Football recruiting.

[WOZ]

This post is for those of us that like Sycamore football. Recognizing the fact the program is in financial straights and may not exist in a few years. Nevertheless, the coaching staff still has to recruit for the next few years, right?

So how would you go about recruiting?
What POSITIVES would you mention?

Can we please have legitimate posts minus all the snide and negative comments about the program? If you believe the program is doomed etc, then don’t post. Let the few of us who root for ALL our teams have a little fun.

 

[Bobbyk60]

This post is for those of us that like Sycamore football. Recognizing the fact the program is in financial straights and may not exist in a few years. Nevertheless, the coaching staff still has to recruit for the next few years, right?

So how would you go about recruiting?
What POSITIVES would you mention?

Can we please have legitimate posts minus all the snide and negative comments about the program? If you believe the program is doomed etc, then don’t post. Let the few of us who root for ALL our teams have a little fun.

Make sure you take advantage of all the financial aid the player can qualify for, Portal, and have the budget to go out of state. Miles raised money to be able to do that.

 

[Jason Svoboda]

I would ask the SAF for the top 22 football boosters and call and ask each to donate $10k and 4-5 of them to donate $25k every year to Crossroads of Champions earmarked for football. Then I would go out and try to buy 22 of the best players I could. With the 4-5 $25k buys, I get a QB, RB, WR and two pass rushing DLs. I supplement them with $10k guys everywhere else.

If you guys have been paying attention to the NIL articles where coaches are being quoted, recruits are now starting the conversation bluntly asking how much they can expect in NIL money. After you've got your 22 that you're expecting to be your pros, you use the old sales tactics for the "supplementary" recruits.

 

[Sycamorefan96]

I was looking at SDSU's and NDSU's rosters and comparing theirs to ours. The thing that struck me the most is that they are recruiting all over the western half of the Midwest (IL, WI, ND, SD, NE, MO, OK, KS, MN, IA), while the vast majority of our players are from Indiana and Illinois. All but three of the states in that list are home to two or less D1 (football) schools, while Indiana is home to five (seven if you count Butler and Valpo), and Illinois is home to seven.

ISU simply has to expand their recruiting. If Indiana recruits want to stay in Indiana, ISU is 5th in the pecking order here, while if players in most of the states in that list above want to remain in-state they only have maybe one or two options. FCS Football is really third tier (behind P5 and G5), so our entire conference is getting players that in general are not being offered by the FBS schools; but the leftovers in Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Minnesota have to be better than the leftovers in states saturated with D1 schools like Indiana and Illinois.

Really ISU should be able to recruit states in our region like Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee anyways. There's nothing wrong with recruiting Indiana and Illinois, but there's just not enough good leftover players in the two states to put together a tough MVFC squad.

 

[BrokerZ]

I’m recruiting the hell out of the RB and interior offense line positions. We clearly are sticking with a between-the-tackles running offense, which can be attractive to certain types of players. Centers and guards love to run block, and you can pretty much guarantee any RB recruit 20+ touches a game.

 

[Syc70]

Our most successful teams were built on recruits from western PA and OH. Why did we ever go away from those areas? Get back in western PA in particular.

 

[Bobbyk60]

Our most successful teams were built on recruits from western PA and OH. Why did we ever go away from those areas? Get back in western PA in particular.

$$

 

[Hooper]

Our most successful teams were built on recruits from western PA and OH. Why did we ever go away from those areas? Get back in western PA in particular.

If you're talking about those ISU teams from the early 80s....that ship has sailed. Most of the studs from ISU's most recent successes (the playoff team 10 years ago for example) were guys for Indy, Chicago area, Texas, and Cali.

And how/why did they get away from Western PA and Ohio after the 80s? Because as has now been reported ISU was intentionally trying to kill the program and limited out-of-state recruiting/scholarships for a few years--and we saw the results.