re: Big reason not to miss out on Damonic

They'll find someone in the portal. I'm actually of the opinion LSU scouting should grow and look at small college ranks to find elite hidden gems. If your scouting is good enough you can find the diamond in the roughs that can stand out in the SEC. They'll have far less demand on the market, will be cheaper in NIL, and you run into potential homeruns this way. Also, I'm of the belief these players will be far more appreciative of the opportunity to display their ability so I think you'll get higher character players here too.


Building a network around this seems smart for a program like LSU. There's plenty of great talent at the small college ranks that are good enough to play in the SEC and NFL. You just need good scouting to identify them. Is LSU's scouting good enough for that? I don't know. They've done it several times already in the portal and just recently Daniels at WR who has potential to be a stud.


Perhaps the bigger problem with this for LSU is it's much more difficult to project DTs at the next level just like HS than a skill position WR. I would like to see LSU focus on a bigger scouting department that makes it harder for gems to fall through the cracks in small college ranks with also the lesser known players in HS. In the NIL era it just seems smart to put more resources here so you cover more ground on issues like we're running into now within the portal. I'm not sure why this is so overlooked especially when all these mercenaries are demanding ridiculous uncapped funds.


You identify the stud, get him in the portal the big name. Then you fill your gaps for depth in with small college ranks with guys you identified as potential homeruns. At worst you have depth pieces so you're not really losing out.