Offseason Topic: why does Louisiana HS football struggle to produce OL?

I assume it’s because we produce short fat people in Louisiana.

Too many French and Spanish ancestors. Short people.

Gumbo with lots of rice

Does this stem from putting the most athletic kid at QB and the playbook reads “throw to the open receiver if no one open run”?No, that's the QB problem.

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develop better OL talent?

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This isn't the problem.

OL requires more intelligence. This is Louisiana. Need I say more?

There's plenty out there in both N and S LA with the size. The gene pool does limit that volume a little, but we have plenty with the frames to be putting out more top rated OL than we do.

The problem, to me, is two fold:

1. There's several out there every year that go on to be Div I starters who were never on our radar because with our population density in places where the gene pool is not limiting is quite low. We, like every where else, have integrated school districts. Unlike other states however we didn't aggressively force the majority of smaller schools into these massive conglomerated schools. So LA still have many more small schools as compared to other states that just don't get coverage and they go unnoticed until they show up on Kipers draft rankings. But this has a role to play in #2, which is our primary problem....

2. High School coaching is the real reason. For OL it sucks arse. Part of that is the small schools, hence small budgets and small staffs. Many high schools do not have anyone on staff that remotely qualifies as an OL coach. So what you get is the guys with the size simply just physically dominate their smaller DL brethren without any real training. And I'm including training along with technique. So when these big guys go into camps against a DL from Katy or some big school they are, literally, untrained speed bumps and look horrible. We not only do not produce OL who have a head start, in many cases we are in a skills deficit because they weren't trained in the art of being a big athletic guy. They were just relied on as a big guy.

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High School coaching is the real reason. For OL it sucks arse. Part of that is the small schools

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OL specialty camps should be big business here. Someone needs to get on that.

Same issue with Basketball... not many 6'7" to 6'10" players running around in the South

Back in the day, Charles McClendon said it was a problem. The Bandits were small but quick...one year... when playing N.D. a comparison was shown on TV and LSU looked like a HS junior team....but the team won with speed.

Red beans and rice and gumbo