TCU football’s new ace recruiter Bryan Carrington tackles his next passion project
Bryan Carrington has sold it all.
Mulch and flowers at Home Depot? Check. DirecTV to customers buying TVs at Sam’s Club? Check. Furniture? Check. Going door-to-door and pitching customers on ways to save on electricity? Check. Convincing his mom to send him to a private high school? Check.
Now Carrington is selling TCU and its football program to prospective players, whether they’re in high school or the transfer portal. He’s the recruiting coordinator and an offensive analyst under Sonny Dykes.
Carrington, a 31-year-old Houston native, is known as an ace recruiter in today’s college game. He helped the Frogs build what 247Sports’ ranked as the 29th overall recruiting class in the country in 2022, factoring in high school recruits and transfer additions. TCU’s transfer class was ranked the ninth-best in the country.
“TCU will be a hat on the table for a lot of the top kids,” he said. “When you look at the landscape where the Big 12 is headed, there’s no excuse for TCU not to be a Tier 1 Big 12 team moving forward. The stars are aligning here.”
Carrington is among those stars who TCU believes will help return the football program to being a contender for Big 12 championships and College Football Playoff berths.
Carrington has shown a knack for connecting with the highest-level recruits across the country and has twice been named by 247Sports as one of “College Football’s Rising Stars.” He spent the 2017-20 seasons at Texas as the Longhorns’ director of recruiting, producing back-to-back top 3 classes in 2018 and 2019. He spent last season with USC’s staff and also was a 2021 participant in the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship with the L.A. Rams, who won Super Bowl LVI on Sunday.
Now Carrington has landed at TCU. It hasn’t taken him long to make his presence felt, whether on the recruiting front or using his sales background to educate players on ways to go about profiting off their name, image and likeness.
“At Texas and USC, the level of expectations are through the roof,” Carrington said. “The standard of what they expect at those places is really high. I like those challenges. In comparison to TCU, this is an opportunity to build something that’s your own.
“I saw Gary Patterson was here for 24 years, so this could be a place to plant a flag and establish something for a long time. Seeing the commitment from TCU to the previous head coach gives me zeal for the new regime under Coach Dykes.”
Brotherhood bond
Bryan Carrington chuckled when he ran through the list of sales jobs he’s had over the years. He fondly recalled his days of building college football rosters on the NCAA Football 2003 video game. He talked as a proud son and brother about his mom fostering neglected children and his twin brother Ryan’s success as a high school basketball coach in Houston.
But nothing brought more joy to Carrington than a conversation about his older brother Byron. Byron is the reason Carrington and his twin brother are named “Bryan” and “Ryan.” Those were two names that Byron could say, something that may sound simple but isn’t taken for granted in the Carrington household.
“My older brother is legally deaf and legally blind. He’s developmentally delayed. He has Usher syndrome,” Carrington said. “I didn’t see anything wrong with him growing up. He was just my brother. When I was young, people would always tell me, ‘You’re going to be blessed because of how you treat your brother.’ I didn’t understand what they meant back then but I understand it now. It makes you appreciate the little things.”
Carrington traces much of his early success in the college football world back to Byron and growing up with a special needs brother. Bryan and Ryan became caregivers at an early age, stepping up when their mother went to work on the weekends.
Bryan and Ryan would split the day into one-hour shifts, allowing one brother to play outside for an hour while the other took care of Byron.
“One Saturday, I came home and everybody was gone,” said Diane Shepard, their mother. “They had taken Byron with them to a friend’s house while they played football and basketball. All of their friends knew Byron and there was no embarrassment or shame bringing him along. Some kids don’t like to identify with their special needs siblings, but Bryan and Ryan embraced it so that makes you really proud of your sons.
“As a mom with a special needs son, you always wonder, ‘What will happen when I leave here? Who will take care of him?’ I don’t have to worry about that. He has two brothers he’s connected with. It just shows a lot of character and compassion in everyday life.”
Taking care of his older brother is something that came naturally to Carrington. The brothers would attend a camp for special needs children every October, which is where Carrington crossed paths with a supervisor from a similar camp in Dallas called Camp Summit.
The supervisor was so impressed by how Carrington interacted with the campers that he was offered a job working at Camp Summit. He accepted the offer, spending three summers — his final two years of high school and his first year of college — working at Camp Summit, which provides a weeklong camping experience for children and adults with special needs.
Carrington was paid a stipend, but it was more of a passion project given the time commitment. It was a 12-week program over the summer with the only break for staffers being from noon Saturday until noon Sunday between the weekly sessions.
“Five-thousand service hours of dedicated work to special needs kids,” he said. “And, to be honest, it didn’t feel like work. It was my passion. I felt I had some expertise dealing with my brother in that fashion. It was not only my first job, but it really helped my ability to connect with kids and relate to people and understand the value of customer service.”
The customer service portion is a common theme through every job Carrington has had in his life. That includes his latest gig at TCU.
As much as Carrington is regarded as an “ace recruiter” and rising star in the industry, it didn’t happen by accident or overnight. There is more to the person than the title, and plenty of work that has gone into getting him to where he’s at today.
“In recruiting, there are four pillars — identifying, evaluating, marketing and then, most importantly, customer service,” Carrington said. “All of my experiences, especially on the caretaker level with Byron, made me who I am as far as how I see customer service and how I feel like people should be taken care of.
“I’m grateful to have those experiences because it helps me in my current role. Experience is the best teacher.”
Gift of gab
Diane Shepard knew her son Bryan had a way of convincing people at a young age.
“When he was 1 or 2 years old, I knew he had that gift of gab,” Shepard said, laughing. “When he was a little boy, I told him he needed to be a sports agent. That was an insult to him because he wanted to play professional football.
“He didn’t see it at the time, I saw it first, but he just always had that gift of gab. He could talk himself out of any situation, but he was a good, caring, compassionate kid. He was always focused on his dreams and goals.”
Football, much like taking care of his brother, has always been a passion. Bryan played at St. Pius X High School in Houston but might’ve spent more hours playing NCAA Football 2003 — as Bryan puts it, the year with Oregon’s Joey Harrington on the cover.
But Bryan didn’t spend much time playing actual football games. Instead, he gravitated toward “Dynasty Mode” and loved the game’s features on recruiting and building rosters during the offseason.
“I would be in like Year 2022 and my brother would still be in that same (2003) year recruiting kids, working in the offseason,” Ryan said. “He would do all the stuff like talk to kids, send them invites. I’d want to try and score touchdowns in the games.
“So it’s crazy and unreal that he’s doing it in real life now. I can’t put it into words. I watched this guy play a video game and somehow he’s turned it into real life.”
Ryan appreciates the path his brother has taken. There isn’t an easy route in an industry as competitive as college football.
Carrington, heeding the advice of a professor one day who encouraged students to be proactive in their career search, sent an unsolicited email to the University of Houston football department when he was a student at the school. Carrington wasn’t expecting a response but he got one.
That email turned into an interview then turned into a job as a recruiting assistant on then-coach Tom Herman’s staff. Carrington was instrumental in building the No. 30-ranked recruiting class in 2016 for Houston, which was the highest ranking ever for a Group of 5 program. Defensive tackle Ed Oliver was the headliner that year as the first five-star prospect to sign with a G5 program.
Carrington followed Herman to Texas where he helped land five-star players such as running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Bru McCoy. Then came a one-year stop at USC before joining TCU’s staff.
“For my brother, every move is a calculated step,” Ryan said. “The sky’s the limit. I remember when he quit a paying job to go work for free in UH’s football department. He said, ‘I have to take this chance.’ The kid literally came off the street and put in the work to get where he’s at.”
For Carrington, it doesn’t feel like work. Just like taking care of his brother, this is a passion. He has loved getting to know players and watching film, especially in his new TCU office (which happens to be the old athletic director’s office).
“I feel like I recruit for free,” said Carrington, who has signed 11 five-star players since 2016. “It’s just a big cat and mouse chase, a marathon, but I’m in love with the process. We’re going to build it brick by brick here at TCU.”
