Meet the players who plan to don Husker red in the coming years.
High school profile
My school: Midway High School.
City profile: Waco, Texas, has a population of about 138,000 and is about 10 hours from Lincoln. Midway plays in the largest class in Texas.
Players from his team with NCAA Division I offers: 3.
Number of players out for football: 250 in all grades.
This week: Midway is 0-2 going into Friday’s game against Killeen. Last week Nixon rushed for 252 yards and three touchdowns in Midway's 42-33 loss to Lake Ridge. Nixon also caught seven passes for 32 yards.
Player profile
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Height/weight: 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds.
Positions: Running back and wide receiver.
Rankings: ranks Nixon as a three-star prospect as a wide receiver and the 92nd overall player in Texas. He committed to Nebraska on July 8.
Final schools: Baylor, Purdue, Georgia Tech and Notre Dame. Nixon’s father, Jeff Nixon, is Baylor’s co-offensive coordinator and running backs coach.
Coach’s point of view
Midway coach Jeff Hulme shares some stories about Nixon:
Three-year varsity player: “In Texas, at 6A, which is our biggest classification, you usually have about two or three guys a year in that sophomore class that make the varsity, but they need to be pretty special, and he was pretty special from the beginning.â€
A wide receiver helping out at running back: “We’re doing that because he can. He’s gotten bigger, he’s gotten stronger, he weighs more than he did last year, so he(can) take it a little more. And he just gives us that explosiveness that we were lacking in that first game.â€
Plays that make you rewind the game tape: “It seems like every time he touches the ball you sort of hold your breath for a second because you think you got a chance to take it all the way to the house. I mean, he scored three touchdowns for us last week and they were really, really quick. He was in the secondary just like that.â€
College coaches who pass through our school: “Just about everybody. In the Big 12, everybody has come through. I haven’t met Coach (Scott) Frost. I’m anxious to meet Coach Frost and I know he’ll come down here with Will. Coach (Chip) Kelly out of UCLA came. It was fun to meet him. He’s an interesting man. It’s always neat to meet these guys. Everybody sees them on TV and stuff, but when you sit down and talk to them, they’re regular guys. They’re regular football coaches like we all are.â€
Interesting things about the recruiting process: “(With the early signing period) these high school kids almost got to be good earlier in their career now instead of waiting until their senior year, it seems like. And so a lot of these kids, if they don’t have a really good junior year, then sometimes these kids get passed up and a lot of schools miss out on really good players. … And then the social media obviously plays a big, big role in it, which I’m not a huge fan of just because so many kids today are so caught up in that. They get so anxious, and stuff like that. It makes it a little more difficult, but it’s the way of the world. I mean what are you going to do? It’s not like I can ban cellphones.â€
— Brent C. Wagner