Oh, sure. My point is that NIL now gives kids a better opportunity to enjoy what Miami has to offer. Athens, Columbus, Tuscaloosa, etc. . . . I'm sure decent college towns and great programs . . . but if I'm 18-22 and can afford a residence overlooking the water in Brickell/Downtown (and lots of pretty young women in that area), when weighing college choices, that has to play on a kid's mind.
The city of Miami has never been the issue when it comes to attracting recruits. It’s the football team that’s been the issue.
As a father of a 10 year old athlete, I can tell you that we’ve been looking at this way way wrong.
To be honest, if a football player wants to come here and the reason he was convinced was because he spent the weekend on South Beach and on Brickell and in winwood, then honestly I don’t want him here. If the reason he made a decision was because he had a party at a rooftop pool with a bunch of beautiful women they were giving him a lot of attention. I don’t want him either.
Think about the kids to go to IMG for example. These are highly rated kids that sometimes go way across the country sometimes from big cities sometimes from small towns, but they’re basically going to a boarding school in order to maximize their talent.
They spend time away from their families from their friends in order to be in a very regimented athletically driven school. Those type of kids ain’t picking the school to see how much fun they can have.
Those type of kids want to go to a place that’s gonna try to give him the biggest chance to get to what they’ve been working on for a very long time.
I’ve written several post about traits that require no talent, but in a sense those traits are a talent.
A kid that wants to spend his adolescent years far away from his family to perfect as craft already has a talent that most kids don’t.
Mario going after kids that play multiple sports is because he’s also looking for talent. But it’s not the athletic kind of talent. It’s the talent of having to manage three different practices three different skills, working to perfect each and everyone of those sports and learn playbooks. The talent to be able to manage being a teammate in those sports at the same time as taking care of academics and maybe even squeezing in a part-time job somewhere.
Those kids are highly motivated, self driven and don’t need a lot of babysitting and they’re attracted to kids that are like minded and get turned off when other players don’t have the same drive as they do.
So, in my opinion, when Mario goes after somebody who plays football, shotput and also plays basketball; he’s not looking at what kind of skills can transcend into the football field.
Yes, there are things that a basketball player, a wrestler, or a track guy does that absolutely translates to the football field, but that’s looking at it on a superficial level.