re: Are our NIL capabilities really still this far behind?

quote:

---

We do not know what these kids are being told.

---

True

quote:

---

But what if Kelly is telling Ricks he’s a starter from day 1 and Saban is telling him he will have a chance to compete for the starting job.

---

There is absolutely zero chance this happened. Zero. I forgot who it was, but someone was telling a story about how we landed Harold Perkins, who A&M offered more to. (I don’t know if Jimbo is the kind of coach to offer a starting job to, but he’s certainly much more likely than Kelly).

Regardless, we had already hired House, but he was still coaching for the Chiefs in their playoff run. But he took time out of preparing for a playoff game—on game day—to talk to Perkins and his family. He was to tell Harold what he could do for him, since he was gonna be his position coach along with the DC. They expected him to give them the usual “we’re gonna get you on the field early, have you All-SEC by your 2nd year, and All-American and an NFL 1st rounder by your JR year” that they’d apparently been hearing. House immediately goes into “we’re gonna change your eyes. You’ve got a bad habit of looking…” and goes through a list of his weaknesses that he can help fix to develop him into the best player he could be. The family looks at each other like, “damn, this is different.” Not only was he not blowing the usual smoke up their arse by telling him how great he was, but Matt House—as the LB coach of the Chiefs in the middle of what they hoped was another Super Bowl run—had already taken the time to break down Harold’s high school tape enough to see some weaknesses and communicate a well thought out plan to address them and help him become the very best LB he could possibly be.

That may not be the 1 thing that sold him on LSU, but it certainly helped. And that’s the kind of shite that Kelly and company are gonna have to do to continue to do well in recruiting. Selling the big vision of instilling good, lifelong habits and “Graduate Champions” and all that entails, but also getting to know each individual recruit and their families, figuring out what’s important to them, and communicating an individual plan to help them achieve what’s important. (Or changing their minds on what is really important). Mom is a teacher and believes in a good education? “Mrs. Jones, we have fantastic “fill-in-the-blank” program at LSU. Jimmy is an early enrollee, and what we like to do with our EEs is have them take as many classes as reasonable during that 1st spring and summer semester and get them a head start on their degree path so that they aren’t taking their most challenging classes during the fall when football responsibilities ramp up if they’re not ready for that that 1st year. But we also have an outstanding support staff of tutors on hand that will work with your son one on one when necessary and will keep up with where he’s at and how he’s doing and make sure that he’s not only being held accountable for going to class, but is not falling behind. On the flip side, we’ll make sure he’s challenging himself as well and not coasting. We’ll do everything in our power to make sure he’s getting the appropriate balance—for him—of school, football, and social life possible. And if you want me to get more specific, I can tell you what we’ve done in the past—I consider myself an educator as much as a coach—what has worked well for us and how we’ve not only incorporated some of that at LSU, but how we’ve improved on it with some of the unique resources we have….”

He’s got to sell the macro and the micro vision, tailor it to the individual, communicate it, and lay out the plan to achieve it while being genuine and actually meaning it. I honestly don’t think we could have a better head coach for our particular position right now than Brian Kelly.