Devin Neal has done more for recruiting than any recruit

When Devin Neal’s football career is over, he could have a future as a college football recruiter. Having covered KU football recruiting for 21 years, I haven’t seen another individual outside of the football offices who has helped as much as Neal.

Neal is the hometown guy. He lives right down the street from the football stadium. He knows about the city and what spots to hit. He can tell recruits about the city and things to look for if they were to move to Lawrence.

Combine Neal’s familiarity with Lawrence, his personality, and the fact recruiting had to be in a pandemic year, he ended up being a big help.

“My journey and how I viewed it, I guess the recruiting pitch was trying to get the best talent here,” Neal said. “I just love the class that we brought in and I connect with them all so well. That's an extremely important aspect when you're talking about bringing these players in to Kansas who's in the rebuild mode. Not everyone's attracted to the numbers, stats or the wins and losses, but that's how you get those people here.”

Neal will admit he’s not a coach and didn’t do as much recruiting as they did, but he did his part to help out.

Being from Lawrence and watching the Jayhawks up close, he wants to see the program get back on solid footing as much as anyone.

“I felt like it was kind of my duty to the program,” Neal said. “You know, I took, I wouldn't say a leap of faith, but I want to rebuild this program as much as anyone else on the coaching staff does. Alongside the other guys who committed with me and before all those guys ended up committing were me, Ben (Easters) and a few others who really took control of trying to get those guys here and not really doing it for anyone but ourselves.”

Recruiting in a pandemic proved to be difficult all over the country. The NCAA imposed restrictions that kept recruits from taking official visits. They couldn’t have their visits paid by the schools and were not allowed to meet coaches face-to-face on campus.

Neal offered an angle that no one else could, living in Lawrence and knowing a lot about the school and football program.

“I think giving the out-of-state guys who live in places like California or Florida or Georgia, who live really far away and being totally honest with them about things like the weather here, what's in place here, the town, the people, everything that I love about I would express to those guys,” Neal said.

“That's exactly what the coaches asked me to do. And, you know, because they know how important it is to get those guys to understand where they're going to be at, for the next four or five years of their life. I think that was a huge aspect of the recruiting pitch.”

Neal stays busy at home jumping between football and baseball season, working out, and staying up on his schoolwork. Being a leader didn’t just happen this year. It started a long time ago.

Neal’s parents, Freda and Ryan McPhail, have seen it growing up.

Freda recalled a time when Devin was playing youth football and they were running after practice when he played with the Lawrence Eagles. He was one of the first ones to finish and some teammates behind were fighting hard to get to the finish line.

“He saw some of the bigs were struggling,” Freda said. “Even though he was exhausted, Devin got back up, because there were several of the players who wanted to quit.”

He ended up running with them encouraging them not quite and finished with them.

“He ran with them the whole time and kept telling them not to quit,” she said.

Freda watched with the other mother’s who were there at the end of practice. It was something that caught everyone’s attention.

“We were standing there with a lot of mother’s,” Freda said. “It literally made everyone stop and look. It brought tears to my eyes. I told him growing up, when he started playing sports… ‘You could be the Pied Piper.’ And I said, ‘People will follow you in the wrong way if you want to be negative, or people will follow you in the positive way if you stay positive.’”

Neal always has a smile on his face and strikes you as the ringleader among his friends and teammates. But, he hasn’t always been that outgoing person. Once you are on the same team or a friend of his, then he gives you everything he has.

“He's always had those leadership qualities,” Ryan McPhail said. “He hasn't been extremely outgoing, but the people that he has a close-knit group with, he's really loyal to. So, when he gets a sense of team or camaraderie, or a sense of belonging, he pours himself into something like that.”

Very few athletes are talented enough to earn football and baseball scholarships at the Power Five level. Neal has the ability that a lot of players dream of possessing. One thing that has helped him along the way is his ability to stay grounded throughout his high school career.

“He's always been extremely humble,” Ryan said. “He's not one of those type of kids who goes around bragging about accolades and whatnot. I mean, if you follow him on Twitter, so you can probably see that he's not continually boasting himself up.

“There are times where me and his mom say, ‘Hey, it's okay to post some of this stuff or say good things about yourself.’ He's always been really humble about his accolades and been a really good teammate for all of his teams that he's played on.”

Neal is the typical teenager. There are times around the house he doesn’t get his chores done and is far from perfect. Freda joked there are instances they have to get on him, but Neal turns it into something funny.

“The funny thing is how he handles it when he gets called out for not doing what he's supposed to do,” she said. “He will turn it into a joke, or he'll pretend like he didn't hear you. So, there’s never a dull moment.

“He's a jokester, an extreme jokester. Even when he knows he's in trouble, he'll still try to sneak that joke in, so it always lightens the blow. It is hard to want to fuss at him. He’s really good if his dad does give him a list of things to do. He'll make sure he gets them done. It's a matter of if he doesn't have a list, then no, it's not getting done.”

Neal had several chances to look at other schools, but he always stayed true to the Jayhawks. There was a text message from Notre Dame offensive coordinator Tommy Reese asking Neal is he was still solid with Kansas. The same came from coaches at Iowa, and Oklahoma State.

But Neal’s mind was made up and set with Kansas.

“Recently those coaches from Notre Dame and Iowa and from a couple of different coaches reached out and I respect all those coaches deeply,” Neal said. “I loved the relationship that I was able to build with those guys. I told them all exactly the same thing, that I was 100% committed to KU and whatever they came back with, I just continued to make sure that was really clear.

“I am going to stay home here at KU and hopefully win a Big 12 championship and maybe a national championship. Because that's always been the goal and exactly what we're striving for.”

There was consideration to enroll early at Kansas, but it didn’t last long. Neal had his junior baseball season canceled at Lawrence High due to the pandemic. He wants a chance to finish his senior year playing alongside his teammates and friends with the quest for a state title.

After that he will continue his dual-sport success playing both sports at Kansas. He knows it will make for a busy schedule trying to juggle the sports at the Big 12 level.

“That's actually something I think about every day and I don't fear it,” Neal said. “I dive right into the challenge. I've done stuff like this my entire life. I've been playing basketball, football, and baseball since my sophomore year when I dropped basketball and I got really busy, but I just loved the grind. I love being in the weight room.

“I know it won’t be easy playing Power Five football and baseball,” he said. “I'm ready to take it on full steam ahead and, you know, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And you know, I just love it so much.”