Brooks in the middle of it all for Mizzou
When Jamal Brooks committed to Missouri in July, the Tigers thought they were getting a middle linebacker for the future.
"The defense Missouri runs is the exact same defense that I run in high school," the Alabama product said. "I’m gonna be playing the middle same thing I've been doing the last four years. The plays you're going to see me making are the same plays I've been making."
What the Tigers probably didn't realize is that they were also getting an assistant recruiting coordinator.
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"It’s not really just me pitching in with the recruiting class. It’s a team effort," Brooks said. "Every commit is trying to recruit other people to commit. I just kind of found interest in playing the role of gatekeeper. Or, not the gatekeeper. The prophet."
Indeed Mizzou's 2017 class has taken to tagging its Tiger-related tweets with the hashtag #ShowMe17 and seems to have undergone a coordinated effort to brand the group. But if something is about to happen in recruiting, Brooks' personal timeline is a good place to start looking for hints.
"They joke about it all the time, you and coach O (recruiting coordinator A.J. Ofodile) are the recruiting coordinators. They tell me all the time I should get a paycheck," Brooks said. "It’s all fun and games. We all have the same goal and that is to build the best class we can and to come in and win football games."
Brooks said the entire recruiting class has formed a bond before getting to campus...and often times before actually even meeting each other.
"When a new commit comes we add them into the group chat, everybody talks and just the other night we were talking and Jafar (Armstrong) said we’re brothers. It feels like brothers already," Brooks said. "I can feel the love and the team already. The same love I feel with the commits when I went on my visit to the game against Vandy we felt that same love in the locker room, we felt the same love with the coaches."
It is that devotion that has helped Brooks remain solid in his pledge made just days after the Night at the Zou camp in July.
"As commits we tried to not look at the negatives. We look at the positive side of everything," he said. "We take in the negative, we absorb the negative from maybe our friends or people in the streets. We take the negative and just want to build off that. It's coach Odom's first year. With a new coach it’s going to take time to get used to new schemes. Everybody knew what everybody was signing up for."
Brooks still gets calls. The Bessemer City native would have some options if he wanted to take advantage of the recruiting process and get some free trips to other schools across the country.
"Schools do still contact me. I’m not the rude guy. I don’t just blow them off," he said. "At the same time I’m committed. A commitment is a commitment to me. That’s something my parents have instilled in me. That’s something that I felt was very important going into it."
Even at the time of his commitment, Brooks was already building a camaraderie with his fellow incoming freshmen. He and Memphis native Aubrey Miller discussed becoming Tigers together leading up to and coming out of that camp in July.
"Same day. We kind of coordinated that as to when we were going to commit," Brooks said. "We were gonna call it the Bash Brothers. I don’t have a blood brother but I do feel like Aubrey’s a brother to me."
That should bode especially well for the Tigers as Miller prepares to take some other visits. He has been open about taking advantage of the recruiting process and seeing some other schools. Brooks isn't worried.
"I don't believe he's going to go anywhere else," Brooks said. "I'll just leave it at that."
Both Brooks and Miller will play for DeMontie Cross, Mizzou's defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, next season.
"I can vividly remember my first cone with coach Cross and that would be the one that put Mizzou on that pedestal for me," Brooks recalled. "He asked my list of offers and I started offering schools and started going down the line. I was naming the SEC schools and the ACC schools. He said 'Stop right there. I’m not gonna let you out of the SEC.' Ever since that point right there I knew that this wasn’t a one way feeling wasn’t just me feeling the love. They loved me.
"Coach Cross and I talk a lot of times, not all the time about football. That’s normal for a coach. Everything’s not about football. They’re supposed to be building you for life."
And so Brooks began to build Missouri's 2017 recruiting class. Just like he hopes to be for four years in Columbia, "the gatekeeper" is right in the middle of it all, contacting potential Tiger targets from Florida to Washington State.
"I guess it just found me," Brooks said of his role as assistant recruiting coordinator.
Brooks is a May graduate and will hit campus in Columbia early next summer. By that time, he should already know just about everyone.