SAN ANTONIO – “If you aren’t talking to them, someone else is!”

Those words echo through the University of Texas at San Antonio’s football facility prior to a staff meeting on this mid-March morning. The phrase rings loudly in what is a modest space, but that only makes the message more piercing. These words, after all, are at the heart of the Roadrunners recruiting strategy under second-year head coach Frank Wilson.

A recruiting savant as an assistant at LSU, Wilson took that acumen with him to UTSA. As a result, the Roadrunners signed the top-ranked class in program history on National Signing Day in February.

Notching 27 commits, a number of whom chose the Roadrunners over Power Five schools, UTSA finished 77th nationally in the 247Sports 2017 Recruiting Class Rankings. That group will be the foundation of what Wilson hopes is an awakening for UTSA in one of the nation’s largest cities and premier football states.

That process started a year ago when Wilson led the Roadrunners to a 6-7 season and the first bowl appearance in program history. But for progress to continue, the Roadrunners need talent. That’s where recruiting, which Wilson calls a program’s “lifeline,” comes in.

At UTSA, where resources are somewhat limited and brand recognition is still a work in progress for a program entering its sixth year in the FBS, the Roadrunners excel in recruiting for two main reasons: identification and relationships.

“Early identification allows you to establish a relationship that stands the test of time,” Wilson told 247Sports. “Where someone might try to trump us with resources or facilities it becomes minute because of the relationships we have. We’re in the people business, we deal with people. When the sincerity of the relationship is established, it allows us to recruit people better.”

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The left side of UTSA’s offensive meeting room is filled with faces and dots. There sits the Roadrunners recruiting board, and it’s massive.

Each player on UTSA’s radar gets their own rectangular card, which includes a picture, their height, weight and their most recent testing results. The board is split by both position and class – 2018 on top, followed by 2019 and 2020 prospects – and players are sorted by color.

Those who are takes are at the very top, followed by offers and players the staff needs to evaluate further. That last group is peppered with dots, stickers that indicate everything from a coach that needs to watch tape to potential grade issues.

It’s an elastic space, flexible and ever-moving.

On this day Wilson, who allowed 247Sports an all-access look into his meeting, instructs his staff to take several recently committed players off the board – LSU and Baylor pledges among them – and also to move several players up the board they're making headway with.

But that’s the board as it stands. In order to understand Wilson’s success, one needs to appreciate Wilson’s method of identification.

It all starts with an evaluation tape for the Roadrunners.

Highlights are UTSA’s first look at a prospect, but the program’s assessment does not end with HUDL. Evaluation tapes – cutups of at least four high school games – are how UTSA gets to the heart of what kind of player a recruit is.

“It’s the good, bad and ugly,” UTSA Director of Player Personnel Jacob LaFrance told 247Sports. “It’s going to be a true depiction of who a kid is. It’s not meant to kill him, it’s not meant to make him look great. It’s an honest evaluation. We want to have a clear picture of who he is so we limit the misses in a class of 25.

“You can’t waste a spot.”

This is a method Wilson took straight from LSU to UTSA. It involves each member of the staff viewing a prospect before an offer can occur, and a second viewing from an evaluation tape (cutup by UTSA’s recruiting staff) to make sure the initial evaluation was sound.

At LSU, where LaFrance worked directly under Wilson as a personal assistant from 2009-14, this method of detailed evaluation was easy. The Tigers football staff is massive. At UTSA, most of this work falls on a much smaller group of people. LaFrance and two others – one of whom, Ryan, is only a part-time intern – are trained to cut game film and pick out individual plays that highlight what a player does well and not so well – these tapes take an hour to two hours to form. The plays they select aren’t formulaic. It’s any snap that helps the Roadrunners better understand who the player is.

That could be a play in which an offensive lineman came off with a flat back or clip of a defensive back showing fluidly with his hips. Sometimes, in the case of a DB, the ball might not even come his way and the clip still makes the evaluation tape because he flashed press technique.

It’s considerably more work but necessary for complete outlook of a prospect’s skills.

“We’ll get initially tricked sometimes off a highlight love a guy and then do an evaluation and be like, ‘Woah,’” LaFrance said. “It’s so eye-opening. People get tricked. It’s crazy.”

The other portion of UTSA’s method of identification occurs during what Wilson calls a “light day” of recruiting. Midway through the one-hour meeting, which starts with a look at UTSA’s trio of commitments (they’ve picked up another in the time since) and an update on a number of other targets, the Roadrunner staff watches the HUDL tape of several national defensive backs.

Once the staff viewing is complete, Wilson goes around the room and asks each coach for his opinion.

When it’s Wilson’s turn, he methodically works through his observations. These are detailed looks and assumptions – if a defensive back doesn’t have any special teams return highlights, his ball skills are likely lacking – that the evaluation tape will delve further into later.

UTSA can’t recruit everyone – many top prospects are off the board for programs outside the Power Five – but there are certain traits the Roadrunners won’t bend on. This process helps the staff make sure they know exactly what they’d get.

“In some cases we’re watching the highlight tape of a kid who doesn’t have one interception, and it’s not like he isn’t thrown at,” Wilson said. “If I go back and watch his eval, he’ll probably drop some. Evals are intended to know if we’ll take you, they’re intended to show a true body of work.”

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The other aspect of UTSA’s strategy is evident early in the meeting.

When discussing one of the team’s 2017 targets, Wilson brings up the player’s living situation and remarks, “He lives with his aunt and uncle, correct?” When the assistant recruiting him responds that he does, Wilson asks if he calls them “mom and dad.” He doesn’t, but it’s all in the details.

Later, Wilson recalled a conversation he had with a 2017 signee, who got into an argument with his mom about a prom date they disagreed on. Wilson, already taking stewardship in a father-figure role, told the player to apologize to his mom.

Wilson discusses all this without a stumble or a pause. The relationships this staff forms are meant to be genuine, and just as much attention is given to those than a player's skills.Relationships are critical in any recruitment, and they’re at the heart of Wilson’s success through the years. At UTSA, he mandates every one of his staff members take a similar approach.

“At such a tender age very seldom will they make that decision by themselves, so we identify the champion – the most important person in their life,” Wilson said. “We do a good job capturing those people. To give those people comfort is important.

"Here’s the thing, in the absence of us, they speak on our behalf.”

That strategy creates loyalty, and it’s a big reason why two 2017 signees showed up to a mid-March practice to observe. One of those was quarterback Frank Harris, a three-star prospect who held offers from Baylor, Georgia Tech and other Power Five schools.

Harris committed to UTSA early in Wilson’s tenure, and he stayed committed despite late pushes by Power Five programs.

“He’s just a father figure,” Harris said of Wilson. “He reached out to me not just as a player but as a person. “That showed me a lot. They stayed by my side.”

Harris’ dad, Darrell, concurs.

“He’s smooth about it,” Darrell Harris said. “He’s not a used car salesman. He sells you on it and then let’s you think. He’s Gregg Popovich because he’s always unearthing gems.”

That last quote – a concoction of relationships and identification – gets to the heart of UTSA’s recruiting success a year ago. It’s the reason why UTSA secured a December commitment from a prospect like wide receiver Tariq Woolen (the No. 681 overall player in the country, per 247Sports) after a May offer, and it’s the reason the Roadrunners held onto him despite a late push by Baylor.

The Bears, who offered Woolen just two days after his commitment to UTSA, secured an official visit from the three-star prospect. But it wasn’t enough to sway him: “It just didn’t feel like UTSA,” he said following the trip to Waco.

That’s what early identification coupled with relationship building can do.

It worked for Wilson at LSU, and it’s working for him at UTSA.

The prospects certainly aren’t the same – “We like to say if they were ready-made they’d be going somewhere else,” said LaFrance – but the way Wilson recruits hasn’t changed a bit. It’s paying off early in the 2018 cycle, too. UTSA’s four-man group, made up of nothing but three-star prospects, currently ranks 44th nationally.

Recruiting remains a program's lifeline, and the Roadrunners are attacking “Crootin'” in the nation’s most talent-rich state.

“We want to compete for the best players in Texas,” LaFrance said. “We want to be relevant in the state. We want to help guys that will help us win a conference championship. We believe with the start we have and the guys we signed we’ll be able to achieve that.”