Bulldogs land late commitment from 2020 linebacker who had wealth of Power Five offers

Fresno State added another high-level player to its 2020 recruiting class on Wednesday with a commitment from outside linebacker Justin Houston from Serra High in Gardena, who early on had a number of scholarship offers from Power Five programs.

“I was just waiting for an opportunity to get to work,” Houston said. “That was really it. I was waiting for someone to believe in me and give me the opportunity to play football.

“Some of it didn’t go down the way I wanted to with some other schools and Fresno State was the only one that at the end was really there.”

Houston, who is 6-foot-3 and 185 pounds, was rated as a 3-star prospect in 2020 by 247Sports. He had scholarship offers from Florida, South Carolina and Vanderbilt in the Southeastern Conference, Boston College in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Nebraska in the Big Ten and Kansas in the Big 12, among others, but went unsigned past the traditional national letter of intent signing day in February.

Fresno State was there when Houston needed it to be, and the outside linebacker is the fifth player the Bulldogs have added late this summer.

Quarterback Jalan Early from Millennium High in Goodyear, Ariz., and offensive linemen Tilini Livai (6-3, 300) from Narbonne High in Los Angeles, Baylor transfer Paul Matavao-Poialii (6-4, 330) and Toreon Penright (6-4, 265) from Cajon High in San Bernardino all enrolled in school at the start of the fall semester.

The Bulldogs had recruited Matavao-Poialii out of Jefferson High in Daly City in 2019, and Livai had originally signed with USC that same year.