How Recruiting and Results Work ( jmo )

[Sonsissymia]

_ Me too. _

and everyone was betting all the ranches last year after the 6-5 prior year and pre-season lauding. and who owns those ranches now?

[MissingMandy]

_ Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

From my end, I saw nothing wrong with the initial post which seemed to start all the ruckus once a players mom jumped in. I was just saying, some people seemed to be focusing more on the feelings of an obviously upset player parent(one person) rather than the big picture which concerns all of us, the struggles (past and present) of our football team. That's what I was attempting to point out, and I still believe that. But I guess I could have used better vocabulary in order to distance myself from the people who you describe. _

Believe me when I tell you it's not just me (the the one parent you speak of) it is many parents that are affected by these posts as I receive private messages and emails from many of them after reading some of the posts here. You are right...you don't have to be concerned what-so-ever with how a parent feels.

[cajunmaniac]

I would much rather take recruits from in state than the florida area, esp. the south florida area. I find that the kids from south florida are much harder to discipline and harder to work with, and for the most part have poor attitudes towards the school. The in-state kids exhibit more of a selflessness attitude, other than hundley, and are more concerned with the betterment of the team instead of making a highlight real. I mean, i don't see us going to the new orleans bowl anytime soon, and I would much rather go watch a bunch of guys who appriciate their fan base and are just all around good guys. i mean blackjack has a point.....better players do, sometimes come out of florida, but at what cost? ..... if we want our program to be like that of FIU and Miami we should continue to focus our recruiting efforts on florida. In my opinion the players that we do have from florida aren't the best players, by any means, on the team. (Smith and cherry being the two standouts.) There is way too much talent in state, and players that want to stay in state. We got lucky with Fleming, we just need to put ourselves out there. Not just at the 5-A level, but at all levels in our area. Some of the best talent in the country comes from in-state schools. Too much effort is put into out of state schools, and in some cases it has paid off, but not for the most part. If we would have better relationships with highschool coaches in the state we might be able to get some really good players that LSU might have "picked over" due to THEIR out-of-state out sourcing. Most athletes want to stay near home, we need to capatilize on that. and we aren't one of the nation's football powerhouses (i assume most of us have accepted that), and that being said what is our marketability to out of state players? Look at the reasons out of state players come to UL........they got into trouble, poor grades, and playing time. Not because of our program prestige, or they have pride in where they are from like the in-state kids. Diversity isn't always a bad thing. But here at UL, when diversity was met with adversity it didn't fair too well. Let me know what you think about this.......

[RaginFan2]

..l. Let me know what you think about this....... _

Not much! Sounds pretty parochial to me. Which Florida players have we gotten who have been "problems"? Since we can't be a "national power", let's just sign local kids so we can watch them play, huh? Sounds to me like you are just a "give up" fan, oops, I mean a "reality" fan. Given that attitude, I guess we might as well drop down to D-1AA (or whatever it's called now) and return to the SLC. But that is NOT for me! I think we should recruit locally and regionally to get the best players for our program that we can.

[Turbine]

Let me know what you think about this.......

I agree, for different reasons.

The media is enamored with and coaches have bought into and drool over Florida's 18,000,000 population.

However if just the FBS teams from the State of Florida alone sign the max of 25 then (on a yearly basis) that pulls a single FBS player out of every 103,000 people.

The yearly national average is a single FBS player out of every 100,000 people.

Now I know Florida is football country but with all the other FBS programs in the nation at least giving Florida some attention, I don't think the bang is worth the buck. You spread yourself very thin trying to get a feel for what is left over.

Now then, in Louisiana there are 5 FBS teams trying to pull each (single) recruit out of every 34,000 people. Not to mention the 6 quality FCS teams trying to do similar.

No Louisiana does not have a deeper pool, however because it is so much cheaper to scout you "can" get real bang for the buck (there should be fewer misses) but don't expect raw numbers from Louisiana

In my opinion the place to recruit besides Louisiana is Texas. Even with 10 FBS schools the ratio of player to population is 1 out of every 94,000. It is close so it is cheaper. Bang for the buck, the ability to analyze, analyze, analyze and get raw numbers.

ps I know there are exceptions and I am grateful for whatever player we get from florida and elsewhere.

[cajunmaniac]

_ Not much! Sounds pretty parochial to me. Which Florida players have we gotten who have been "problems"? Since we can't be a "national power", let's just sign local kids so we can watch them play, huh? Sounds to me like you are just a "give up" fan, oops, I mean a "reality" fan. Given that attitude, I guess we might as well drop down to D-1AA (or whatever it's called now) and return to the SLC. But that is NOT for me! I think we should recruit locally and regionally to get the best players for our program that we can. _

First of all, by no means, am i a give up fan. I was mearly stating that we should be more focused on winning our conference than a national championship. In saying that, I didn't accomidate for the "RaginFan2" factor. I just expected that any simpleton would be able to deduct the fact that we aren't competing on a national level.

[RaginFan2]

_ First of all, by no means, am i a give up fan. I was mearly stating that we should be more focused on winning our conference than a national championship. In saying that, I didn't accomidate for the "RaginFan2" factor. I just expected that any simpleton would be able to deduct the fact that we aren't competing on a national level. _

First of all, I am glad to hear that you are not a give-up fan. But as a "simpleton", you'll need to explain to me where in the post I responded to that you mentioned anything about competing for a conference championship. All I saw were comments about how we should focus all of our attention on recruiting local athletes. Also there was some reference to "problems" with the kids from out-of-state, particularly those from Florida. That is what I have a problem with.

[rhineaux]

There are always entirely too many broad generalizations made when talking about where these football coaches recruit. go and have a look at the roster, and then count how many players we have from each state. The results are always the results that people want to see. I think that for anyone to imply that we only recruit FL or TX, or that we focus all of our time there, is simply irresponsible. I do not feel like we waste a lot of time there, especially when we have a coach that has numerous connections to the So Fla area, and has developed a pretty nice pipeline to the state. Once that's done, then a lot of the hard work is done.

I think that Turbine's mention of the actual players available is pretty spot on with respect to why we recruit FL and TX. Simply, there are more of them there to recruit.

In no means am I trying to say that one way is better, but I'm just trying to say that I hear this argument from too many people and its usually not entirely accurate.

[Clutch0364]

Once again I say WHY DOES IT MATTER WHERE THE PLAYERS COME FROM! If we were winning nothing would be said about not recruiting as many LA athletes...LA Tech isn't winning, are they recruiting LA athletes? ULM isn't winning, are they recruiting LA athletes? I want to go after the best athletes period it doesn't matter whether they are from La, Tx, Fl, or Japan!!! La has some great athletes so does Fl and Tx so go where the talent is an recruit those areas hard and try to get the best talent available. I really doubt that this coaching staff is saying to itself, yea they got so and so in Lafayette who is a pretty good athlete but I dont care we are going to go to Miami and get this guy who isn't as good of an athlete but hey he is from Fl. Lets get real people this coaching staff and every coaching staff in this country is going to try to target the best players regardless of where they are from so they can win.

I believe we can be critical of this coaching staff but why be critical of things that don't really matter? This coaching staff has done a lot of thigns that we can critique but whether they recruit La enough is such a joke...if we were winning right now would it matter where the recruits come from? NO, so why are we making this such a big deal. Lets hold this staff responsible for the stuff that matters and that is the on the field performance.