Patrick Conn of LonghornsWire wrote a piece today on former Badger cornerback Jay Valai and his current efforts as cornerback coach and recruiter for the Texas Longhorns.
Former Wisconsin CB Jay Valai is proving his worth on the recruiting trail for the Longhorns. @thebadgerswire https://t.co/Hll1wTgtiW
— Patrick Conn (@PatSportsGuy) July 5, 2020
Valai played at Wisconsin from 2007-2010 during which he played in 48 games at cornerback for Brett Bielema’s team and recorded a total of 154 tackles, 10.5 tackles-for-loss, one sack and two interceptions.
The Texas native then went on to become an assistant coach at Georgia from 2016-2017, a quality control coach for the Kansas City Chiefs in 2018, the cornerback coach at Rutgers in 2019 and now the cornerback coach for the Texas Longhorns.
Conn wrote about the former Badger’s recruiting efforts this offseason with the Longhorns still working to return to their national championship form seen throughout the early 2000s.
Valai has been credited with the recruitments of recent commits Jamier Johnson, J.D. Coffey and Ishmael Ibraheem. All three are four-star prospects for the 2021 class. For the 2022 class, he is hot on the trail for another California product Domani Jackson. The three commits that Valai has been getting to come to the Longhorns did so without a single visit.
Due to the NCAA’s dead period, coaches and players are prohibited from face to face visits. Given that all of their contact is done through video messaging, phone calls or texts messages Valai is proving his worth already. Even before coaching a single game, it appears as if Ash was right to bring in one of his former players to help mold this defense into his vision.
It did not take long for Valai to find employment in the coaching ranks and given his current trajectory, it appears the former Badger is in for a long, successful coaching career.