Spoke with somebody that covered Brown while he was the offensive coordinator at Kentucky to get some perspective on how he connects as a recruiter.
"The first thing that comes to mind is his recruitment of former four-star quarterback recruit Drew Barker. Of course, Barker's career never really worked out at Kentucky, possibly because of a lingering back injury, but he was a coveted recruit in the Cats' backyard. Neal Brown immediately became his lead recruiter when he got the job. South Carolina's coaching staff had a two-year head start recruiting Barker and they were the heavy favorites to land him. But in a period of about six months Brown's persistence and work on Barker eliminated that gap and the quarterback made a high profile commitment to Kentucky. That helped jump start the best recruiting class, by the rankings, in Kentucky history. Brown had a hand with all of UK's offensive recruits that year, when UK had the No. 1 recruiting class in the country into September (nobody has ever believed this was even possible) and finished in the Top 20.
The other story that comes to mind regards offensive lineman Jervontius ("Bunchy") Stallings, who was a two-star recruit from Alabama. Late in his recruitment, about a week before National Signing Day, Brown and offensive line coach John Schlarman traveled to Alabama to try and close the deal. They were recruiting against Mississippi State, which has historically had a big edge recruiting Deep South guys against Kentucky for obvious reasons. There was actually a heavy snow that made travel virtually impossible but Brown and Schlarman pushed their rental car to the max in horrible conditions and literally walked a couple of miles to finish their journey and get to Stallings, who was snowed in at his high school. Brown and Schlarman ended up being snowed in as well and they stuck around hanging out with him until 4 a.m. It wasn't a given that Stallings would pick Kentucky, but after he saw that level of devoted interest, he committed hours later. That seemed like a lot of fuss about a two-star recruit but this year Stallings was a first team All-American as a senior.
He is extremely competitive. While Brown won more than his share of high profile recruiting battles over top tier Kentucky targets, there were some misses, too. In the 2015 class, Kentucky was recruiting Jarrett Stidham (once a resident of Kentucky, and you probably know about him) as well as Elijah Sindelar, originally from Ohio but a resident of the Commonwealth at the time. They never had a great shot with Stidham but it was a considerable upset when Sindelar picked Purdue. I heard anecdotally afterwards, at one point when there were rumblings that UK might have a shot at flipping Sindelar, that Brown probably wouldn't want to reopen that saga because he wasn't happy with the decision the first time around."
"The first thing that comes to mind is his recruitment of former four-star quarterback recruit Drew Barker. Of course, Barker's career never really worked out at Kentucky, possibly because of a lingering back injury, but he was a coveted recruit in the Cats' backyard. Neal Brown immediately became his lead recruiter when he got the job. South Carolina's coaching staff had a two-year head start recruiting Barker and they were the heavy favorites to land him. But in a period of about six months Brown's persistence and work on Barker eliminated that gap and the quarterback made a high profile commitment to Kentucky. That helped jump start the best recruiting class, by the rankings, in Kentucky history. Brown had a hand with all of UK's offensive recruits that year, when UK had the No. 1 recruiting class in the country into September (nobody has ever believed this was even possible) and finished in the Top 20.
The other story that comes to mind regards offensive lineman Jervontius ("Bunchy") Stallings, who was a two-star recruit from Alabama. Late in his recruitment, about a week before National Signing Day, Brown and offensive line coach John Schlarman traveled to Alabama to try and close the deal. They were recruiting against Mississippi State, which has historically had a big edge recruiting Deep South guys against Kentucky for obvious reasons. There was actually a heavy snow that made travel virtually impossible but Brown and Schlarman pushed their rental car to the max in horrible conditions and literally walked a couple of miles to finish their journey and get to Stallings, who was snowed in at his high school. Brown and Schlarman ended up being snowed in as well and they stuck around hanging out with him until 4 a.m. It wasn't a given that Stallings would pick Kentucky, but after he saw that level of devoted interest, he committed hours later. That seemed like a lot of fuss about a two-star recruit but this year Stallings was a first team All-American as a senior.
He is extremely competitive. While Brown won more than his share of high profile recruiting battles over top tier Kentucky targets, there were some misses, too. In the 2015 class, Kentucky was recruiting Jarrett Stidham (once a resident of Kentucky, and you probably know about him) as well as Elijah Sindelar, originally from Ohio but a resident of the Commonwealth at the time. They never had a great shot with Stidham but it was a considerable upset when Sindelar picked Purdue. I heard anecdotally afterwards, at one point when there were rumblings that UK might have a shot at flipping Sindelar, that Brown probably wouldn't want to reopen that saga because he wasn't happy with the decision the first time around."
