Question about recruiting pressure on local Kids?

Yeah, Acquatic, I don’t envy being faced with having to make such a big arse decision at such a young age. Particularly, as you said, with everyone you know watching and reacting to it.

That’s not an easy predicament to be in, particularly when you aren’t even an adult yet

Great topic ... I can only speak from my brother's experience, albeit he was recruited in the late 80's; 30+ years ago. There was no Rivals, 247, ESPN recruiting, or social media internet. Summer football camps were in their infancy. Player profiles and information was mainly learned and shared thru Max Emfinger who helped kids get noticed by D1 schools. My brother was 1st team all-district & offensive MVP of the NOLA Catholic league. LSU never recruited my brother because they were content with signing Jesse Daigle whose father was an LSU coach at the time. My brother committed to play for HC Pat Jones @ Oklahoma State and compete against QB Mike Gundy for playing time.

I do not recall any pressure being placed on my brother by his friends, HS, local media (Hap Glaudi & Ron Swoboda ) , or my parents. My brother just wanted to go somewhere and play while earning his college degree. Today, recruiting and college sports is a whole different animal as evident by this and many other www forums. I believe kids today are softer than several decades ago, and it's an "ALL ABOUT ME" world.

Another thing to consider, many lower income kids who come from broken homes have handlers that will steer them towards a certain coach or University. A kid's dream may be to play for school A, but ends up at school B because of poor guidance or bad information.

Yeah, belowmebama, The cringe worthy post to recruit social media accounts should somehow be used against the people that post them. That shite is just so wrong and pathetic on many levels

Great info, Blaze, thanks for sharing buddy.

Interesting point you bring up about handler’s for these 1718 year old athletes. That whole arrangement has always kind of struck me the wrong way and I feel bad for kids having to rely on those types instead of their parents or other loved ones that really do genuinely care for their best interest

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The pressure on a kid like him was insane, but not so much for others.

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Very familiar with the recruiting of MD as he’s a few years older than me. What made his recruiting so crazy is that he was the #1 HS player in the country who was 6’3”, 220 pounds, and ran a 4.25 40-yard dash. Additionally, it was the wild wild West in the SWC & Big 8 conference and there was crazy money being spent to recruit players while guaranteeing their families $250K ~ $500K. Philadelphia, Mississippi have a population of approximately 6,000 people during this time. As an 18-yr old kid, Dupree was fixing to get paid more money than anyone in the entire town.

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> where does most of that pressure originate (family & friends of a recruit, etc)??

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Much of it comes from the idiots who interpret every little nuance of what a recruit does or says. Most of the time its when they assume their favored recruit is going elsewhere. Typical example is the panic by some on this board after interpreting Quency Wiggins' purported demeanor in a damn radio interview. They also cluck over where a recruit visits, how he looks in a photo, what he says upon returning from a visit, color of socks, and on and on.