Going home is always exciting for ISU football player James White.

The redshirt junior running back from Dallas will be doing just that with his 18 teammates that also hail from the state of Texas when Iowa State travels to take on Big 12 newcomer TCU on Saturday.

After getting overlooked by almost every FBS school in Texas, White said he has a little bit more fire whenever he plays against one in their stadium.

“I feel like it’s personal when I play them,” White said. “Any team that’s from Texas, I want to do my best against them — prove them wrong, show them what they missed out on.”

Having two away games every season in Texas — America’s football recruiting hotbed — is a perk ISU coach Paul Rhoads stresses while recruiting high school players from there.

“The opportunity to go home is special,” Rhoads said. “A lot of these kids’ families don’t get up here very often, and so the opportunity to go home and play in front of them is something that motivates them.”

In his time as coach at Iowa State, Rhoads is 2-2 in the state of Texas with both wins having come against ranked teams (No. 22 Texas in 2010, No. 19 Texas Tech in 2011).

While losing Texas A&M to the Southeastern Conference hurts Iowa State’s chances at recruiting in the Houston area, with its proximity to College Station, Rhoads said adding TCU, which is in the heart of the Dallas metroplex in Fort Worth, to the Big 12 makes up for that.

Cornerback Jeremy Reeves, who hails from Allen, Texas, in northern metropolitan Dallas, said the addition of TCU adds more than just another avenue for recruiting.

“It’s a good look for the Big 12,” Reeves said. “There’s a lot of good teams in this league… It’s a very offensive [oriented] league too. Those guys, they can play on offense, but they’re very known for their defense also. So it’s a good fit.”

Along with White, Reeves is one of the 15 Texas natives on the team who did not receive scholarship offers from the schools in Texas. Damein Lawry, Jared Barnett, Chris Young and Jerome Tiller are the only players who declined offers from Texas schools to come to Iowa State.

When asked which school he would have liked to have played for, however, White could not give a definitive answer.

“I can’t say; I’m just happy to be a part of Iowa State,” White said with a chuckle. “I can’t really say.”