South Florida Recruiting - An Outsider's Thoughts (long)

[mianjomar]

Good well thought out post. The thing that is telling is that kids have no loyalty for their high schools. They transfer to the hot school at the drop of a hat often more than once. Why should we expect them to show any loyalty for the hometown team?

 

[The Franchise]

Bags and scumbags. That's your local problem in a nutshell.

Adults treat these kids like commodities and want to cash in on all the money being handed out even to get kids to visit. The adults know UM isn't handing out $25k to get local kids to visit. So they're shopping the kids to places that to hand out big bags.

There's always been bags. But the bag game went to a whole new level when the local enterprising coackroaches started forming fake high schools. I trace the hardcore local scumbagging back to Dee Morley and that fake HS his handlers engineered. That started the demise of South Florida.

 

[The Franchise]

I agree with the premise - especially that winning is the biggest factor - but if it were just a "business decision" issue (vis-a-vis the shortest path to the NFL), well, even our darkest years have produced legit NFL talent.

But those guys are consistently undervalued, which means less guaranteed money when they're drafted. They make it in the NFL because of their talent. We haven't been getting the most out of them in college or helping their draft stock. Two guys you mentioned-- Gunter and Howard -- went undrafted. Guys like Olivier Vernon and Calais Campbell should have been Top 10 picks.

I think that's changing, but it will take time to shift the perception.

Olivier Vernon is a bad example because he played about 10 games here before bailing as a sophomore. The reason a sophomore with about 10 games under his belt got drafted as highly as he did was the exposure he got here.

 

[The Franchise]

I think it boils down to this: South Florida athletes are basically professionals at the Pop Warner level. There is already free agency, high expectations, gambling and intense pressure. That carries on through high school.

There is a positive and negative to this. As college coaches will tell you, South Florida kids are the most hardened and tough competitors. They play early in college and in the NFL because they aren't blinded by the pressure or the talent. The negative is that South Florida kids make business decisions in choosing a college. That includes taking money, but it's deeper than that.

You need to win and you need to have a proven system. Why do you think UF is killing us in DB recruiting? They've proven that they can take talented defensive backs, utilize their talents and turn them into first round picks. We, on the other hand, wasted an NFL defensive backfield in 2013. Similarly, if you're the best WR in South Florida, there is pretty clear and established path to success at Alabama.

It takes time for Miami to re-establish its reputation. Once we make it clear that Miami is the best business decision, we will get the majority of elite South Florida kids.

The issue with this is that we should already see some bump in defensive back recruiting based on what our defense showed this year. 2013 was 2013. A different staff and, to some of these kids, a different time period altogether. I concede we're picking up, to name only a few, guys like DJ Johnson, Garvin, Steed (who I think would come here anyway?), I expect Dean and I think Deejay Dallas is a CB (as we've discussed), but we've missed on some Safeties who could have really helped. And, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me given the momentum and evidence behind where our defense is going.

Now, if what you're saying is it needs more time to crystalize in the minds of some of these prospects, I guess we'll wait and see. Problem is Manny Diaz may or may not be around by then. Then we have a different problem.

I'll remain concerned that we seem to have to work 4x as hard on virtually everything. Tough to win that way in today's competitive environment.

I hate to applaud uf for anything, but why should we expect to Dbs over uf right now.

1. Uf has two kids projected higher than corn elder (doesn't make it true but that's the perception held by many)
2. Our two db coaches have 0 players in the league compared to uf's db coach who has multiple kids there
3. Soflo Dbs look up to Quincy Wilson like mark Walton & yearby looked up to duke johnson. Unfournately for us corn came from tenn

Corn will be help, but it's goin take a little time to catch up.

Because if you've played DB at any level, you understand you are, most of the time, a product of your system and your DL. It's our job to sell that effectively.

This is the 2nd year UF had this DB coach...they fired the other guy

That UF DB coach is no uber genius. His DBs benefitted greatly from the dog's Muscrap signed up front and their own natural talent.

People are too dopey though. They see good pass defense so they crown the DB coach. Then everyone who goes to UF to play DB is going to be a zillionaire in the NFL.

 

[The Franchise]

Kinda crazy when you think about the fact that most of our best/most important players right now are from outside of the Dade/Broward lines.

1. Corn
2. Pinckney
3. Richards
4. Njoku
5. Kaaya
6. Norton
7. Jenkins
8. Shaq
9. Herndon


That's all fine and dandy but we cannot make a living like that. It's okay to supplement kids from other areas. We've always done that. But we still need to get a hold of South FLA recruiting to build quality depth. We need to identify kids that can legitimately play in the ACC and sign those kids. They don't all have to hold offers from Bama, UF, FSU, etc. Golden was TERRIBLE at this. He'd ignore kids that had offers from Clemson, Pitt, UNC, Syracuse, VT, etc...to sign a kid who's best offer came from Akron.

You need to recruit like you wanna win the ACC first. Then once you start dominating the ACC, you become highly ranked which makes it easier to recruit the big-time kids. South Florida kids are all around the country right now making plays for other universities. We didn't recruit some of these kids cause they were an inch too short or 12 pounds too light. Well we're in no place to turn down great players because of minor shortcomings. We can do that when we become a top-10 team but right now we need to stockpile ACC level talent for depth purposes. Kids like Juwan Dowels, Chris Lammons or Ronnie Hoggins should be covering kicks for us and contributing in our Nickel/Dime packages. They might not be future NFL players but you don't NEED a bunch of future NFL players to win the ACC and start improving your rank and national image.

By no means am I saying sign a bunch of lower tier guys. I'm talking about the kids who have offers from the like of South Carolina, Tennessee and the majority of the prominent ACC schools. You can win the ACC with kids like this, along with some big-name kids sprinkled in. That's how Clemson got to where they are today. That's how Louisville came up when Strong was there.

You make some good points as usual, but recruiting at the South Carolina and Tennessee level isn't going to win the ACC.

With a badass QB like Watson we can get away with lesser guys littered throughout the roster. I want to see what happens to Clemson without Watson. I think they'll still be very good, but I always like to see what a program that suddenly starts winning big with a transcendent QB does when that guy leaves.

Alabaga is about the only program recently that has consistently won at a very high level no matter who was the QB.

 

[FAKE Chip Brierre]

lol. Miami has bags too. just not as big.

why can't people understand that some kids are just dumb and make dumb choices? there isn't always some ulterior motive.

 

[404CANES]

Let me preface this post by first saying I no longer live in South Florida, I'm not tied in to the University or recruiting in any way other than as a fan who follows, so my opinion may be worth no more than a cold bag of dog crap. That said, I'ma give my opinion anyway based only on what I've gathered/read/opined on over the last 10+ recruiting cycles. Feel free to ignore or downvote this thread as you see fit.




Amid all the speculation about what it will take for Miami to truly be "back" again, the one constant theme has always been: "We have to keep the local studs home." And every year it seems that there is some kind of...drama isn't even the right word...MELODRAMA is better... with not just the elite athletes, but nearly every player, coach, parent, handler, posse, crew, distant relative, etc. in the Tri-County region. This is not to say we don't get our share, but for every Mark Walton there's a Brandon Powell or Alex Collins, for every Ahmmon Richards there's a Jerry Jeudy or Trevon Grimes.

I won't sit here and pretend that the issues with our ability to recruit our home base effectively aren't tied in some way to on-field performance. It's certainly no coincidence that a mediocre ACC Coastal team is going to have a difficult time recruiting. And yet I believe the issues with Miami's South Florida recruiting go deeper than just "win and they'll come," and I'd like to address at least some of the larger elephants in the room.

1) There is a deeply ingrained culture of entitlement within the South Florida athletic community. All athletes - ****, most young people in general - have a certain degree of entitlement. Yet it seems it's worse with South Florida athletes. Why? Part of it I believe is that these kids are SURROUNDED by entitlement from the time they show any type of talent at the Pop Warner level - parents, coaches, "handlers", friends are all looking for their cut, and so these kids grow up knowing nothing else. As such, to many in the South Florida community, an offer from the hometown Hurricanes is simply a given, not a privilege. Coaches expect UM to offer every one of their players sight-unseen, and if they don't, well then they'll take their talents elsewhere. Offer too early and it's a "placeholder" offer giving them free license to look elsewhere (Billy Gibson.) Offer too late and we're not showing enough "love" (Skai Moore.) Offer the kid but not his cousin/brother/sister? Forget it. Certainly there are mitigating circumstances for each athlete - Moore should have been offered much earlier, for example - and no coach is perfect, but it seems more and more like South Florida athletes and their "networks" are just looking for reasons to crap on the hometown team, which leads me to my next point...

2) It's cool to disrespect the University of Miami. I live in Northeast Alabama now, and you can bet your a$$ that to kids down here, an Alabama offer is a freakin' Golden Ticket (in more ways than one for some, I'm sure...) For teams like Bama, Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Georgia, USC, Va. Tech, even Pitt or Penn State, the hometown team usually rules the roost. Not so in South Florida. Some of that is again because Miami hasn't been good in over decade, but that doesn't fully explain kids rushing to play for Tennessee or South Carolina or Oregon when they could stay home. What I've seen from this area that goes along with that sense of entitlement is the idea that it's somehow cool to "play" the University of Miami. Like, "yeah I got that UM offer - even told the coaches I'm coming - but wasn't it hilarious when I threw their hat on the ground and picked Florida on national television? Did y'all see that? What a hoot." And sometimes it's done with the full support of coaches/parents/handlers.

3) "Resources." $$$. Bagmen. Whatever you want to call it. Am I jaded enough to think every recruit we lose is bought and paid for? Of course not (see my first two points.) Do I think every team with championship aspirations has an under-the-table program for recruiting? **** yes. And the grim reality is, the University of Miami can't afford to play that game on the same level as other schools. We can't afford it from a money perspective, and we can't afford it from a personnel perspective either. For one, Miami for whatever BS reasons will always be an easy sacrifice for the NCAA and its SEC-fronting cronies. For another, because of Points #1 and #2 above, we don't have the kind of booster/coach/bagman "loyalty" that other programs have. There are people out there that would literally fall on an actual sword if Nick Saban asked them to. I've met some of them at Wal-Mart. We don't have that here.

4) We've been a bad-to-mediocre football team since 2002. I've touched on this in my other points, but the fact remains that "the U" hasn't been "back" for 15 years, and hasn't even been good for a decade. Bad coaching, bad recruiting, bad facilities, bad culture all lead to a bad on-field product and recruits not only know it, they've grown up with it since grade school.


We've seen these phenomena played out over and over again through four different coaching staffs - Coker, Shannon, Golden, and now Richt. One could even argue that Butch Davis had similar issues - his genius has always been as a brilliant evaluator of the deep talent pool, not necessarily as a high-profile star recruiter... Regardless, the issue of local recruiting has been a thorn in every coach's side since the recruiting game has turned into the national circus it is now. So what, if anything, can be done? I don't have the answers, but here are my thoughts on how best to stem the tide:

1) Win. Winning games won't cure the culture, it won't make kids less entitled, it won't stop the money from flowing. What it will do is lend UM and its coaching staff at least a little credibility in its recruiting pitches and maybe make those high-profile recruits think twice about staying home before they rush off to who-knows-where. Miami HAS to start winning the ACC on a regular basis in order to even be in the conversation for many of these kids - Tennessee can afford to lose 4-5 games every year and still draw recruits, Miami cannot.

2) Invest in every aspect of the South Florida athletic community. From Pop Warner on up, Miami has to start building relationships - not just with high school coaches, but with kids, parents, handlers, and crew alike. I don't like it - nobody likes it - but keeping kids home means we have to start dealing head-on with some of the more unpleasant aspects of South Florida athletics. Host football camps for nine-year olds, hold "coaching clinics" for local coaches, handlers, and "crew members." Have a potluck for parents. Anything and everything. It should be noted that Richt and Company are already starting to do these things.

3) On the flip side, be willing to draw a line in the sand once those relationships are built. Try to mitigate the games and nonsense - you won't eliminate them, but be savvy enough to know how and when to drop a recruit, and what the long-term effects may be. Be invested in the TOTAL recruit - not just their 40 time or even their GPA but their family, their support system, their upbringing, their mental and emotional makeup, and do it early enough to minimize those "signing day surprises." There are ways to play the game without sacrificing principle - find them.

4) Continue to upgrade facilities and support staff. Facilities are self-explanatory. As much as we scoff at "power moves" like Baez and Cooley, they're a step in the right direction. Finding room for guys who are "plugged in" and can help build those relationships EARLY is always a good thing. And that doesn't necessarily mean hiring high school COACHES - as we've seen, that doesn't always hold the same weight as it would in say Georgia or Texas.


There's no easy path to keeping the best recruits home. I'm not even saying that any of my ideas will actually work (other than maybe, y'know, winning games...) And there will always be kids that get away for a myriad of reasons. You really can't win them all - but we have to start winning more than we lose in order to seriously compete for titles.

Just my .02.

I concur. I left 16yrs ago but still bleed the o&g. Anyhow, you slam dunked it, knocked it out the park, and all that about entitlement and hands in the cookie jar.

 

[LustNCanes]

Great post ghost! Thank you

 

[AUcane]

Bags and scumbags. That's your local problem in a nutshell.

Adults treat these kids like commodities and want to cash in on all the money being handed out even to get kids to visit. The adults know UM isn't handing out $25k to get local kids to visit. So they're shopping the kids to places that to hand out big bags.

There's always been bags. But the bag game went to a whole new level when the local enterprising coackroaches started forming fake high schools. I trace the hardcore local scumbagging back to Dee Morley and that fake HS his handlers engineered. That started the demise of South Florida.

Wasn't Antron Smith the famed "street agent"? I believe that was the first time the words street agent were used to describe these inner city commodity traders.

That said, I keep hearing reference to this $25k for visits. What did I miss? Did someone out the fact that some kid got $25k to visit?

 

[RichterScale]

I just can't figure out kids these days. In a word, it's entitlement. And most of the time it's not their fault, that's how they were raised. Case in point, granted its a different sport. I coach an 18U fast pitch team that is all about getting these girls college scholarships. And that's a totally different discussion based on a head count sport vs an equivalency sport.

Anyway, I had a kid that was a catcher that said she wanted to go to school in Florida. Being as how we're in the ATL, you have a minimum 4 hour drive to get across the state line. We setup an OV to a school in West Palm Beach that absolutely loved her. They offered her a 75% scholarship, which is unheard of if you're not a lights out pitcher.

She came home and talked it over with her mom and decided to turn it down. Their reason was it was too far away from home. They really wanted to be within 3 hours. I guess I'm supposed to move Atlanta closer somehow. Three more offers within their window and those offers weren't good enough. So now she sits at home, 8 months after graduating high school and isn't enrolled anywhere.