Couple of good things about the football program.....

[MetEdDawg]

Well, we are really not even on the radar of national recruits outside the state of MS the way things are currently (even AFTER the #1 ranking) whereas OM absolutely is along with a lot of other SEC programs. Whatever the reasons, this is current reality. Now, the only way to counteract this is we have to do a dang good job in identifying more under the radar recruits that can be impact players in the SEC and develop better than most other SEC programs which is a challenging task as other SEC programs have excellent coaches as well. Its like a racing game where the competition gets a 2 to 3 second head start on you. Yes, you can potentially catch up with the correct strategy but you are at a disctinct disadvantage. One thing that is in our favor is that a lot of the hidden places in MS have recruits that are very underrated but need a LOT of polishing.

Here's where I disagree some. Yes I agree we need to find those kinds of guys, but I think it's clear by the types of games we lose that unless we start hitting recruiting hot beds for big time talent, we can't compete with upper echelon of the SEC consistently. We may snatch a win every so often, but if we want to compete consistently (which we are capable of doing), we have to start going outside of this 4 hour radius.

Let's be honest. The top talent in AL is going to Auburn or Alabama. That's a given. The top talent in LA is going to LSU. The top talent in MS is either split by MSU and OM or ends up at Alabama. We've raided Georgia a few times for some solid guys, but their top guys go to UGA, FL, or Auburn typically. There isn't enough blue chip talent to stay within 4 hours and compete consistently because it all gets shared between the schools we are competing with. So while I'm fine with getting a couple of project guys from in state, I think the reality is that we need to get out of the state of MS for more kids than we currently do, especially for OL.

We've had a lot of success at taking out of state guys and turning them into studs. Most recent examples of Bear, Benny, Day, Fred Ross, Preston Smith, Will Redmond, Dak, Robinson. I mean our who's who of the last 3 years is made up of a lot of guys that didn't come from the state of MS. Now there's a good number that have come from MS, but just look at the types of guys we get from out of state.