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Recruiting in the Deep South

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who knows if this does anything for Autry being that he’s about 20 min away from Auburn & Jordan Hare Stadium, but perhaps some other DL targets.
 
Well, already one commit from our 25 list in the OP.

 
grover said:
Why Metro areas? You can accomplish a lot over the phone, text, Zoom etc. But at some point you need to be physically present to develop relationships with the recruit, family, coaches et al. If our staff can get to multiple schools and recruits for every trip they make, allowing Mario to save those helicopter flights for the absolute most critical moments, then that gives the program the highest chances of closing the best classes. There are always exceptions to the rules.

So IMO, the geographic targets can't be as general as "Texas" or "Deep South" because you can't drive to more than 1 or 2 kids a day if you're in rural Louisiana or Arkansas. It's a full day to get to Pensacola from Miam. Texas is country-sized. You need to pick your battles.

As far as Chicago goes, we got the 2 best kids out of there in a long time. There are only 2 other recruits in the Rivals 250 that are from the entire state of IL. And in 2023, the highest rated IL player on Rvials was #133 from East St Louis. That feels more like national recruiting than territory recruiting to me, like when we went after Okunlola last cycle.

But sure, if there are a handful of kids in a specific year you like out of Chicago, Detroit, LA, Cleveland, Philly, then definitely assign a lead guy to cover it. I'm talking more programmatically. And I think we can get 90% of all our needs with those 5 Metros + the rest of FL. Those last ~3 kids each class would go into a national recruit bucket that you hunt regardless of location.
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I think we need to be flexible at all times. It’s all dependent on where the talent is located and the reception we receive from recruits. I have zero facts to back this up, @cway313 , but I wouldn’t be surprised if the country folk are more likely to honor their commitments.
 
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lindend said:
After listening to @Geo305 recruiting space this afternoon and reading between the lines, it seems like the top of our DE board is

Iose Epenesa
Zion Grady
Jared Smith

IDK the exact pecking order, but that's my guess. That means that 2/3rds of the initial top of the board is from Bama. Here's to hoping Bama's death grip on DLs in Bama left w/Saban.
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Epensea’s father and brother AJ were both captains at Iowa. Another brother walked on and his mom is a native of Iowa.

This kid has been going to Iowa games his whole life.

Might not want to allocate too much time in this recruitment.
 
gogeta4 said:
my college teammate was from Opelika...Those kids worship auburn.

crazy also had teammated from Phenx City and it was all Bama.

We wont pull this kid lol
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My parents live in Opelika, I was just down there last week visiting for my mom's birthday. They moved down there (Only God knows why) back in '09 when my father retired from our fire dept. He worked at AU for the last 10 years, just retired for good last month. You're 100% about the Auburn love down there, it's almost like how these classless hillbillies in NE Ohio are about OSU. They make me ashamed to be from here,
 
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Added Eric Winters to the OP given that Gaby says we've got a lot of traction here.

@Odysseus given the large number of offers and significant traction, the law of averages is heavily in Mario's favor to pull kid(s) out of the "slave belt" this cycle.
 
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