re: LSU has hired Sam Petitto

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What the hell does a Dir. Of Player Personnel do ?

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Think of all of these roles (Austin Thomas, Sam Petiitto, the guy from Ole Miss they just hired, etc.) as part of a "sales staff"... with Austin (I would guess) being the sales manager

In a corporate environment, you would have some level of prospecting, where you're researching who might be good clients (that equates to evaluating football prospects for talent and fit in LSU's case). Then you have the sales process of getting the client to sign on, which takes time (in this case, from the time of first contact until they sign and show up on campus). Then you have the client relations side once they are a client (which in this case amounts to keeping the recruits at LSU and happy-- preferably until they graduate and go pro.). To the above mentioned ends, salesmen may be hunters (the aggressive salesmen who close the deals) and farmers (who excel at maintaining good client relations).

I would imagine all of these guys are very charismatic young men who excel at building relationships with people. Their titles are just formalities. They are salesmen and they're going to fill help fulfill the roles described in the previous paragraph... identifying talent (along with the coaches I would guess), reaching out to the players and their high school coaches, helping make the pitch for LSU, and once players are here, I would guess that in some way they might help keep the recruits already here happy so they don't transfer out after a year or two.

Part of me thinks this trend started with Saban's alleged "shadow staff" at Bama, and has evolved from there... I think I saw some talk on here about some change with the NCAA perhaps that has the big programs staffing up like this. But I might be completely wrong on that.

Boom