So,What is the difference between LSU and UL? (Not as much as you'd think). From a parent's eye
Like any other proud parent of a son who's pubesence has gotten into super high gear and brought him into the land of the giants, otherwise known as a college prospect, I now find myself on the never-ending hamster wheel of college football camps. I began sending my son to summer football camps three preseasons ago with the idea of increasing his technical skills and the hope that one day, if he were big enough, quick enough, mean enough, strong enough, and fortunate enough to avoid serious injury, he might one day be considered if by no one else, at least by myself and himself able to play football beyond the high school level. At a tender 16 years of age and 6'4" tall and 275 pounds and sporting a size 14 Extra wide, he certainly has the size. With the footwork and other technical skills I see in his game versus other prospects, he definitely has the skills. While he is not a track star, he can get down the field real well for a guy his size. So, in my unusually somewhat humble, but less than totally objecteive estimation, he has the goods to play division1 football somewhere.
The big question is where. As his short time in high school begins to draw to a close (after all, he will be starting his junior season this year), I begin to feel the pressure any good loving parent of a prospective football recruit would feel. If I truly love my son and want what's best for him, I should surely swallow my pride and bring that boy to camp in Alabama, and let old Satan himself have a looksee to see wheher he's Crimson Tide material, OR NOT. As a proud son of Louisiana, it was surely my duty to let my son go to Les Miles' camp and let Les have a gander, do some poking and prodding, and let Les know just how much good it would do my ego to have my son run across Tiger Stadium with ninety-nine thousand screaming red necks and coon asses calling his name.
So that's just what I did. Instead of just the usual four day three a day extremely intensive O. Line and D. line football camp in Thibodaux, I also decided to send him to the LSU lineman camp this Saturday. I also got wind of another select camp at UL, and was able to talk my boy's way into it. Surely Mark Hudspeth would see the potential future star lineman that would lead the UL Ragin Cajun Nation to the BCS promised land. And then away we went.
I can say I have gotten AT LEAST an associate's degree in college prospect parenting in one weekend. A big part of that time I spent sizing the two different schools up and down and deciphering for myself the biggest most critical differences between them. My final analysis is there really isn't that much difference at all. I think if more people realized this, there wouldn't be nearly as much anomosity between the fans of the two schools as there sometimes seems to be. For all the hoopla and to do LSU is really not that much more "big time" of a program than UL potentially is. For that matter, neither is Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, or any of the rest.
Are there hundreds of parents of blue chip all stars and great football players wasting their time chasing a pipe dream to play at a school like LSU or Alabama every single year? You can bet your last dime on it and come away a winner 99.99% of the time. And for what? Does LSU have a really nice indoor football facility, practice field, meeting rooms, and front office? Sure. It's nice. But UL's is not light years behind with the updates they've made under Hudspeth's watch, and when they complete the new sportsplex they have planned, UL will actually have a nicer one than LSU's. It won't be as big, but it'll be nicer, because it'll be newer and will have as many if not more accoutrements than LSU's does.
Is coaching the reason Parents like myself spin their wheels, and some eventually end up driving themselves crazy with despair and disappointment? Not from what I've seen. From the limited first hand knowledge I have, LSU has an outstanding coaching staff. As good as money can buy. No doubt these guys understand football up and down and can break down the other team's weaknesses and tendencies as good an anyone around. Here's the kicker though. They're not any bit better than UL's coaching staff. Point of fact is from what little I've seen, they aren't any more capable at all. UL has an outstanding coaching staff that has proven themselves as capable as any of teaching and motivating every single young man they are involved with to the point of getting every last drop of energy they can squeeze out of them for the good of the program.
So then, what is the difference? What makes every single studly young man in America want to hop a plane at his own dad's expense or jump in the car and ride a thousand miles if a Nick Saban or Les Miles writes them a little love form with the name inserted and changed five hundred different times? From my perspective there are only two differences. One is the tradition of winning. Like it or hate it, LSU has a hundred year tradition of mostly winning football. With a four story trophy case full of Sugar Bowl, Peach Bowl, Cotton bowl, Orange Bowl, and BTW, a couple of crystal footballs, it's hard not to see why a young fellow who thinks he's the next man of the hour wouldn't want to play at a school like LSU. The only way to address that is by building your own winning tradition. Winning back, to back, to back, etc. bowl games is a sure fire tonic for what ales you. Winning the outright conference title of your conference consistently and repeatedly performing at the top of your competitive level begins closing that gap and that is the only way to close the gap and tighten the competitive level for eyeballs of the studliest of all the studs in this country.
The other inherent competitive edge is the SEC. That's right brothers and sisters. When you talk football, you just as soon be talking SEC as NFL. After all, 25% of all players selected in this year's college draft were from the good old SEC. That one, my friends, doesn't just get the goat of Sunbelt followers. It gets the goat of every other major college football coach, athletic director, and university president in America. But we're not just talking SEC. We're talking cream of the crop, high rent district, Park Place SEC. Those are the differences between UL and LSU.
The one can be somewhat and mostly overcome through the process of much time. The other will take the realistic understanding of hundreds and thousands of parents like myself, to finally get that there are just some things in life you have to live with. One of those is, hey if my kid isn't 6'7" and looks like he should be on the cover of playgirl magazine, Or if my kid can't run the forty yard dash in 4.2 seconds, he's probably not going to ever get a sniff at a school like LSU or Alabama. Things will change when enough frustration sets in and enough parents see the light for what it truly is. The college prospect game is a game you play where you have somewhat of a chance of winning. After all, it's your kid's future you're playing with. And if the coach you want to see him play for was as foolhearty with your kid's time as you are, you'd want to see his nuts roated on a spicket by sunset.
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Originally Posted by tank
R we need to win.
Re: So,What is the difference between LSU and UL? (Not as much as you'd think). From a parent's
