Leahy 1-AA 93, RB James Akins was already green to Brown - mark t, before start of recruiting.  Is this common?

It's pretty rare. Supposedly your AC does his job and generates some interest before recruiting starts. It's just a handful of recruits each season, and usually they're crap recruits anyway, but every once in a while you'll see a top recruit start green, or one school start with multiple greens. It's almost completely random, and there's nothing you can do to influence it. Just another one of those bits of fluff that WIS would be better off getting rid of.

Even though the recruit is green to another human-coached school, it's just barely so (less than a recruit green to a lone SIM school).  If the other coach doesn't recruit the kid, and he's someone you're interested in, it's easy to get him to consider your school.