The Poet is a film buff. Star of several ooh-worthy highlight videos across the Internet, Tavon Austin admits he was at first a fan of clips of Noel Devine in high school and Steve Slaton in college.

Make that, still is a fan. The sophomore wide receiver in 2010 takes time every so often to go to YouTube or somewhere else and watch the clips of his predecessors for inspiration.

It began years back, though. In Devine he saw a player doing the same things he was doing when he was in high school. In Slaton he saw a similarly sized back with what he believes are also similar abilities. He found the common denominator between Slaton and Devine to be WVU and, yes, it’s what opened his eyes to a future in Morgantown.

And you thought recruiting was a complex science? It’s reached point-and-click simplicity now.

For Austin, though, he found it to be not nearly as simple as he expected. There were humbling moments and he later realized the one who gained the most from the hype was also affected most.

“Most of the time I think it hurts you,” he said. “If you come in there and think you’re going to do that to people, if you think you’re pretty tough and you’re going to do the same things at that level while the whole time you have linebackers who have the same speed as you, sometimes it hurts you when you come in with the big head.

“When I came in, I thought I was going to do the same things, but it’s not like that. I thought I was going to be able to make a couple people miss and score, but the reality here is if you make one person miss, someone else is going to come in and tackle you.”