Texas A&M, UTSA + Ole Miss Make Plays For Carthage Running Back Keaontay Ingram’s Service

Keaontay Ingram is back at the forefront of college football recruiting news after a one-day hiatus.

Carthage's junior running back announced Friday new scholarship opportunities from Texas A&M, UTSA and Mississippi through his personal Twitter account. The offers are his 16th, 17th and 18th from the NCAA Division I FBS, and he now has an area-best 19 school choices in total.

Ingram (6-0, 198) closed the 2016 East Texas football season with the Offensive MVP award in Carthage's 31-17 win against Abilene Wylie for the Class 4A Division I state championship. The back scored twice in the title match, including the tying touchdown that brought the Dawgs back from a 14-0 deficit.

East Texas' scholarship leader in sheer number of invitations eclipsed 2,200 rushing yards in 15 games, scored 31 times on the ground and caught 46 passes for a little more than 400 yards.

Texas A&M made Ingram its third local target in the 2018 class. It had previously offered Marshall guard Chasen Hines and made contact with Arp athlete DeMarvion Overshown about an hour ahead of getting hold of Ingram.

The Aggies are hoping to get back some of the regional recruiting momentum they lost in the past cycle. Head coach Kevin Sumlin and his staff landed four prospects in 2015 and pulled in zero when the 2016 class became eligible to sign earlier this month.

It was a half-and-half 2016 campaign for Texas A&M on the field. The team rose as high as sixth in the AP Poll with a 6-0 start, but it lost four of its final six regular season games and then got upset by Kansas State in the Texas Bowl.

There are a lot of familiar faces within the program if Ingram, or the other two current targets, ultimately opt to play for the Aggies. More than a dozen former players from the ETSN.fm coverage region are on the roster.

In Ingram's case, pledging with Texas A&M is an opportunity to reunite with former Carthage offensive lineman Cagan Baldree. Ex-Bulldogs receiver Edward Pope exhausted eligibility last season.

Sumlin has never missed a bowl game in his five seasons with the Aggies program. For that matter, eight of his nine teams as a head coach have reached bowl games.

The coach played a major hand in the Aggies' second Heisman Trophy winner, Johnny Manziel, and the program at large has served as home to 30 consensus All-Americans in its 122 seasons.

Texas A&M also has national championship banners from the 1919, 1927 and 1939 campaigns.

UTSA is a much newer program -- it launched football in 2011 -- and has never been stronger than today. It reached its first bowl game in school history this past season with a 6-6 regular season and a second-place finish in the West Division of Conference USA.

The Roadrunners fell, 23-20, to New Mexico in the New Mexico Bowl.

Frank Wilson will be back in San Antonio for a second season and successfully recruited John Tyler cornerback Javontavius Mosley earlier this month against nine other interested FBS schools.

Mississippi, which entered the picture after lunch, had big aspirations for its 2016 season.

The team began the year ranked 11th in the county, but two of its first three games were against then-No. 4 Florida State and then-No. 1 Alabama. Mississippi lost both of those pivotal games and then three of four October toward a 5-7 record and a last-place finish in the West Division of the SEC.

Ole Miss had 13 Texans on its 2016 team, but none of them are from East Texas.

Ingram, like all college football prospects currently in their junior year of high school, will become eligible to sign with any program that offers him in February of 2018.

2018 East Texas Football Players With Division I FBS Offers

• Tre Allison, John Tyler, OLB, 6-0, 200 — committed to SMU; additional offer from Mississippi State (2)
• Chance Amie, Tyler Lee, QB, 6-3, 190 — offers from Bowling Green, Iowa State (2)
• Dekalen Goodson, John Tyler, DE/OLB, 6-0, 215 — offer from Mississippi State (1)
• Chasen Hines, Marshall, C, 6-3, 340 — offers from Baylor, Louisiana Tech, LSU, Minnesota, North Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech (11)
• Keaontay Ingram, Carthage, RB, 6-0, 198 — offers from Arkansas, Baylor, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, UCLA, UTSA (17)
• DeMarvion Overshown, Arp, ATH, 6-4, 196 —offers from Alabama, Arkansas, Baylor, Kansas, LSU, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, SMU, Southern Miss, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA, UTSA (14)