The

The Welcome into this very special edition of Open Mic on the State of Recruiting

Podcast. I am Mike Roach from Orange 24-7, and I'm joined by what I would say is the first

guy I ever had a really, really good relationship with in this

business. My first one, I've got, I think two pictures I've ever taken with commits,

and you're one of them. It is the great Toppa Amade. Tope, how's it going?

Going well. Everything's doing well. I'm happy to be here, man.

You've got, I was, I texted you, like literally the day after the season was over and was just like, man, you, you have had quite a ride.

It has been a long time, me and you, and, you know, you and I have kind of grown up in this

thing together. You were, like I said, the first kid I ever really connected

with. And then you went off to college and you've been through the biggest whirlwind, probably of

anybody on this roster, probably of anybody you could talk to it. If you want to talk about,

you know, how to handle adversity and change, I think you're the perfect guy to do that. We

definitely will. Before we get into that, I want to go back to

your recruitment because now, look, I see you got your, you know, you got a clean fade and all that

sort of thing, got a great beard. I remember the kind of pudgy kid with the smudged with the smudged

glasses that showed up at camp. You know, your recruitment took off kind of out of nowhere. Have you ever thought back,

kind of just reflected back on that recruitment and everything in it? And if you have, I mean,

is there any regrets or anything you would have done differently? No regrets, really. And

just thinking back on it, everything happened once the whole deadlifting record video went viral. And that's when I started getting a lot of attention from, you know, Tulane and Texas State they offered. Then my first biggest offers were tech in Washington on the same day. So then stuff started picking up after that. But, you know, just looking back on my time in high school,

that there's no regrets at all, you know.

You know, the whole recruitment process was pretty,

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