I’m not sure Al or Tenn top 25 is superior to Miss top 25 every year.
Walter Payton getting overlooked has to be the worst blunder in the history of sports lol. It’s like cutting Babe Ruth in little league.
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I’m not sure Al or Tenn top 25 is superior to Miss top 25 every year.
Walter Payton getting overlooked has to be the worst blunder in the history of sports lol. It’s like cutting Babe Ruth in little league.
Met - I think this is pretty spot on. It was real easy to overlook those guys in the 70s and 80s because scouting was so limited. The internet, staff sizes, 7v7 camps, etc have ended that. Farve was really the last one - but Farve was kind of the Nick Fitzgerald of the 80s. He ran QB in a wishbone offense and rarely threw more than 5 times a game. Southern was his only offer. Even McNair wasn't exactly overlooked, teams wanted him on defense instead of QB. People forget McNair was All-State as a QB, but All-American as a Safety in HS. He bet on himself as a QB and won.
The thing about MS high schools vs. AL, TX, GA etc is money. MS schools for the most part can't match the investment in development that kids in those states get. I look at the high school here that took our old middle school gym and converted it into a football only facility with nutrition area, state of the art weight room, a small IDP, training room with ice pool and sauna, film rooms for each position group, tutoring rooms, and pay the Head Coach $140,000 a year and think "damn, this is nicer than some FCS schools have it". Kids on the team practically live there year round. We don't have fat kids playing OL/DL like when I was in school, they are chiseled athletes at 16.
And we are small time compared to some of the Metro ATL schools and legendary south Georgia programs like Valdosta, Colquitt, Lowndes or Camden. And Glynn Academy doesn't even put as many kids in D1 as our cross-town rival Brunswick High - who seem to have a D1 OL or DB every single year. So, unless MS high schools can start matching $ with schools in surrounding states, we are going to have to focus much broader than in the past because we can't take the time to red-shirt the entire Freshman class of MS kids anymore so they can get in shape and learn the game.
Go look at how the Top 25 in those states are getting recruited then get back to me. A lot of people think the same thing as you until they actually go look at the data. The data shows the Top 25 in both of those states is significantly deeper than it is in MS.
And like I said in my earlier post. If you can find someone in the modern recruiting era from MS that is similar to the 3 that always get mentioned as being overlooked, I would like to know who they are. Because I don't think they exist.
Too many fans continue to think that MS is on par with other states from a depth of talent perspective. It's simply not the case folks and there isn't any data out there to support it. Sure we've got the high per capita NFL player stat. But per capita doesn't build consistent winning football teams when you don't have a lot of high end players to begin with. 25 of the Top 50 in MS signed a P5 scholarship in 2022. 36 in Alabama did.
Number of P5 schools represented in the 36 from Alabama? 23. Number of P5 schools represented in the 25 committed from Mississippi in 2022? 13. So of the 25 that signed P5, that means 11 other P5 teams took some of our talent. That's almost half. And 5 of those 11 took someone from the Top 10 in the state.
We need to modernize our thinking. Recruiting isn't local anymore. It's regional and national. If we think we can win just taking MS talent, we are already behind the 8 ball because we aren't going to get every recruit in MS period. And even if we did, it's not enough to sustain a program at an SEC level.
Leach has said many times, he will not just take a player simply because he is from Mississippi. He really evaluates them and if there is a guy he can get better elsewhere, he will do so but he also said he won't fly over a guy to get a similar guy either.
The key is either you trust his offers or you don't. So far, all of his offers in-state have seemed like legit offers to me and SEC level athletes.
Big difference between the 25th rated player in Mississippi vs 25th rated player in Georgia. We used to recruit Georgia especially Atlanta area very hard.
I had actually forgotten how many we used to get. I remember Jackie always grabbing 3-4, and for every Walt Harris he landed he got a Rodney Hudson. But, I went and scrolled thru 24/7's class info, and I was surprised at how many Jackie and Croom brought in. Jackie usually had 3-4 split between freshman and JUCOs from Middle Georgia or Georgia Military (who were the EMCC of the late 90s and early 00s), but Croom brought in 6 GA kids in '05 and also almost always had 3-4. That number really dwindled under Mullen to 1 or 2 a year at most - although he got some real good ones in Slay, Preston Smith, & Fitz. Sloppy Joe signed 1. And Leach seems a little more interested - he signed two this year and got the UGA transfer WR who is from GA. Leach and staff have also participated in HS camps at Valdosta State each year - so they are out there looking.
Thompkins used to kill it in GA.
Those three are among the top 25 players of all time- two are easily top 5. That's a really high bar.
I can think of a few that we had that were overlooked- Eric Moulds, Jonthan Banks, from back in that era of Payton and Rice we had Kent Hull who was overlooked out of high school, Fred Smoot, JT Gray who Dan should have started- he's a pro bowler. Darius Slay came from a Mississippi JUCO even though he is from Georgia. We may say the same thing about Walley who was underrated one day.
Georgia pickups are generally great!
We have one elite rated instate recruit left on our roster, the other was landed by Moorhead 4 years ago, and is now in the NFL. We used to do better here, and could mix those kids with the hidden gems and developmental kids for our best recipe for success. More of these former guys are leaving the state now, and I don't know if that can change, even a little with the NIL in play.
Hubbard committed to AL. You can mark him off the list.
Dude, he’s going as a DB, not a QB.