From the farm to the football field, a look at Grant Brix's rise to being the top in-state recruit

At 9:30 a.m. on a muggy Tuesday — about four hours after arriving at the Iowa State Fair — Grant Brix and his family huddle around a metal grooming chute with Ziggy, a 1,470-pound, 18-month-old Hereford steer, inside.

Brix changes from brown moccasin-style shoes into cowboy boots. He joins in the grooming affair, as Brix and company brush, spray and clip the steer’s hair in preparation for the upcoming 4-H competition.

The goal is to make the show steer look as muscular as possible, which is no easy task for a steer that Brix’s father, Jim, describes simply as “fat.”

Almost an hour after the grooming began, Brix took hold of Ziggy’s halter and led him to the show pavilion. Inside, Brix parades the steer in front of a judge, Ryan Rathmann, who is trained to identify which animal’s size and build stands out.

Instead, Rathmann remarks on the size of Ziggy’s handler.

“I’m glad you’re tender-hearted because you’re so big,” Rathmann said while looking at Brix, who towered over his steer and his fellow competitors. “If I was the athletic director at Texas Tech, I’d offer you.”

Brix — all 6-foot-6, 280 pounds of him — flashes a sheepish smile when the judge brings up football.

Rathmann is right, though: One look at Brix’s physique and it’s easy to see why he could play college ball. Except, he doesn’t have an offer from Texas Tech.

But Brix does hold offers from two dozen other Division I programs, including Alabama.

Brix enjoys a quiet rise in the recruiting world

Brix is the top-ranked, in-state recruit in the 2024 class.

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The senior offensive tackle at Logan-Magnolia is a consensus four-star recruit and is listed as the No. 62 player nationwide by 247Sports Composite. There are whispers that, with a successful season this fall, he could be upgraded to the coveted five-star ranking.

But long before Brix was one of the most sought-after senior football players in the country, he struggled to get on college’s radars.

His high school coach, Matt Straight, encouraged him to go out to camps, and it took one at Kansas State last June for Brix to convince a college coach to take a chance on him.

“That was my 10th camp, and I hadn’t gotten an offer from any of the (other) camps I went to,” Brix said. “Even though I was sore, tired from going from camp to camp, I just kept going.”

The hard work paid off when Wildcats coach Chris Klieman pulled Brix into the player tunnel and extended a scholarship offer to play football at Kansas State. He couldn’t help but smile when reliving the moment at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

“It was awesome,” Brix said, “Because it was what I’d been working toward.”

Brix said it was his run blocking and “how he fired off the ball” that caught Klieman’s attention. It wasn’t long before other college coaches saw his potential.

Kansas State offered in June.

Iowa State, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wisconsin all followed suit in September.

Between October 2022 and June 2023, Brix landed over a dozen more offers from Iowa, Alabama, Auburn, Boston College, Duke, Illinois, Miami, Michigan State, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Ole Miss, Oregon, Stanford and Tennessee.

His spring and summer were spent traveling to different parts of the country.

Brix embarked on unofficial visits to Iowa State, Minnesota, Penn State, Pittsburgh and Tennessee, trying to see as many programs as he could between the end of wrestling season and the beginning of summer training sessions.In June, he took official visits to his top four programs.

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Breaking down his top four schools

Alabama, Kansas State, Nebraska and Oklahoma are the four remaining schools vying for Brix’s commitment.

Those are the programs he took official visits to over the summer, something that took time away from when he would normally be showing cattle.

For the Crimson Tide, it was simple: It’s hard to beat the draw of Nick Saban and one of the highest-tier football programs in the country.

Brix liked the “family feeling” at Kansas State and said that he’s in contact with some of the Wildcats’ commits, like Dowling Catholic’s Kyle Rakers.

More: Q&A: Kyle Rakers on Dowling football, Kansas State commitment and relationship with Grant Brix

He credited Matt Rhule and the culture he’s instilling at Nebraska, as well as the program being on the up-and-up, as reasons why the Huskers are still in consideration.

Oklahoma already has a good recruiting class, but Brix said that the Sooners were only getting started. Plus, it’s hard to ignore the number of players who have gone from Oklahoma to the NFL or the experience of the coaching staff in Norman.

Brix told The Des Moines Register that he wanted to commit before the first game of the year, but the opening weekend of high school football came and went without any news. Logan-Magnolia is gearing up for its second game — a matchup against Kingsley-Pierson — and Brix doesn’t seem any closer to a decision.

He has some people in his ear: Thinking an offer from Alabama is cool, thinking he should commit to the Huskers or to the Cyclones for a myriad of reasons.

But this isn’t something the high school senior takes lightly.

“At the end of the day, when I make a decision, I’m going to have to go there and practice and play,” Brix said. “That’s the part I’ve been thinking about the most, because that’s the part I feel like everyone forgets about.

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“I just imagine the place being my home every single day, and not just on a recruiting trip, and then the people you’re gonna have to see every single day. And are you gonna feel comfortable in that environment? Are you going to be able to grow in that environment?”

Is there anything Grant Brix cannot do?

The Logan-Magnolia senior is a man of many talents.

Brix plays the trumpet in the school band, including before the start of football games.

“It looks odd, because you’ve got a 6-foot-6 guy who’s an incredible player in the marching band, but that’s a small school,” Straight said. “I put my brakes on the halftime performance because we need him there.”

This spring, he won a competition through the Iowa chapter of Business Professionals of America and was sent to the national conference in Anaheim, California.

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He’s successful in other sports, as well, qualifying for the state tournament in wrestling and the state track and field meet.

It seems like everything Brix touches turns to gold, except, it isn’t that simple.

Straight shared that, just a few years ago, Brix wasn’t the player recruiters see today. He didn’t play football until eighth grade and even then, he joined the team with raw size but not much else.

“He showed some promise, but he was really tall and awkward at that time,” Straight said.

The high school football coach credits two things with Brix’s growth: An incredible work ethic and the support of a small town.

“He stays after (practice) sometimes and does extra work, and it’s not for show,” Straight said. “He wants to improve himself, and I think that’s been his focus and what’s accelerated his growth for starting so late, that self-drive that he had.”

As for the small-town factor, Straight isn’t sure that Brix would be as big of a name if he lived in a larger community. There’s the possibility that Brix would’ve been lost in the shuffle or would’ve been at a disadvantage coming to football at the end of middle school.

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“I think small communities can provide more opportunities later on for awkward, tall kids like Grant,” Straight said. “Grant wasn’t very good in eighth grade, and he was just OK as a freshman. That growth, that patience of being in a small community gave him more opportunities later. I think that helped him.”

At Logan-Magnolia, he’s part of a community that takes pride in its high school sports programs. Friday night football drives the community, and Brix is just another jersey on the field for Panthers fans.

His teammates and other members of the community aren’t fazed by offers from Alabama, Notre Dame, or Oklahoma. And neither is Brix.

“I don’t think I could’ve asked for him to be more humble in this process,” Straight said. “Certainly getting a lot of attention but (he) doesn’t flaunt it, he doesn’t tell his classmates who offered or who’s coming in. That’s just who he is, and that’s very rare. Grant does the best job of downplaying it.”

Does showing cattle help train the oversized offensive lineman?

Brix may be one of the top football recruits in the country, but that doesn’t make a difference at the state fair cattle competition. He — or rather, Ziggy— did not finish in the top three.

He leads his steer back to the barn, where he will wash off several layers of tail adhesive, which is basically extra-strength hairspray for livestock. Then, after six-and-a-half hours at the state fair, he will drive the two hours home with his brother, Grady, so that they are back in time for football practice.

One would think that leading a 1,400-plus-pound steer around all morning was enough training for the day, but that’s not the case.

“I don’t think so,” Brix said, chuckling at the thought of showing cattle helping him go up against defensive linemen. “You’re not really pushing, you’re more pulling and, usually, the cows are cooperative.”

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be taken from the farm to the football field.

“Just working hard every day,” Brix said. “Sticking to a routine and pushing through on days you don’t want to. You could say that about anything in life, too.”

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Grant Brix's rise in the recruiting world includes an offer from Alabama