The Bodda Getta

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jadennis said...

What are those things?

Are those the things that make Auburn, Auburn, or Georgia, Georgia, or Alabama, Alabama?

Not really.

Those things listed....weight rooms, practice fields, and stadiums...those things are all pretty much a wash from LSU to Tennessee to Auburn to Florida. Facilities are facilities. Mascots are mascots.

For kid that has never lived life within the football complex of Auburn or Athens or Baton Rouge, what it is about each place that makes it unique? If it's not all of those lifeless things, what is it?

It's the people.

For football recruits....who are the "people" that make these places what they are? It's the coaches, the support staff, and the relationships that the recruits have developed with those specific people over the years that form 60% to 95% of the bond to a program.

So when an entire staff is jettisoned out the door, those relationships and connections are gone as well.

Go back to your childhood home, knock on the door, go inside and sit down, and see how "at home" you feel. What makes it "home" isn't the house, it's the people inside the house.

That isn't to discount the town of Auburn and the "feel" many of us get just by being in Auburn. To a lot of folks, that is something special, even as the "people" come and go...Auburn seems to remain "Auburn". To us, Auburn is something that doesn't leave when the coaches leave.

But remember, these kids aren't looking just for a town in which to live, they are looking behind the closed doors of the football program. That is #1. That is where they will live. And when everything behind those closed doors changes....the decision about which "doors" to walk through gets a little tougher.

Give the recruits time to meet the new "family" that now lives in the house they were going to call a home. Some will stick around, some will leave, and some will leave and then come back. But whatever the case, we need to at least try to understand that it's not as simple as it seems.....especially not for an 18 year old looking for a home.

No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, we may say it's over, but the enemy gets a vote. - Gen. James Mattis