The Bodda Getta

Those are some pretty strong offers for those guys. Clemson baffles me how they are in the mix with all these guys. I suppose they are doing a really good job up there. I would think that Fisher at FSU would get more attention from these guys, but I suppose they have the state of Florida to keep them busy.

WDE.

Great list and glad to see a couple more good LB's... Definatly agree with TrojanTiger clemson is recruiting at a high level and it really surprises the crap out of me.

Bryan,

I sent you this message a few weeks ago on a similar thread but I don't think you saw it. It applies to this thread as well.

It surprises me to see that decisions on which players a program is going to recruit are being made earlier and earlier e.g. the players mentioned in your article above still have two full seasons of HS football to play and two more years to grow and develop physically, mentally and emotionally before they can sign a college grant-in-aid. With fewer and fewer scholarships to give and the overall numbers restrictions on all programs I would think schools would want to wait longer before pulling the trigger and making offers. Instead it seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year. I know that schools are influenced a great deal by what their competitors are doing and schools want to get in early with kids that have been identified as having the potential to play college ball and be the first to offer. I just wonder if we are missing out on some late developers because of this trend. I taught HS biology for a couple of years a long time ago and it was obvious to me back then that the freshmen and sophomore kids who were dominating on the field or on the court were the ones who had had an early growth spurt and were already shaving. There were also a good number of kids in those classes who, at the time, were about 5 feet tall and weighed about 100 lbs. but who ended up being the best players for the team by their senior years after they had gone through their own growth spurt. And that's just talking about the physical aspect of maturation.

My point is that there well could be many HS football players currently getting ready to start their junior season who no one is currently recruiting because they have never started or played very much to this point because they are at a very large school with a lot of good players and there was a talented senior ahead of them last year. Or a player who was too small last year may have had a significant growth spurt since last season and can now dominate players who used to be bigger than him.

In years past it was common to read stories about late bloomers like that being discovered by assistants and signed to scholarships - the kid who came from nowhere to be a major talent in his senior year or the kid who came out for football for the first time in his senior year and showed himself to have major potential. A lot happens between a kid's sophomore and senior year, good and bad.

This was my original question: Regarding the fact that Park in the 2014 class is definitely our #1 QB target for that year, I find it curious that our coaches have made that firm of a decision since all the players in that class still have two years of HS football to play and a lot of physical, mental and emotional growing to do before the possibility of signing a college grant-in-aid.

For example, I went to HS with Pat Sullivan and he wasn't even a starter in his sophomore year. He did get some playing time as a sophomore but we had a very good experienced senior who was first string and took the vast majority of the snaps that year. He was a very good HS QB but was too small to be recruited. Pat didn't start until his junior year. So if that were now, a future Heisman Trophy winner would not even be on anyone's radar at this point of his career but Auburn (and many other schools) has already decided who their #1 QB target for '14 is.

Maybe all these summer camps give coaches an earlier read on players but it seems there are tremendous differences between a sophomore and that same player as a senior. Even with the earlier read you get on the younger players who attend summer camps the coaches would still totally miss the late bloomer. What are your thoughts?

It's a push.

Clemson, home of Charlie Pell, Danny Ford, Dabo Sweeney...get the connection? Similar breeding. Similar recruiting success. Learned all the tricks at Bama. Dabo just hasn't been caught..yet.

Going after anyone at Oxford has been frustrating in the past. I'm not saying we should ignore the place, but it's definitely a significant uphill battle to recruit anyone there.