Posted by: Chris Vannini on February 6, 2013

In most years, Texas has a recruiting class ranked in the top five, but that's not the case in 2013.

The Longhorns are No. 16 in the 247 composite rankings, but a big reason for that is class size - Texas is only signing about 15 players.

The last time Mack Brown brought in a class of this size was 2005, when 15 kids came in and the class was ranked No. 20 by Rivals. That worked out, as the Longhorns won the national championship the following season and reached the national championship game in 2009.

So when talking about the keys to recruiting a smaller class, Brown wasn't worried.

"You take fewer chances. You usually have to do a better job evaluating," he said on ESPNU's Signing Day special. "It's funny, in that class, nobody knew Henry Melton would be starting for the Chicago Bears. Nobody knew Aaron Lewis would come in and move positions and change, Roy Miller is still playing (in the NFL). There were so many great players in that class. Nobody really recruited Colt McCoy, and he's still playing. Nobody knew Rod Muckelroy very much.

"What you do is, you have to be careful on Signing Day that it's not a lot of eye candy. There will be a lot of guys that oversign today so the numbers make it look like they had a great class. There will be a lot of guys that take guys that will never be in school today. They'll have to place them and they may never show up.

"That was a class of 14 or 15 guys that really paid the University of Texas back. We were really, really high on the success rate of our evaluations, and we're hoping this class will be the same."

Below is a video of the Texas women's golf team hitting balls on the football field.

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Chris Vannini is the lead writer for CoachingSearch.com and has covered Michigan State sports for The State News, The Oakland Press and MLive.com. He writes a weekly column for the Detroit Free Press on behalf of SB Nation. Vannini lives in Big Ten country, so his foot speed is far from SEC caliber, but his pulse on coaches is hard to match. Be sure to follow @CoachingBuzz on twitter and send your feedback to chris@coachingsearch.com