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OL Rami Hammad reportedly decommits from Baylor

If the reports are true, Baylor lost its highest-ranked OL recruit today while he was on his official visit to Texas. Hammad is still scheduled to take another official this coming weekend to TCU, but I don't know if that will still happen. Rami seems headed to UT, if he isn't officially committed already.

By Mark C. Moore
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

I'm getting that news from Blake Munroe, one of the writers for UT's 247Sports site. He tweeted the following:

Hammad is in Austin this weekend for an official visit to Texas and has remained committed to Baylor thus far in his recruiting. If, as Munroe says, Hammad has decommitted during that trip and will announce this week, that changes quite a bit of what we knew about his recruitment.

First, I have a hard time believing that UT's coaches didn't have something to do with this decommitment since it occurred while in their presence or shortly thereafter. Were I to speculate, they were probably pushing his decommitment, or "opening things up" the entire weekend. Conditioning an offer on a previous decommitment is a tactic they've used before, and I'd guess they did it again.

Hammad decommitting from Baylor certainly doesn't mean we're out of it; as Munroe said in the tweet, he could still choose Baylor. The timing of his next commitment, if true, probably means OU and TCU are out, however, since he has yet to visit either school. His TCU visit was scheduled for this weekend, after this commitment is supposed to occur. The fact that it is so close to his trip to UT should be worrisome to Baylor fans, but I am confident that our staff will re-establish contact with Hammad in the next day or so (if they haven't already), and the further he gets away from the visit to Texas, the better our chances become. It's the opposite of what I said about Kenny Hill-- we needed him to decide to leave A&M quickly and not wait. Now we need Hammad to wait so we can make up any ground we might have lost.

This is a blow to Baylor's recruiting class at any rate since Hammad was our best OL recruit in the group and a player expected to compete for playing time as soon as his second year on campus. Hopefully he changes his mind again and decides to recommit to Baylor, but I have to say that rarely seems to happen.

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