Some will champion Kyler Murray and Matthew Stafford — maybe even Bobby Layne or Tim Brown, if they’ve been around the block for a bit — as Dallas’ best football exports.
And good luck getting a straight answer on the area’s top basketball player: some will pine for Chris Bosh and Deron Williams, others liked Marcus Smart’s hustle, and soon, the votes will begin to pour in for emerging star Tyrese Maxey.
Consider these the kind of debates and squabbles that only a few regions of the country can truly undertake at this kind of caliber.
Here’s a reality: Dallas-Fort Worth is quite possibly the nation’s leading producer of amateur athletic talent across all sports. It’s a living, breathing Mount Rushmore of sporting prowess.
Here’s another reality: Colin Simmons and Tre Johnson — the region’s top football and boys basketball prospects in the class of 2024 — will undoubtedly be under consideration for addition.
Maybe they already are.
Simmons, a five-star senior defensive lineman at Duncanville, is one of the highest-rated football prospects to have rolled through North Texas in recent years. Johnson, the No. 4 player in ESPN’s national class of 2024 basketball rankings, transferred to Link Academy (Mo.) for his senior season last May.
Both led their teams to UIL state championships. Both earned prestigious honors from The Dallas Morning News. Both are headed to the University of Texas (Johnson signed last month; Simmons is scheduled to do so this week).
Both call D-FW home.
And, because of all listed above, both live under something of a microscope both locally and nationally.
Their exploits have been documented since their days as underclassmen. Their every move was tracked by fans and reporters alike as their recruiting journeys began. Their talent brought them unbelievable options; in Simmons’ case, nearly 50 scholarship offers; in Johnson’s, a winding, sometimes lucrative, route toward the NBA.
Simmons and Johnson are the flagship faces of Dallas-Fort Worth’s modern Mount Rushmore of high school athletes. They’re also the flagship faces of what the life of a modern superstar prospect looks like.
Options. Decisions. Stay. Leave. Followers. Critics. Money — potentially lots of it — and hometown roots.
All left on the shoulders of two larger-than-life teenagers.
“It is a lot, it is a lot,” Lake Highlands coach Joe Duffield said. “They’re still young kids.”
It is, indeed, a lot. Simmons and Johnson are case studies of what unparalleled talent brings — the good, the bad, the in-between — and how much the life cycle of a top prospect has changed as social media and athletic landscapes have evolved.
“It’s very different,” said Mo Taylor, a once-top basketball recruit who now coaches his modern counterparts on the AAU circuit.
So, too, are Simmons and Johnson.
Differences in recruiting
Former South Grand Prairie star wide receiver BJ Johnson (no relation to Tre) doesn’t recognize the process of being a top recruit in 2024. When he was the No. 1 football recruit in Texas in 2000, he felt like a regular kid.
He was as highly recruited as anyone before choosing to go to the University of Texas, but it wasn’t until he made a highlight tape and sent it off to schools that any coach knew who he was. It wasn’t until he set seven records as a freshman at UT that the nation knew him.
“I never understood how I became the No. 1 receiver in the country,” Johnson recently told The News. “I know I was doing my thing, but we didn’t have Hudl. We didn’t have all these platforms where coaches could just go online and see these kids and not visit them. It wasn’t really until you got onto a campus where you got a lot of notoriety and shined.”
Ditto for Taylor — a 10-year NBA veteran who coached Johnson with Houston Hoops AAU program last summer — who signed with Michigan in the mid-1990s on the heels of the program’s illustrious Fab Five run.
Taylor played high school basketball in Detroit before the days of online recruiting services. He waited for the release of Street & Smith’s magazine to find out where he was ranked nationally. Today’s recruits have access to an ever-changing prospect database in the palms of their hands.
“I got letters in the mail and they called my house,” Taylor said. “You had minimal ways to have contact with a player. As of now, these players are accessible, they’re open books.”
Especially so in the cases of Simmons and Johnson. They’ve been in the public eye since entering high school, if not before. They have a combined 77,000 Instagram followers. Neither has turned 18.
“It’s time-consuming, but you’ve got to be willing to do it and not complain about it,” Simmons said. “Sometimes it can be overwhelming. Sometimes it can get to your head. But it’s just about trying to remain humble and not think too much about it.”
Now, look at David Hogg II, the region’s top baseball recruit. The Mansfield senior is signed to reigning national champion LSU. He’ll likely be selected in next July’s MLB Draft. He — like Simmons and Johnson — is on track to play professional sports at the highest level like the many baseball stars who came through D-FW before him.
But unlike Simmons and Johnson, Hogg has under 10,000 Instagram and Twitter followers combined. He isn’t a household name like his football and basketball counterparts.
You won’t catch him complaining, though.
“It gives you a chance to make a name for yourself,” Hogg said. “It gives you a chance to build your own narrative. A lot of times, in different sports, sometimes people are forced into roles they’re not ready to play.”
Unparallelled options
Tre Johnson’s stardom reached its peak in March with a state championship at Lake Highlands.
Then he left.
Johnson chose a route for high school basketball superstars that’s grown increasingly popular in recent years, and transferred to Link Academy (Mo.) in May.
The academy has become one of many national prep schools that pull highly ranked recruits from other states. South Oak Cliff’s Jordan Walsh, McKinney’s Ja’Kobe Walter and Frisco’s Jalen Shelley (a four-star recruit in the class of 2024) each left North Texas for the Branson, Mo. private power.
Now Johnson has, too.
Among other options? Move directly to the professional ranks, either overseas or domestically.
G-League Ignite — founded in 2020 to provide high-level basketball players a paid alternative to college underneath the NBA’s umbrella — has already landed two D-FW prospects: Duncanville’s Ron Holland and Pinkston’s Dink Pate.
Even in a sport like football, where the path is clear, the options often aren’t.
Simmons received 45 college offers and had to weigh which school would give him the best chance to reach the NFL, while also considering immediate factors such as NIL and how schools could support his family.
Throughout the process, he began to get overwhelmed. His mother, Monica McCarley, said she had to become his “momager” to make it more manageable.
“We try to not talk about football at home,” she said. “I try to make that our safe space so that he can still live a normal life, have a little type of normalcy. Every school in the country basically wanted him to come visit. When the coaching staff from these schools would go to his school, they would pull him out of class. He would probably talk to about 10 coaches a day. It became a lot.”
Highland Park head coach Randy Allen, whose program produced Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, has seen the options grow over the years.
Stafford was the No. 2 recruit in Texas and No. 1 pro-style quarterback in the nation when he graduated in 2006 after leading Highland Park to a state championship in 2005.
Allen said his college decision was relatively simple. He visited the University of Georgia because his sister went there and committed on the spot because he liked head coach Mark Richt.
“It was just a lot different. It was more pure,” Allen said. “I think it’s more confusing now. I know if Matthew were back here, it would be a totally different scene. A lot of different things would go into the decision that weren’t a part of that decision-making when he made the commitment. He just said he liked Coach Richt and felt at home in Georgia.”
Tre Johnson’s path will include his season at Link Academy, where he’ll play a national schedule against the country’s best teams in showcases attended by countless college and NBA scouts.
“Ultimately I just want to see Tre be as successful as possible, and want to see him achieve his dreams of playing in the NBA,” Duffield said. “Of course we would love to still have him here at Lake Highlands playing for us, but I think I understand, and the family does.”
Then he paused.
“I don’t know if Texas allowing NIL would kind of change some of that,” Duffield said.
Dallas pride in a fast-changing era
Johnson did something soon into his Link Academy tenure that would have been impossible in Texas.
He signed an NIL deal with Panini America and became the trading-card brand’s first high school athlete endorsee. Texas — considered the gold standard of high school athletics — is one of 20 states that doesn’t allow its high school athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness.
“[Texas] needs to seriously consider looking at the high school NIL side,” Panini senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations Jason Howarth said. “Because it is going to be this thing across sports where athletes are going to have to make decisions that are not just on the field of play, because of opportunities that might exist in a state that’s the next one over.”
Those who’ve seen the impact share that sentiment.
“When there’s 30 or so states where these top-level kids can benefit financially, and we’re not allowing that, you’re going to see these top-level kids leave the state,” Duffield said.
He said this from a place of pride, cognizant of the opportunities and resources Texas and D-FW high schools provide athletes. North Texas is on the shortlist of best regions for basketball and football teams and recruits.
The end of high school NIL prohibition, Duffield believes, can help protect that.
Simmons and Johnson alone are examples of what’s worth protecting — and of what’s prideworthy about having so many of the nation’s top athletes in their respective sports within a 40-mile radius.
Whether it’s the opportunities that exist locally — from top trainers to elite high school and travel coaches and teams — or genetics, a consequence of having a number of retired professional athletes in D-FW, the saturated talent pool is unique to the region.
“It’s a different mindset here,” McCarley said as justification. “It’s just a different mindset that these kids have in this area. They want to make it.”
But sometimes making it involves leaving, a reality both Simmons and Johnson had to confront this year.
Simmons wanted to stay connected to his home but also wanted to create the best opportunities for him to play professionally and for his family — particularly his 8-year-old brother, Clayton, who has autism. Austin provided a chance for both.
Johnson will return to Texas, too, as a member of the Longhorns’ basketball team after a pit stop in Missouri. If you asked those who watched his greatness at Lake Highlands, he’ll always be a Dallasite.
The top athletes in the Dallas area’s Class of 2024 could go on to win national championships, Super Bowls, Olympic Medals, World Series and World Cups. Individually, they could be future MVPs and All-Stars.
But as much as their paths may differ and could take them all across the world, they’ll always have their D-FW roots in common.
“It’s where I was raised, where I was from and where I’ve been my whole life,” Simmons said. “Even though I’m trying to get away from it so bad, this will always be where I’m from.”
Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn, @lassimak
Find more high school sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
