Council Becomes 17th Hoosier Commit

Thursday night, the Indiana staff received the words it had been waiting for from Texas defensive back Richard Council.

The 6-2, 180-pounder from Carrollton, Texas’ Newman Smith H.S. called the Indiana staff and verbally committed to the Hoosiers, picking Indiana over San Diego State, Sam Houston State and Louisiana-Monroe. Council is the 17th player to pledge to Coach Terry Hoeppner for the 2006 class, and the first cornerback.

Council made his official visit to Indiana last weekend.

Newman Smith H.S. Coach Bobby Bounds says Indiana is getting cornerback with plenty of upside, someone that combines the sort of size that college recruits are looking for these days along with the sort of speed to allow him to cover one-on-one.

“He’s rangy. He’s long armed and long legged,” said Bounds. “He probably has the reach of a guy who is 6-3 or 6-4. He has real good field speed. He’s probably a legit 4.5 guy, and his field speed is a little better than that.”

As a senior at Newman Smith Council was a two-way standout, earning All-District honors as a wide receiver while also starring at cornerback. Offensively he caught 33 passes for 578 yards and six touchdowns, and on defense he had 34 tackles, two tackles for loss, three passes broken up and one blocked kick.

Council started at free safety as a junior, but made the switch to cornerback in the off-season in an effort to not only give his team a lock-down corner, but to also put him at a position that Bounds thought he had potential to play at the collegiate level.

“We moved him around a little bit,” said Bounds. “He probably could have stayed at safety, but we thought we had some other guys that we thought could play safety better than the other guys at corner.

“We thought had the potential to play Division I at cornerback. We knew he had to have a good year, and he did some impressive things along the way.”