Canegrad89
Recruit
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2017
- Messages
- 1,197
Great post.I think we have different players today than we did in the 1980's. In the 80's and 90's the players were edgy, they weren't recruited higher than FSU most years but they were hungry to prove that the recruiting services, which were weak at the time, underrated them, and it was true. We had players who weren't afraid to get in an opponent's face and back any talk up completely. They didn't think they were better because of the uniform they wore but who they were as men. Those guys were warriors. They weren't thugs but they worked harder than any team in America regardless of the facilities they worked in, which just happened to be some of the poorest funded in the country. But they mostly came from the poorest funded high school in the country and they said F that, we are better and they just refused to lose for like a decade. These players today are not like them. They abide by the 20 hour a week rule while our players in the 1980's and 90's probably spent twice that amount of time preparing for games. They did so because first, they wanted to be the top dog, and once they attained that status, they refused to let anyone else out work or hustle them. And yes, they got lucky a few times (wide left or wide right) but they were awesome men of character.
We now have players who protect themselves from playing in a bowl game because they might drop from the 5th round to the 6th round of the NFL draft, who admit to "going through the motions" in a bowl game over trying to win the **** thing, and who don't care whether we beat FIU, Duke and La Tech. The last player I have watched who you could tell it mattered to him whether his team won or loss, more than life itself, was Duke Johnson. I know he isn't popular and he made more than his share of mistakes, but Randy Shannon only tried to recruit players who were champions on the high school level. He knew champions have something within themselves that is different than other players. Jarren Williams' team in high school was like 5-5. He got used to losing in high school and so he doesn't have the refuse to lose attitude. So he plays a game "going through the motions". That isn't the type of player we recruited in the 1980's and 90's.