Quote Originally Posted by Todd4State View Post
This is a house of cards until Jackson Prep decides to play along and take it to the next level. I'm not saying that Prep doesn't recruit- they do. But they've never gone all in like Hartfield has done the past couple of years and the way JA is now. And if they keep losing the State Championship to teams like Hartfield they will go all in eventually. Smartest thing they ever did was start to play public schools. Private schools haven't won all of them but they have shown that they can compete. That ended the image of the league being an inferior football league. And that has helped take the recruiting to the next level. When Prep does decide to go all in they're going to become the best program in the state probably. And certainly among the best. Similar to what John Curtis, which is a known football mill, was in New Orleans.

The big losers here are the small schools in Mississippi. Because the public schools with large booster clubs are going to try to protect their best players from getting poached while at the same time they will be recruiting as well. And the bigger ones like Madison Central, Northwest Rankin, Brandon, Tupelo, Olive Branch, DeSoto Central, Ocean Springs, Gulfport, and the schools in the college towns like Starkville, Oxford, Petal, and Oak Grove are going to be where the majority of the prospects are going to play at for their junior and senior years. Not sure of the status of Meridian but I have heard they have gone down some. You might see a few small school powers like Noxubee Co. and maybe someone like West Jones will emerge where there is growth in the community. We're already seeing players from places like Aberdeen and Nettleton move to Tupelo. You also might see guys like Kamario Taylor and Caleb Cunningham move to Starkville. Essentially smaller schools and schools with little support like Callaway are going to become AAA affiliates for Prep and JA and others.

I've said this before too- but MSU should take advantage of MSMS being on campus and start a football team there. That would have been a great place for Dan to "hide" players like Chris Jones. I'm sure MSU will take the high road and squander it or allow Ole Miss to use it to their advantage under our nose. LSU has a school basically on their campus and does this by the way.
If the big 4 private schools played a 7A public school schedule they would be running back to playing east rankin and Lamar school in a hurry