He’s not a Miner, who cares? Glad he picked his school, time to move on.
Cowing enters portal
- Thread starter LTMiner61
- Start date
I agree, but it will happen again to us. How do we prevent the next cowing from leaving? Get him an ELP baby mama!
WARNING - RANT: I get it that these young men need to make a decision for their future BUT like the military, committing to college athletics is where the young adults learn what it is to be committed. There is so much more behind this than just going to another school. I don't hold any ill will against Cowing or any other player but I do feel that the NCAA is failing to set a strong standard. Progressive change is not always bad but the lessons that are learned by young student athletes, are important. Aaron Jones is a perfect example of someone who stayed true to his commitment. I think most of that comes from his parents but still, he was able to make it into the NFL and become a star even after playing football for UTEP. Picks Up!
Moves like this will start having G5 schools thinking harder about the value in recruiting HS players. Is it worth it to spend the time and resources developing players for someone else? Are you better off getting the majority of your players from the portal? They will use up their one-time transfer pass and will probably be much less likely to transfer again.
I wonder how the fanbase will feel about rooting for someone disloyal that didn't stay committed to their original college.
Two more players showed up on the portal. We had all heard that Jakoby Longino had entered the portal and now it seems like a freshman d-lineman has also joined. Rated three stars out of high school. Our d-line is pretty darned good but it would have been nice to keep this player, especially with his size.
https://247sports.com/Season/2022-Football/TransferPortal/?institutionkey=24061
https://247sports.com/Season/2022-Football/TransferPortal/?institutionkey=24061
Hate to lose Joseph.
Wonder if a decline is coming, in that colleges will start recruiting less high school recruits. Recruiting high school players just appears to be too much of a risk under the new immediate eligibility transfer rules. Let someone else waste their time recruiting the freshman, then just wait and get them when it seems like the majority of them will eventually enter the portal. I guess that signing less high school players would end up sending more qualified players to JC's?
Wonder if a decline is coming, in that colleges will start recruiting less high school recruits. Recruiting high school players just appears to be too much of a risk under the new immediate eligibility transfer rules. Let someone else waste their time recruiting the freshman, then just wait and get them when it seems like the majority of them will eventually enter the portal. I guess that signing less high school players would end up sending more qualified players to JC's?
Fewer G5s will recruit high schools. More high school players will sign with P5s and Jucos while G5s raid the transfer portal for those "studs" that signed with P5s and sat on the bench for their first year or two.
I hope UTEP also takes that route. Wasting time with high schoolers these days. Just raid the portal and be done with it.
I think it's a mixed bag. What's not talked about much is the role of the assistant coaches in recruiting. Let's be honest, the head coach does not even remember the first name of a good chunk of the roster. First teamers, yes. Two and three deep, he doesn't. The assistant fills the gaps where the head coach can not. We read the over hyping of this "new normal" but do not read about a good chunk of the players who stay because they have a close relationship with assistant coach Joe Six Pack.
Your spot on, and that’s true about many head coaches. Dimel however does not fit that mold. He does a really good job with developing relationship with every single person on the roster. Much more so than many head coaches around the country.
He is definitely old school. A dying breed of coach.
Yes, he is known as a players coach and does have a good reputation among the coaching ranks.
However, I have heard him on the (post game) radio not remembering a players name. I mean this as a funny thing, it is no big deal and there are so many too remember.
This tweet feels like a shot at the receivers that are transferring
Are you kidding! The male libido not from El Paso love the local Hispanic women from here and the ladies know it. I'm the offspring of such an encounter and subsequent marriage, thereof. LOL!
Anyways, keeping me out of it and sticking to UTEP athletics, it does bear fruit in different ways and has over many decades, but just not enough to keep a top tier college athlete to possibly stay given the new easy transfers in D1 college athletics has yet to be fully seen. This has been going on for a while in the FBS arena but Cowing's departure was a gut punch to UTEP fans. Many on here saw it coming, but many did not.
How the transfer portal and fatherhood brought Jacob Cowing from UTEP to Arizona
[IMG alt="wide receiver Jacob Cowing (2) — — TUCSON, ARIZ. -- Football spring practice.April 1, 2022.
Photo by Mike Christy / Arizona Athletics"]https://cdn-theathletic-com.cdn.amp...-Christy508-e1649258706259-1024x682.jpg[/IMG]
Chase Henry Cowing was born on a fall Saturday. His dad has been trying to keep up ever since.
Jacob Cowing was one of the most coveted transfers in college football this offseason. A lot of big-time programs called the prolific UTEP wide receiver in December, and their offers were awfully tempting for a former two-star recruit. But when the Arizona native got the offer he needed, the decision was easy. He chose Chase.
For too long, he has tried to be a long-distance parent to his 2-year-old son. He was thriving on the field at UTEP, finishing No. 9 nationally in receiving last season with 69 catches for 1,367 yards and seven scores. What people couldn’t see is how difficult the past three years have been.
“It was killing me being away from my kid,” Cowing said. “After those three seasons, I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was eating at me each and every day, and no one knew about it.”
Becoming a father at 18 changed his world. His son is his why. Cowing got this far so that, someday, he wouldn’t have to be so far. And that’s why he’s at Arizona today.
Distance has been an issue since the day Chase was born. Cowing’s girlfriend, Taylor Barchus, would often come over to his parents’ house to watch UTEP games. Nycole Parker, his mother, remembers getting the call right before his game against UAB kicked off in 2019: I think my water just broke. The little guy was arriving ahead of schedule.
They both kept frantically calling and texting Jacob, whose phone was in the locker room. He was busy having one of the best performances of his freshman season, putting up 85 receiving yards in the Miners’ 37-10 loss. He didn’t find out Taylor had gone into labor until afterward, when Parker finally reached receivers coach Scotty Ohara and got him to tell her son to call her back.
“I had like 10 missed calls from my girlfriend and 10 missed calls from my parents,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘What is going on?’”
As if that wasn’t stressful enough, Cowing was 1,400 miles away in Birmingham, Ala. Parker had hustled to try to find him a direct flight back to Phoenix, but there wouldn’t be enough time to get him to the airport and on the plane. He had to fly back with the team to El Paso and then catch a flight home. “The whole plane ride there, I’m saying, ‘Can we hurry this up?!’” he said. Cowing rushed over to Banner Desert Medical Center in nearby Mesa and arrived an hour after Chase was delivered.
“He was a little upset that he missed his birth,” Parker said. “But as soon as he got there and he saw his little boy, nothing else mattered.”
That date — Nov. 16, 2019 — is inked in Roman numerals on his left forearm, along with his son’s name in cursive. Ever since that date, Cowing has tried to do whatever he can to be there for Chase. Living more than six hours away in El Paso was never easy. Taylor and Chase staying in Arizona, where there’s plenty of family to help out, just made more sense. They’ve tried to make the best of it, but parenting a newborn is already hard enough. Going through it as teenagers living far apart is deeply challenging. So much of his bonding with his son has had to come via his phone.
“We have daily FaceTime calls,” Cowing said. “I’m seeing him before he goes to bed, during the day, when he’s playing, when he’s feeding. That’s what I became accustomed to, FaceTime calls just for him to hear my voice and know I’m his dad.”
Not a day goes by that he misses one, even if he just gets to say good morning or goodnight. Cowing drove or flew home whenever his college schedule allowed, but the homesickness hit him hard during his freshman year. Being a father, a student and an athlete is a lot to handle, and he wants to be far more than just good enough at all three. His mom would send care packages and words of encouragement. But when you know you’re missing out? It’s a brutal feeling.
“I wasn’t there when he said his first word,” he said. “That killed me, obviously. I just want to see more and more of those achievements. And I want to see them in person, not over the phone or getting a text message.”
UTEP was his only FBS scholarship offer coming out of Maricopa High School, and Cowing was lucky to even have that. Tim Beck was the one who found him. Brandon Harris, Cowing’s head coach at Maricopa, had worked for Beck at Saguaro High in the 1990s. Beck, Texas’ offensive coordinator at the time, liked what he saw: a really dynamic athlete with great change of direction. He was small — Cowing says he was around 5-foot-8 and 158 pounds as a senior — and Texas was already set at receiver for the 2019 class. But Beck did reach out to UTEP coach Dana Dimel and suggested he take a look. He also tipped off his buddies at Youngstown State.
On the February signing day, Cowing had three options: UTEP, Youngstown State and CSU Pueblo. Arizona and Arizona State talked to him about coming in as a walk-on, but he couldn’t afford it. So he made the move to El Paso, determined to make the best of his opportunity. He could’ve given in to the homesickness, given up and gone home during that first year of college. Why stay? Because he believed in himself, knew he could play at this level and knew this was his best path to giving Chase a better life.
“He just pushed my motivation even more to be the person I am today and to be the player I am today,” he said. “Having that motivation really kept me focused on the bigger picture, my bigger dream.”
Cowing got bigger (he’s now 5-foot-10 and 172 pounds) and worked harder and turned himself into one of the best playmakers in college football, catching 141 passes for 2,608 yards and scoring 14 touchdowns over three seasons with the Miners. He became a first-team all-conference performer as a junior and helped lead UTEP to its first bowl game since 2014. The wideout reminds Dimel so much of Tyler Lockett, one of his former Kansas State players. Both can truly do it all, regardless of their size.
The success was gratifying, but the distance never got any easier. He offers nothing but praise for Taylor and what an amazing mother she is but admits the road has been “a little bit rocky” in their relationship. The six-hour drive back and forth is a relatively easy straight shot, but it gets tiring. The older Chase got, the more it all weighed on Jacob.
At the end of the 2021 season, the timing felt right to attempt to go home. This was one of those rare transfers where no hard feelings linger. Cowing says he couldn’t be more grateful for the love and care he received from Dimel and his staff. They understood he was doing the right thing for his family. When he went in the portal on Dec. 21, his expectations were modest.
“I thought it was maybe going to be Mountain West or other Conference USA teams offering me,” he said. “That was my mindset. So when my first call was Oregon, it was like, ‘Ain’t no way this is happening right now.’”
Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch got him on the phone as soon as possible that night, but he had a ton of competition, including Arizona State, Florida, Louisville, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas Tech and Virginia Tech. “I think he could’ve called up just about anybody and said, ‘I want to come,’ and they would have taken him,” Fisch said. “He’s not a two-star player anymore, that I do know.” But Cowing says his conversations with Fisch were different from the rest.
“We talked a little bit about football, but he got more into family and knew I have a kid,” Cowing said. “These other schools didn’t know and didn’t acknowledge it. All they ever talked about was football, football, football. For me, it made me feel like he actually understands my situation, my goals, what I want to do. He actually has my back on that.”
Cowing didn’t take any official visits. He didn’t need to. He committed on Jan. 3 and got moved to Tucson as soon he could.
Fisch gushes about what the wideout has brought to the program so far, from his smile to his willingness to learn and work to his competitiveness in every single practice rep. “He’s a tremendous catcher of the football. He’s explosive. His willingness to block, for somebody his size, is ultra impressive,” Fisch said. “I mean, the kid is special. I love having him on our football team. He’s made all of us better.” The Wildcats will get him the ball every way they can and have brought in more exciting additions on offense with Washington State transfer quarterback Jayden de Laura, touted freshman receiver Tetairoa McMillan and the rest of a top-25 recruiting class. This move really can bring out his best, on and off the field.
“He’s just laser focused on making his dreams come true,” Parker said, “not only for him, but to be able to provide for Chase at a higher level than what we had growing up and to build that legacy for him.”
He’s now just an hour and a half away from Chase and Taylor, who live in the Chandler area, and that has already made life much easier. Chase is going through his terrible twos stage right now, Jacob says with a chuckle, but it’s still fun. He’s always on the move, always energetic and talking. Grandma says he’s just like his dad. He’s really into Lightning McQueen and the “Cars” movies and playing with Jacob’s old Matchbox cars. He loves parks and pools and, yes, football games. He went to nearly every UTEP home game over the past two years and loved it — the cheering, the band, pointing to dad on the field. He’s already starting to flash quite an arm, too.
“We’ve got to work on his catching a little bit,” Cowing said, “but he can definitely throw it.”
He’s been able to see Chase every weekend since he got to Tucson, and they spent spring break together. The little guy was out there running around at Arizona’s scrimmage last Saturday. Best of all, Jacob and Taylor are in a good place now and back together. It’s been a long journey, he says, to figure out how to be the best parent, player and student he can be. Those aims are all finally aligning at Arizona.
“It was definitely hard and took a toll,” he said. “But in the end, it all worked out. We’re one big, happy family now.”
“We’ve got to work on his catching a little bit,” Cowing said, “but he can definitely throw it.”
He’s been able to see Chase every weekend since he got to Tucson, and they spent spring break together. The little guy was out there running around at Arizona’s scrimmage last Saturday. Best of all, Jacob and Taylor are in a good place now and back together. It’s been a long journey, he says, to figure out how to be the best parent, player and student he can be. Those aims are all finally aligning at Arizona.
“It was definitely hard and took a toll,” he said. “But in the end, it all worked out. We’re one big, happy family now.”
Cowing got named preseason Pac 12 1st team on Athlons. That some pretty good respect.
There is an article today in the El Paso Times about the Transfer Portal. Kevin Baker said its tough because you're recruiting athletes that have been fired somewhere else.
One note that I found interesting was that Dimel said 5 players entered the portal. (20 is the NCAA average). He said Cowing. And 2 failed out of school and 2 played less than 5 snaps. I know Longino didn't play. So that means Eldridge and Miles Banks are the ones who failed? Or did Joseph play more than 5 snaps.
The Miners lost five to the transfer portal, including a budding superstar in Jacob Cowing who was one of the biggest transfer portal recruits in the country (he picked Arizona over multiple SEC offers). Of the other four, two were ineligible because of grades and had to leave; the other two played a total of five snaps.
