Juwuan Briscoe was sitting at home on his couch messing around on Twitter in October when his whole life changed.
“I had this thing where I would follow coaches and see if they’d follow me back,” the four-star cornerback from Thomas Stone High in Waldorf said. “So I followed (Georgia assistant coach Kevin) Sherrer, the linebackers coach, and he followed me right back. Two seconds later I get a DM (direct message). He’s like, ‘call me.’ It was weird. So I called him, introduced myself, gave him a little background.”
Things happened fast from there.
“(Sherrer) said, ‘our defensive coordinator wants to talk to you,’ and he puts coach (Jeremy) Pruitt on the line,” Briscoe said. “I’m like, ‘hey.’ He introduced himself, said what he liked about me and said I had (a scholarship) offer. It’s crazy how it happened. Like five minutes.”
If you’ve ever wondered how big of a role social media plays in modern-day recruiting, there’s your answer. But in this case, the Bulldogs moved swiftly because they had a lot of ground to make up.
That was midway through Briscoe’s senior year. At that point, he had been committed to Clemson for nearly six months and was pulling in offers weekly from the likes of Ohio State, Oklahoma and Penn State. So Georgia was late to the party.
But the Bulldogs continued to impress Briscoe after that digitally enhanced initial meeting. And this time it was their physical presence that caught his attention.
“After that they started coming up here a lot,” said Briscoe, sitting in the football office at Thomas Stone High a day before graduation. “Coach Sherrer came up a bunch, coach Pruitt came up a bunch, coach (Mark) Richt came up about three times. It was pretty heavy. A lot of times coaches would come by as they were going here or there. But (Georgia) came in private planes just to see me.”
Well, to see Briscoe and another state-of-Maryland recruit. Patrick Allen, a four-star offensive lineman, lived in Reistertown, Md., about two hours away.
“So they’d come see me, go see Patrick; come see me; go see Patrick,” Briscoe said.
It paid off. The Bulldogs not only signed Briscoe, who was named Maryland’s defensive player of the year, but also Allen, who was tabbed offensive player of the year in the state.
Pretty good work considering the Bulldogs weren’t under Briscoe’s consideration before that fateful tweet.
In fact, it long had been considered a foregone conclusion that Briscoe would play for his childhood favorite, Clemson. Briscoe committed to the Tigers in May 2014 and hadn’t considered going anywhere else heading into his senior season.
To say Briscoe’s recruitment had been light before then would be an understatement. That tends to happen when you miss your sophomore season of football.
Briscoe was ruled academically ineligible before his 10th grade year. It served as a wake-up call, he got his act together and had a terrific junior season. But it wasn’t enough to attract the attention of “the big boys.” Not until later anyway.
“People weren’t coming to see him his junior year,” said Stone High coach Paul Friel, who coached at Johnson High in Gainesville before moving to Maryland. “He was getting interest from schools like Toledo, Temple, Rutgers and Maryland, and a bunch of (FCS) schools. Then Clemson offered him and it looked like that was going to be it. It kind of stopped, so he committed to Clemson.”
And why not? Briscoe grew up rooting for the Tigers, but not for most of the reasons one might think.
“I played NCAA video games all the time when I was little, and Clemson was my team,” Briscoe said. “Ever since then I’ve always been a Clemson fan. That was my dream school growing up.”
But Briscoe’s relationship with the Tigers soured over the coming months. The more Briscoe’s star rose, the more Clemson tried to keep him grounded.
“I didn’t really go to any camps or anything,” Briscoe said. “Clemson didn’t want me to have the exposure. Coach (Mike) Reed (defensive backs, Clemson), kind of threw it out there. He was like, ‘you’ve got special talent and we know that. So we want you, but we don’t want you getting out there because you’ll want to go see other schools and all that.”
But Briscoe’s light was too bright to hide. Friel had Hudl, a video-hosting team, put together a highlight reel of Briscoe’s junior season. Word started to truly get around about this 5-foot-11, 185-pound speedster. And after he ran a 4.43-second, laser-timed 40-yard dash at a Nike camp later than summer, Clemson’s secret was out.
“Then everybody started coming in and seeing him,” Friel said with a laugh.
“Everybody” included Ohio State and coach Urban Meyer. He made a visit to Stone High to meet Briscoe, extend an offer and invite him to an official visit, which Briscoe accepted.
Clemson actually rescinded its scholarship offer briefly as a result, but quickly re-extended after the floodgates opened. But by then, the Buckeyes led for Briscoe. In fact, up until Briscoe announced via Twitter on New Year’s Eve he was going to Georgia, it was thought Columbus would be his ultimate destination.
“I can’t lie, it was hard, just because he’s Urban Meyer,” Briscoe said. “He’s one of the greats. It was hard. But I had to look at what would benefit me in the long run, not just him being Urban Meyer.”
And in the end, it was Georgia that was telling him what he wanted to hear.
“Urban Meyer’s got his track record, but he’s an offensive guy,” Briscoe said. “I’m going to play defense and I want to play for the best. And coach Pruitt, I saw him at Alabama and he did what he did and I saw what he did at Florida State. And I can talk to coach Pruitt about anything and everything.”
Now that’s something to tweet about.
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