Black kids want to see the field, win, get paid, make the NFL...just like white kids. Race is almost nothing; convincing kids they can do those things at your program is almost everything.
Even when people think Charlie Strong was getting kids it was really because Randy got fired and Clint Hurtt was playing games.
Plus UL was a natural target for renegade type recruits and lose NCAA adherence. ****, didnt Radio take on a role as a volunteer, freelance recruiter for Strong at UL when he was fired?
You're saying Randy started recruiting for Strong as a volunteer when he got fired by UM? I never heard that story but I'm not saying I should have. I'm not in south Florida and I'm not plugged into that kind of stuff. Was he doing that specifically to hurt UM? Pretty sleazy, if he was.
When I followed John Thompson Sr. closey I naively thought since he was one of a very small number of major Div. 1 black coaches that he would have a big advantage in recruiting. All i know is, he often whiffed on a lot of players I thought he was recruiting. He had the one great recruiting class when he pulled in Patrick Ewing and the two top D.C. kids, Billy Martin and Anthony Jones. Martin was a solid forward for Georgetown, Jones ended up transferring out to UNLV and was never a great player. Jones was from D.C. Dunbar and probably top 5 in the country while Martin was top 15; Ewing of course was no. 1.
After that, Thompson pulled in a top recruit here and there, but didn't dominate. He often did best with D.C. area and Baltimore kids. He also brought in a bunch of projects like UM used to do in football.
Besides, most football staffs have multiple Black coaches now so the whole idea of a Black kid being more attracted to a Black coach means nothing these days. I remember when staffs used to have maybe one Black coach. That was early '80's. No more. Plus there are so many other staff members involved in the football program such as S&C, grad assistants, volunteer coaches, recruiting staff, etc.
Our recruiting coordinator in the Schnellenberger years was a woman, Suzy Wilkoff. She was more of an administrative assistant/secretary type. She did get together with recruits when they came in, but didn't go out and recruit. Before that, she held a similar job with SMU, where she was involved in recruiting the Pony Express (Craig James and Eric ****erson). I last saw her at a UM-FSU game in the late '80's. She had long since left the staff to work at an airlines.
Everything has gotten bigger and more complex.