bunch of football. and the fact we signed only two true corners last year, and those two guys ,with the exception of Jay Brooks, are the only guys coming back next year. That's a position where a guy could come in and easily help. We're trying to sell guys that, at the worst, you're going to come in and be a backup.

In our situation, where we play so many nickel and dime packages, we play six defensive backs at a time. So that's going to be real important.

We're losing four of our top eight receivers, so that's going to be a priority, as well.

Q: How many kids are you looking to sign?

Cassidy: Right now, we've got 20 seniors on our team. Based on that, you could sign at least 20 players. If you have any kind of attrition at all, where you lose somebody to injuries, academics or somebody becomes discontent with their playing time, obviously that would add to the number (of scholarships).

Q: Will A&M sign a quarterback just to sign one, or could the Aggies pass on that position this year?

Cassidy: Our situation at quarterback with Randy being a senior and having three guys with four years of eligibility. if a guy fits what we were looking for, we would take a quarterback. But we wouldn't sign a quarterback just for the sake of taking a quarterback.

Q: What position in the state of Texas is really deep with quality prospects, and what's not so deep?

Cassidy: The two positions that are hardest to fill across the board are defensive linemen and defensive backs, particularly cornerbacks. So there's a big premium put on those guys. I wouldn't say there is a weak position this year, but I would say those are the two hardest positions to fill year in and year out.

Sometimes those guys who end up being defensive backs come from other positions. You look at a guy like Ray Mickens. His senior year in high school, he was the Offensive Player of the Year in El Paso. Aaron Glenn in high school was a running back.

Q: How does the staff decide which high school games to scout on Friday nights in the fall?

Cassidy: Each guy has his recruiting area, and he's obviously responsible for those guys in his area. (Each coach) can only go out nine times in September, October and November to evaluate prospects. Of course, with our road game schedule, you may not be able to make all nine times.

We're really looking hard at cornerbacks, so we're trying to make sure in each area that a coach has checked all those guys.

And a lot of times it's very hard to evaluate certain positions on tape. In those cases, you have to try to go to games.

We took some time and looked at California players during the open date. That was practical during that time because we weren't practicing.

Q: Is there another big push to recruiting in California this year?

Cassidy: It's an area that has a good number of prospects in it. It's an area we're always going to look into to evaluate prospects. We've always looked at California and any out-of-state prospect if they've got some ties to Texas. The guys we signed last year all had some kind of connection back to Texas. The same problem we run into in this state happens in California, as well, when you get some young men who have followed A&M and really want to leave the state.

We try to do enough homework early on to find out which kids have a sincere interest in A&M. It's obviously harder to recruit California because of the lack of proximity.

Q: When you sit down after National Signing Day and evaluate what went wrong and what went right during recruiting, is there something you feel the A&M staff needs to improve on?

Cassidy: You always can get better. Our recruiting is an on-going process. On game day, we're already entertaining juniors and sophomores. On signing day, we sit down as a staff and evaluate the things we did on official visits, the things we did with mailouts and the evaluation process. The most critical part of the recruiting process is the evaluation.

I think it's interesting that you see a lot of publicity for the guys we turned down, but you don't read about the hundreds of guys we turned down, went to other places and weren't successful.

The most noticeable (story) this year is the fact that we did not offer Drew Brees. At that point in time, the guys we evaluated at the quarterback position we felt they could come in and help our team probably moreso than what Drew could have done. With the success Drew has had, it's easy to go back and look what he's done for Purdue. And their situation is different than ours. They drop back and throw the ball 50 or 60 times a game, and that's not the case in our traditional past.

Obviously, you'd like to go back and say we'd like to have that guy. But we don't get that option.

Q: Still, Brees has battered A&M a little bit in the press because the Aggies passed on him. Does that frustrate you?

Cassidy: No, not really. Just by coincidence, I actually talked to his mother a couple of weeks ago. I remember at that time, we looked very closely at him and thought he was a really good football player, and he obviously had ties to Texas A&M. But at that point in time, we elected to go with another guy. As things turned out, it would have been better to have Drew in the program, but who knows how it would have worked out. That's just part of it.

We literally go through 1,200 guys who went to play for Oklahoma or Oklahoma State, but you get one Drew Brees or one Wane McGarity. That's part of the business. we're in a profession where our mistakes are widely known.

I would say based on our overall record since 1989, I'd say we're doing a good job. Are we doing as good a job as we can? We're working to improve that every day. I feel fortunate that R.C. (Slocum) is demanding about recruiting, knows how important recruiting is and knows our lifeline is based on how successful we are in recruiting.

Q: Looking back on your time at A&M, is there one day that sticks out when a bunch of kids committed or that one day when the phone rang and it was that big-time recruit saying he was coming to Aggieland?

Cassidy: I remember very vividly in Rudder Tower when Sam Adams committed to Coach Slocum over the phone. I also remember the two or three days leading up to Rodney Thomas coming to Texas A&M when he had committed to us and somehow was persuaded to change his mind to go to LSU. We had no more opportunities to go see him because of the quiet period, and so we were just doing everything we could by phone. Those were trying times.

Q: What's the most disappointing aspect of recruiting?

Cassidy: Probably the most disappointing thing about recruiting is that as good of football is played in Texas at the high school and college level and the quality of education a kid can get in the state of Texas, it's very disappointing to me to see a young man who is just bound and determined to go out of state. There is not a month go by that we don't get a phone call from a disgruntled guy who went on to XYZ University. Why a young man would have to leave to get national recognition, play in bowl games, play in front of 70,000 people, play on TV. you don't have to go. In most cases all that is within three hours of your home.

Q: R.C. Slocum has said that A&M's recruiting budget is probably the most economical in the country because of its proximity to the talented playing fields of Texas. Would you attest to that?

Cassidy: The majority of our kids come from the state of Texas, so in most cases, our coaches are in a car or, in the worst case, they are flying to Midland or Amarillo.

Q: How does a program like Nebraska, which is located far away from the epicenter of recruiting, cover the nation and afford to travel all over the nation?

Cassidy: A lot of times (Nebraska's) coaches will leave out on a Thursday night to get to a high school to watch a game. I know personally, from knowing the Nebraska coaches, when they flew down here last year for our game, they flew in with the team plane and then chartered private planes all over Texas. A lot of schools have access to private planes. We do use our school airplanes on occasion to visit prospects, but a majority of ours is done on a quick commercial flight to Dallas or going to Houston in a car.

It's not uncommon for R.C. to work here all day long on Friday, go to practice and drive to Houston or Austin to go see a prospect. Not many other head coaches do that, so that's how much recruiting means to him.

Q: Is there another No. 1 class out there for the Aggies, like the one they signed in 1987?

Cassidy: You really want to judge a recruiting class four or five years after they've been here. We have really over the years tried to stay away from the hoopla about the No. 1 class. There's a lot of danger when you have the No. 1 recruiting class when they don't produce. What we want to do is bring the kids who meet our qualifications, not those of Joe Jones' Recruiting Service. We have to base it on what our experts think. Our experts are the running back coach or tight ends coach at A&M.

Q: Tom Lemming, a highly respected recruiting analyst, recently ranked you in an ESPN.com story as one of the top 10 recruiting assistants in the country. How did that make you feel?

Cassidy: That's based on years at Texas A&M. That's based on being part of Southwest Conference championship teams back in the '80s with Coach Sherrill and conference championships with Coach Slocum. No. 1, it goes back to what the university has to offer; No. 2, it goes back to the head coach and his commitment to recruiting; and No. 3, it goes back to the nine assistant coaches who are actually doing the work. I'm a facilitator, and I just happen to be with Coach Slocum, a mainstay in this position. Because of the way my job has evolved since 1985, really the title and some of the things I've been able to do from a recruiting standpoint have also been eliminated.