re: Landon Collins to Willis, Get out of Louisiana

quote:

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Landon's recruitment and some of the things he's said since haven't helped his image

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I'm far away from it all, but followed his recruitment as closely as I could at the time. In my admittedly uninformed opinion, I didn't think he did anything bad during the recruitment. He liked Bama as it was(okay, that is bad in it's own right) but Bama found the weak spot-- his girlfriend-- then set her up with a job in the athletic dept. (if I remember correctly) to sew him up. Despite that, I really feel like LSU, (especially Eric Reid) pretty much flipped him on his last visit. But the girlfriend worked him over pretty hard in the days leading to his announcement and broke him so that he stayed with Bama. I might hate that Bama won the battle, and hate the BS game bama played, hate how that game made LSU look like it got outmaneuvered, and I question Landon for getting sucked into that mess, but I don't hate him for choosing that sales pitch or wish ill on him.

As for after he chose bama, a LOT of bad things were said about him on here-- much of it as out of line or worse than the comments I called out. I feel like he faced more backlash on here than Joe McKnight did, and based on comments by McKnight, I think McKnight was stringing LSU along without any intent on committing in comparison to Collins, who really considered it (imo).I don't know for sure, but have to thing bama made sure he saw the worst of it to sour him on potentially turning. If so, again, it's a shame he let himself be swayed by others, but I would somewhat understand him getting pissed off. It's easy for me to say I would be more mature if I was in Landon's shoes... but I haven't dealt with it.

I've seen little snippets here and there that he's upset or grumbled something back in reply to the backlash against him. I don't think he deserved that much backlash to begin with, so again, I somewhat understand if he talks a little smack back. But I will say, to the extent he has talked any smack in return, it's not the most mature response, so I agree with you that he hasn't helped his image here.

All that being said, my motivation to reply in this thread at all is specifically in response to the mean-spirited poison that clueless people are spewing on here, which does diminish the board in many ways.