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How two Martin players landed at Nebraska with the help of a coach-turned-recruiter

Nebraska signed two Arlington Martin seniors — Ismael Smith Flores and Jeremiah Charles on Wednesday. Wager’s son Gage is also headed to Lincoln as a priority walk on.

Shortly after Bob Wager held a team meeting in December to tell his Arlington Martin football players that he’d accepted a job on Matt Rhule’s staff at Nebraska, he pulled Ismael Smith Flores aside.

“He’s like, ‘I just want to let you know, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, and then I can talk to you,’” Smith Flores recalled.

Smith Flores laughed.

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“I can kind of see where this is going.”

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Wager, who was officially named Nebraska’s tight end coach on Jan. 11, returned two weeks later to the school that he’d won hundreds of games and lived out his Friday Night Lights dreams at and offered Smith Flores, a three-star tight end recruit, a scholarship. Smith Flores committed to Nebraska over Iowa, Michigan State and others, and signed his national letter of intent to play for the Cornhuskers on Wednesday.

So, too, did Martin three-star wide receiver Jeremiah Charles, who like Smith Flores, earned a scholarship from Nebraska shortly after Wager’s hiring. Even Wager’s son Gage, an all-district punter at Martin, will be in Lincoln as a preferred walk-on running back.

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In the often tumultuous and unpredictable world of college football recruiting, relationships matter.

Wager spent 17 years at Martin. It didn’t take long for him to remember those connections once he arrived at Nebraska.

“If you go to [Martin], you know coach Wager, right?” Smith Flores said. “He’s the biggest name there. I had always heard about him, but I never really spoke to him [before I played football]. So when I got there, I had this image of what I thought he was. It turns out that he’s a really great guy, a really nice guy. He’s just real down to earth.”

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Lewisville defensive back Jaydan Hardy (1) tackles Arlington Martin wide receiver Ismael...
Lewisville defensive back Jaydan Hardy (1) tackles Arlington Martin wide receiver Ismael Smith-Flores (15) during the first half of a Class 6A Division I area-round playoff game at Ford Stadium in University Park, Texas, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

Both Smith Flores and Charles have similar stories. Smith Flores — a standout on Martin’s state-ranked basketball team — had never played high school football before his senior year, but joined the team because he wasn’t being heavily recruited to play college basketball. The 6-5, 210 pound senior blossomed into one of the nation’s premier tight end prospects in a matter of months.

Smith Flores, whose father Leroy was the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year in 1991 at Iowa, caught 15 passes for 362 yards and 3 touchdowns for Martin (10-2) and caught the attention of Wager, so much so that Martin’s coach had pitched Smith Flores to Nebraska before he’d even been hired there.

“Before I hired Bob, he called me about Ismael,” Rhule said at a Nebraska signing day news conference on Wednesday. “He said his dad is in the Iowa football hall of fame, you should check him out ... Bob came [to Nebraska], he showed him to us, and we were like, ‘Holy smokes.’”

Now the man who’d sold Smith Flores to Nebraska will be his positional coach there.

“Those are the hardest things about going into college,” Smith Flores said. “You’re going in at 18 years old, you don’t know anybody. Everybody else is a grown man and they know what they’re doing, it can definitely be intimidating. You worry about, ‘Oh, is my coach going to like me,’ well, I already know how he is.”

Charles, a 6-2 receiver who also plays basketball, also joined Martin’s football team prior to his senior year for the same reason Smith Flores did. He caught 23 passes for 452 yards and 5 touchdowns, but was still unsure if college football was in his future.

Rhule came to Arlington in January to watch Smith Flores play for Martin’s basketball team. He’d stopped by Wager’s home beforehand, and Wager mentioned that Charles — who triple-jumped 46-8.75 in the spring — was still unsigned and without any offers.

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Charles’ track and field athleticism piqued Rhule’s interest. His basketball athleticism might’ve sealed the deal.

“The game began, and my man just started dunking on everybody,” Rhule said of Charles. “I was like, ‘I see it coach.’

“Bob certainly had a lot of influence in that.”

Arlington Martin wide receiver Jeremiah Charles (11) races down the sideline ahead of...
Arlington Martin wide receiver Jeremiah Charles (11) races down the sideline ahead of Lewisville defensive back Cameren Jenkins (2) during the first half of a Class 6A Division I area-round playoff game at Ford Stadium in University Park, Texas, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
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Charles scored a team-high 22 points in Martin’s 73-54 win over Arlington that night. He played his heart out, but it wasn’t necessarily because Rhule was in attendance.

It’s because Wager was.

“I didn’t get to say goodbye to him before he left for Nebraska,” Charles said. “I wanted to turn my coach up, last time I ever saw him type stuff. I was playing hard defense, getting steals, fast breaks. Dunking everything — like, literally dunking everything. Catching lobs, dunking on people.

“Then the coaches came up to me, came to talk to me, and I was like, ‘Ooh.’”

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Wager offered Charles a scholarship that night. He visited Nebraska’s campus three days later, and committed three days after that.

Nebraska signed the nation’s 29th-ranked recruiting class, per 247Sports.com, with a staff now loaded with Texas flair. There’s Wager, the former president of the Texas High School Coaches Association. Rhule coached Baylor and the Carolina Panthers (and once wore a THSCA hat on the sideline of a NFL game). Nebraska hired UIL director of athletics Susan Elza as its chief of staff, and its wide receivers coach Garret McGuire is the son of Joey McGuire, Texas Tech’s head coach and a three-time state champion at Cedar Hill.

Now add two Martin players — two players who’d never played high school football before they joined Wager’s team last summer — to that list.

“I know a lot of people get homesick,” Smith Flores said. “But it’s almost like I’ve got home with me in Nebraska.”

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On Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn

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