Meet the New Guy: Ty Slanina

<table align="center" border="0">

<tbody>

<tr>

<td><b>NAME</b></td>

<td>Ty Slanina</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><b>POSITION<span> </span></b></td>

<td>Wide Receiver/Athlete</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><b>HEIGHT/WEIGHT </b></td>

<td>6'0" / 182lbs.</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><b>HOMETOWN</b></td>

<td>East Bernard, Texas<span> </span></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><b>High School</b></td>

<td><span>East Bernard High School</span></td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td><b>247 Composite Star Ranking</b><span> </span></td>

<td>Three Star (***)<span> </span></td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table>

Mr. Versatility can do everything on the field and score from anywhere. Slanina led his team to a class 2A state championship last fall playing quarterback, running back, receiver and cornerback. For good measure, he also utilized his 4.3 speed to return punts and kicks. Slanina has already made an impact at receiver since arriving to TCU over the summer, in fact he's already received reps with the first team offense.

- Jeremy Clark, HornedFrogBlitz.com.

- Despite being a Three star overall, 24/7 ranks Ty as a four star so he's got scads of potential.  Ty was an Athlete, which tends to keep rankings down unless you're an absolute physical freak- scouting services like to scout you at the position you're likely to play in college, and when there's disagreement about what that position is going to be you get widely variable rankings as one scout thinks "He's a four star receiver" while another thinks "He's a three star safety".

- Slanina joins a stacked wide receiver group for the Frogs, but despite the flashes of big play ability in practice  I really hope that the staff is willing and able to redshirt him.  I know Slanina could probably contribute somewhere, but a look at the spring depth chart shows we are absolutely stacked with depth at the wide receiver position.  What makes a redshirt even more appealing for Slanina is that the wide receiver depth is all clumped together class wise, made up entirely of juniors and sophomores.   Any opportunity we have to try and stagger this depth so we remain deep for future football seasons as we'll graduate nine wide receivers in 2014 and 2015.  Pushing Slanina back to 2017 would be a boon, but if Patterson thinks he's good enough to win us an extra game this year he'll play.

- Slanina picked us over the old SWC (minus Arkansas and Texas), Arizona, Mississippi State and more.  The chief competition was from A&M where he was originally committed, but he flipped to the good guys when new A&M coach Kevin Sumlin wanted to reevaluate him.  Of particular interest are that Rice, Stanford and Vanderbilt offered him as well- Slanina will almost certainly not be an academic casualty at TCU with the premier brainiac universities from the west coast, south and southeastern offering him.

- As indicated by the athlete designation and Jeremy Clark, Ty did a bit of everything in leading East Bernard to a state championship last year, as you can see from his highlight reel.  What may make him Fungo's favorite football player in the future is that he was an all-state baseball player as well.

- Slanina is one of my favorite recruits in the class, so I'm looking forward to watching him play for us for a long time to come.  He may help give our return game some consistency as well, as a player with history in the outfield isn't going to pull a Dawson and look down before the ball is caught, but I'm still hoping we won't see him until 2014.