(Photo: Evan McCullers, 247Sports)

Shedrick Jackson, a wide receiver in the class of 2018, visited Auburn this past weekend and came away impressed.

“It’s great just coming out here and meeting people, getting to know new people and just seeing everything. The facilities and stuff, it’s nice,” Jackson said, according to 247Sports. “It’s definitely a place I’ll be coming back to. I love it down here. It feels like home, and they made me feel like I was part of the family.”

And that makes perfect sense, given Jackson is the nephew of Bo Jackson, one of the greatest players in the history of college football and a former Auburn Tiger.

Still, Shedrick, a junior-to-be at Hoover (Ala.) High, doesn’t give off the vibe that his attending Auburn is a foregone conclusion. He is also drawing attention from other SEC powers, such as Alabama, and he has received an offer from Mississippi State.

“I think they’d be one of my top 5 schools if I had them compiled like that,” Jackson said. “I love it down here. It’s somewhere I’d definitely consider going.”

Rechon Black (Photo: Kelly Kline, Under Armour)

Rechon “Leaky” Black, who committed to play basketball at North Carolina in January, will transfer to Montverde Academy in Florida to for his final two high school seasons, The Charlotte Observer reported.

Black, a 6-7 point guard, said in a statement that he “will be able to continue as a student-athlete and compete with and against players from all over the world.”

A four-star prospect, Black is ranked as the No. 7 point guard in the Class of 2018 and the No. 27 player overall, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings.

Montverde finished 26-2 last season and was No. 5 in the final Super 25 rankings but won the Super 25 national title in the three previous seasons.

His father, Chon, told The Observer that the decision was based on what would best prepare his son to be a starter as a freshman at North Carolina in the 2018-19 season. The family also considered Oak Hill Academy in Virginia and Huntington Prep in West Virginia.

The decision to leave Concord (N.C.) was difficult in part because Chon Black is one of the school’s all-time greats and his wife, Carla, was the principal there at one point.

Concord coach “Jason Stowe is one of my best friends,” Chon Black said, “but the biggest thing for (Rechon) now is to get prepared to be able to compete when he gets to Chapel Hill. And with us exploring our options, academically and athletically, Montverde has a history of preparing kids for college to play on at a high level.”

Georgia quarterback Harrison Bailey has yet to play a high school football game but has eight reported scholarship offers, including five from Southeastern Conference programs. LSU became the most recent this week.

The Tigers join Alabama, Ole Miss, Georgia and Florida among the SEC schools.

Bailey just finished his eighth grade year and is entering Marietta High, where he is a member of the Class of 2020.

“I think you would say I am handling the attention well because I don’t feel any different than I did before these offers,” he told USA TODAY High School Sports. “I think the offers are coming from a lot of the camps I have attended. I think they see how young I am and how well I do.”

Bailey, 6-3 and 195 pounds, received his first offer in February from new Miami coach Mark Richt. Given Richt’s history at Georgia, he presumably had Bailey on his radar as an in-state prospect.

Quarterbacks are among the first players often to have scholarship offers, and Bailey is part of a small group of high-ceiling elite young QBs with verbal offers.

Here are some highlights from Bailey’s eighth-grade year.

John Krahn, who got national attention last fall as the presumed largest man in football at 7 feet and 440 pounds, will continue his football career at prep school in hopes of landing an FBS scholarship.

Krahn enrolled at Georgia Prep Sports Academy in Decatur and is down to 400 pounds with a goal of getting to 350 by the time his freshman year starts in college and then losing another 50 to play defensive end. By attending the academy, Krahn can do post-graduate work to get situated academically and potentially attract recruiters.

MORE: Meet John Krahn, a massive defensive lineman from California

Krahn, from Riverside, Calif., told Champion Newspapers in Georgia that he had a few Division I walk-on invitations, some Division II offers and also considered junior college. He said by going to prep school he does not have to use his college eligibility and would still have four years wherever he lands.

Krahn said he had visited Georgia and Georgia Tech and fell in love with the state.

“I thought [GPSA] was way better than junior college, especially being out here where a lot of big-time schools like Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Auburn [which recruit] out here,” he told Champion Newspapers. “I thought it would be a better recruiting process out here.”

Krahn will be working out intensely with former New York Giants defensive end Dwight Johnson, who owns a complex in McDonough, Ga., beginning this week.

Johnson said Krahn will take part in weekly two-hour lineman technique training on Saturdays and doing conditioning and core training during the weekdays. Johnson and his team plan on helping Krahn develop a better nutrition plan.

“The goal is to trim him up around the midsection, get him quicker, get him limber, and improve his pass blocking,” Johnson told USA TODAY Sports.

Krahn was more known as a defensive lineman in high school but the plan is for him to attempt to play both ways this season.

As for how Krahn is maintaining his diet to this point, “It’s only hard if I’m surrounded by cookies, chips and stuff like that, but living here you get the kind of [healthy] food you get and that’s what you eat. It hasn’t been that hard. If I go to the store I’ll just get a jar of peanut butter and that’ be my little sweet snack, but it also has protein and fat that I’m able to burn when working out.”

Trae Young announced his final six schools, using Twitter to show him wearing each of the school’s jerseys.

The five-star point guard from Norman North in Oklahoma narrowed his choices to Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and Washington.

Ranked as the No. 2 point guard in the Class of 2017 and No. 21 player overall by ESPN, Young is coming off a spectacular summer. He had more than 30 offers so cutting the list makes the process more manageable.

Three of the schools were seemingly givens in Kansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

In Texas Tech, Young could continue his father’s legacy. Rayford Young score more than 1,500 points for Tech with more than 400 assists.

That Washington is included continues the prospect of Young and Michael Porter would go through with the long-discussed “package deal.” Porter, ranked No. 4 in the class, committed to Washington, where his father was hired as an assistant coach on Lorenzo Romar’s staff.

Keeping Young in state — and potentially away from the Sooners — would be a big coup for new Oklahoma State coach Brad Underwood if he could pull it off.

David Coleman, the head football coach at Piper (Sunrise, Fla.) High, was sentenced to a year of probation after being found guilty of battery stemming from a 2014 case in which he was accused of striking a player while an assistant at Taravella (Coral Springs, Fla.) High.

Separately, Coleman is due back in court Thursday on charges of domestic abuse involving an ex-girlfriend. The coach told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that his job is not in danger.

“The school board has already done a thorough investigation,” he told the paper.

The school’s athletic director, however, was not aware of Coleman’s conviction, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

As an assistant at Taravella, Coleman allegedly punched a player in the ribs, knocking the teen to the ground and leaving a large bruise. When approached by investigators, Coleman admitted to hitting the student and said he’d done so to others before. He was suspended, and he later took the job at Piper coaching football and teaching math.

“I just wanted to get it over with,” Coleman told the paper Wednesday about the player abuse case. “I am not a monster. I am not a bully. I just want to move on and continue coaching football and helping kids.”

Coleman led Piper to a 9-2 record in 2015 and its first playoff appearance in over a decade.

Football coaches value preseason practice and most still have two-a-days, just with a different focus that the past (Photo: Tennessean)

As high school football programs around the country get set to begin preseason practice, 58% will participate in two-a-day practices but say the emphasis has changed.

According to a national study of high school football coaches released Thursday with the launch of part of Russell Athletic’s Team On campaign, coaches said two-a-days have changed from attempting to push players to exhaustion to focusing on physical and mental preparation and fundamentals.

RELATED: Russell Athletic, Eddie George help state football runners-up #SettleYourScore

The study authors said its intent was to “explore preseason football culture – the styles, techniques and philosophies used by today’s coaches to build a team in 2016.”

Asked to provide three words to describe two-a-days of the past, grind, exhaustion and conditioning were the most popular. The most popular words for two-a-days of today were fundamentals, mental and physical.

Amid rule changes intent to limit contact and prevent injuries overall, 57% said they agree with preseason practice regulations and 66% said limits on practice make athletes safer. A total of 93% of the coaches came from states that have some regulations.

In terms of the value of practice and off-the-field activities, 50% of the respondents said teams were made in practice, 47% off the field and only 3% in games.

Other findings:

* 46% of coaches see themselves as father figures to their players

* 56% of coaches says they use innovative, new techniques and technology in pre-season training

* 64% of coaches became a coach because they love teaching and turning kids into young men of character.

* 77% of coaches said their teams have a mantra that they use through the season.

Katy coach Gary Joseph hoists the Texas state championship trophy . Katy was among nine Texas teams that went undefeated.  (Photo: Bob Levey, Associated Press)

As teams begin to take the field for preseason practice around the nation, 139 programs will start without having tasted defeat in more than a year. Those teams went through the 2015 campaign without a loss in 11-man football, according to data collected by Ken Massey.

Texas finished with nine schools to lead all states, followed by New York with eight and Florida, New Jersey and Illinois with seven each. Here are the schools looking to build on that perfection.

RELATED: Longest active football winning streaks

Jerry Jeudy (Photo: 247Sports.com)

Alabama has landed another elite wide receiver from South Florida with the commitment Thursday night of Jerry Jeudy from Deerfield Beach.

That’s Amari Cooper to Calvin Ridley to Jeudy, who teamed with Ridley for a time in high school.

Jeudy was considered an Alabama lean and that notion got stronger as he continued to build relationships with Crimson Tide recruits at The Opening earlier this month and then enjoyed a visit to Tuscaloosa.

He made the announcement during a South Florida radio show, reaching into a plastic bag to pull out a white Alabama visor.

Ranked as the No. 6 wide receiver in the country by 247Sports and the No. 25 player overall by ESPN.com, Jeudy had 41 receptions for 496 yards and 10 touchdowns last season.

Jeudy had Florida fans salivating with his performance at the Gators’ Friday Night Lights event, but he decided to leave the state, picking the Crimson Tide over Florida, Florida State, Miami and Tennessee. He had visited Alabama, Miami and Florida within the last month.

We are still a long way until National Signing Day so don’t expect the Florida schools to just let him walk away; the fullcourt recruiting press should continue.

A Baylor School (Chattanooga, Tenn.) tennis coach was arrested Thursday in Georgia after investigators say he purchased $200 worth of methamphetamine from a police source.

Philip Henry Johnson, 51, has been the coach of the program since 2003. Investigators believe he frequently travels to a specific county in Georgia to buy meth.

Police say Johnson also had a gun in his car.

According to the Chattanoogan, Johnson was a youth tennis star and twice faced Andre Agassi at the U.S. Open. The report states he was also a Georgia high school state champion and played on UGA’s national title teams in 1985 and ’87.

This 2003 piece from the Athens Banner-Herald says the former star was nicknamed the “Dalton Detonator.”

He is currently being held without bond.

Grayson’s tough schedule may be attracting elite transfers. (Photo: Rick Crain, Grayson Football).

With August almost upon us and practices happening in many states around the country, it’s time to start looking ahead to season openers around the nation. Take our poll below.

Emory Jones, one of the top dual-threat quarterbacks in the class of 2018, announced his commitment to Ohio State on Friday using the video above produced by Bleacher Report.

“They’ve been my dream school since I was growing up and Braxton Miller’s been my favorite quarterback,” Jones told 247Sports in a recent interview. “I love the university here, I just love everything they have to offer me. I love Coach (Urban) Meyer and I love Braxton Miller just by what he had done in their offense. It was just what I like.”

A star at Heard County (Franklin, Ga.), Jones, of course, will join a host of star quarterbacks in Columbus, including top 2017 dual-threat QB Tate Martell from Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas).

Ranked as the No. 3 dual-threat QB in the class by the 247Sports Composite, Jones chose the Buckeyes over Tennessee and several others.

He is the second 2018 commit for Ohio State, which got a commitment from four-star running back Brian Snead at the recent Friday Night Lights camp that Jones also attended.

It appears the James family is getting pretty accustomed to winning titles.

LeBron James, of course, led the Cleveland Cavaliers to an NBA title a few weeks back, now his son, LeBron Jr., is doing work for his own squad.

We’ve shown you plenty of what the younger James is capable of in the past, and now here’s Bronny taking his team, the North Coast Blue Chips, to the USBA Championship.

LeBron Jr., who, as a fifth-grader, is already reeling in top-notch scholarship offers, continues to improve on the floor, and he looks simply head and shoulders better than the competition.

Seriously, Jameses, leave some glory for the rest of us.

Wendell Carter Jr. (Photo: Jon Lopez, Nike)

While “package deals” often sound good during the recruiting process, making them happen is generally more difficult.

But in recent weeks, Gary Trent Jr. and Wendell Carter Jr. have reiterated their intention to play together in college.

Carter, a power forward from Pace Academy in Atlanta, is ranked as the No. 2 player by ESPN.com in the Class of 2017. Trent, a 6-5 point guard from Minnesota who recently announced his intention to play at Findlay Prep in Nevada, is ranked No. 9.

“A package deal is still the plan,” Carter Jr. told SNY.tv at the Adidas Nations event in Southern California.

Carter has narrowed his list to eight with Duke, Kentucky and Arizona the schools on his list that also are intensely pursuing Trent.

Trent has said he’s liked to commit before the season starts, according to SNY.tv, but Carter has yet to provide a timeframe for his decision.

Alabama already has a commitment from quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the Class of 2017.

Now, the Tide has made an offer to his brother, Taulia Tagovailoa, a quarterback in the Class of 2019, as noted by Tua on Twitter.

The brothers from Hawaii play for different high schools so both get a chance to start. Tua attends Saint Louis (Honolulu) and is ranked as the No. 1 dual threat quarterback in the class by the 247Sports Composite rankings. He was the Elite 11 MVP at The Opening. Taulia attends Kapolei (Honolulu).

According to SEC Country, Taulia was not with the family when they visited Alabama in May.

Bubba Bolden is one of the top safeties in the Class of 2017 and plays for Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas), the two-time defending Super 25 champion. And you won’t miss him if he takes his shirt off.

Bolden, who decommitted from USC in mid-July, has gotten a lion tattooed across his chest, as he displayed on Twitter.

This leads to several questions we posed to Bolden:

• Why a lion? “I’ve been planning this out for a while with my mom. The lion has been my favorite animal since I was little. I decided to get it because my mom says that I am the man, the one that will support my family, the one that will help my family out with whatever and I will protect my family. My mom says that I show my inner beast when I’m on the field and that’s when the lion really comes out.”

• How long did it take? “Nine hours.”

• Um, did it hurt? “Yeah, it hurt. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but if they want it, they can try it.”

Bolden, who already has accepted an invitation to the Army All-American Bowl, has 17 reported scholarship offers. Top247 ranks him as the No 7 safety in the Class of 2017 and the No. 2 player in the state of Nevada.

Grant Thornham, a 10-year-old Denver Broncos fan, has an unexpected souvenir from his trip to training camp Friday — an orange cast on his wrist.

Thornham was in a crowd on the hillside and tried to catch a field goal off the foot of Brandon McManus.

The result: a trip to the doctor for X-rays and the diagnosis of a broken wrist.

“The ball came towards me really fast and I didn’t know what to do,” Thornham told Fox 31. “It wasn’t his fault, I think it was my fault for trying to catch it. I didn’t have any idea how fast it was going to come.”

His dad contacted the Broncos and Grant was back at training camp Sunday, where he met McManus, who autographed the cast; gave him a signed picture and posed for a photo.

He also met coach Gary Kubiak and wide receiver Demaryius Thomas.

“If I’m gonna break it,” Thornton told The Denver Post, “this is the way to do it.”

Montverde Academy forward EJ Montgomery takes a shot over Dillard’s Joniya Gadson (Photo: Robert Duyos, USA TODAY Sports Images)

The Wheeler (Marietta, Ga.) basketball program is expected to add two elite-level recruits to its program in EJ Montgomery and Terry Armstrong.

Montgomery, a 6-10 power forward who is ranked No. 14 in the Class of 2018 by the 247Sports Composite rankings, is leaving Montverde Academy in Florida for Wheeler. He played the last two seasons for the Eagles.

Montverde was 26-2 last season and finished No. 5 in the Super 25 rankings

Montgomery’s move was first reported by Ronnie Flores of CalHiSports.com on Twitter and then confirmed to USA TODAY High School Sports by Wheeler.

A 6-4 small forward, Armstrong is ranked No. 18 on the ESPN 25 for the Class of 2019 and will depart Carman-Ainsworth (Flint, Mich.). He averaged 16 points and 5.5 rebounds as a freshman.

According to MLive.com, Armstrong considered Findlay Prep, Huntington Prep and Pebblebrook before selecting Wheeler.

“It was about finding somewhere where he would fit in right away and be able to play against the best competition and get the best training,” Armstrong’s mentor and trainer Timothy Jones told MLive.com. “We wanted somewhere for him to be comfortable.

Wheeler went 22-6 last season and lost in the first round of the Georgia AAAAAA playoffs. Among those losses was a 76-70 defeat at Montverde in Wheeler’s second game of the season.

Shakwon Barrett, who spent the last two years at Findlay Prep, will play a post-graduate year at Montverde Academy in Florida.

Barrett, a 6-3 guard from the Grassroots Canada pipeline, has seen his stock rise again with strong play this summer and is hoping to take things to another level at Montverde.

“It just felt like a good fit,” he said. “It’s somewhere where I could develop my game as well as play good competition on the big stage.”

Of note, Shakwon is not related to R.J. Barrett, a star player on Montverde’s high school team who is also from the Toronto area, although Shakwon notes “we’re good friends.”

Ohio State has done, generally speaking, quite well recruiting under Urban Meyer. Following a recent event in Columbus, Meyer talked about what he looks for in players.

“We just had a big Friday Night Lights thing the other night, and instead of just evaluating — you know the guys can play,” Meyer said on SiriusXM College Sports Nation, according to CoachingSearch.com. “But I want to see, more than anything, and I challenge our staff, are they jumping to the front of the line? … We call it the grind. You’d better embrace the grind if you come to Ohio State.

“Not everybody wants to do that, which is fine. There’s other places they may not go as hard. That’s something me and my staff have gotten better at over the years.”

In the past, Meyer has talked about his staff’s propensity to communicate with high school coaches to get a better feel for players and if they would fit in at Ohio State.

“That’s something, early in my career, I was probably average at,” Meyer said. “You’d be enamored with stars or, ‘We have to (get) him, because this other school is recruiting him.’ We do watch who is recruiting people. I personally look at recruiting rankings, because I think it’s kind of fun to watch that, but it’s not how we make decisions. It’s how do you fit in the culture.”