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I Noticed on 247

I love Nebraska, and I'm very bullish about the future,... but you're probably even over-exaggerating to say "middle-of-the-road kind of program" at this point for the vast majority of recruits. ...
Great post. So much truth in so few words. And the perfect balance of painful reality and well-founded optimism for the future. Your post isn't negative or pessimistic or whiny - it's saying what is true to this point. In any effort, seeing where you are is only seeing where you have to start to build.

I am not concerned from the standpoint that that is about the same thing that has happened the past 20 years. Glass is half full response tho is Noa Pola-Gates was "cool" for quite awhile on us on some of those sites and we got his commitment.

Exactly. I think it it will look just like this example - not really looking like a leader for lots of blue chips until at the end, when the kinds of advantages MABC pointed out this staff will work finally make the difference, incrementally, one solid recruit at a time - for us for a while.

Frost and staff have so much work to do. But while it's true that nothing is certain until it's done, it feels like we finally have a staff with a clue and some skills. Nothing good ever comes easy though. If Frost can turn NU into the kind of contender that blue chips are consistently and readily drawn to, it will be a great achievement.
 
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I love Nebraska, and I'm very bullish about the future,... but you're probably even over-exaggerating to say "middle-of-the-road kind of program" at this point for the vast majority of recruits. I'm speaking in technical terms about how, say, 60-70% of American high school recruits would generically view Nebraska as a potential football school. Almost any state north of Texas and between the Rockies and Ohio is already behind the 8-ball because most American kids don't know their geography well enough to even know the difference between Nebraska, Idaho, and New Mexico on a blank map, so the name of the state means "not here" to almost anyone on either coast, the Southeast, Texas, the eastern Midwest, and Arizona. Look at where the majority of students live, and you just crossed out about 80+% of them. Some will have connections to Nebraska (family, other recruits etc.), and most of their parents (if they followed football) and coaches will know Nebraska football because of the 90s, but to the average kid growing up in California, seeing highlights of the Nebraska-Iowa game is roughly as relevant as some Nebraska recruit seeing highlights of the Eastern Washington-Montana game.

If you're asking how what I said can possibly be true, first of all, you should spend some time talking with people from either coast who have no connections to Nebraska. Second, you may think about some of those wonderful Tuioti quotes about how much easier it is to recruit for Nebraska because we have a national brand. Both things are simultaneously true. Nebraska is VERY well known ... among high school football coaches and college football fans over age 40. When Tuioti walks into a high school, anywhere, with that hat on, the coaches know who Nebraska is, and especially the coaches who are looking for programs that will take care of their kids (and that's how almost any good high school coach views his players), Nebraska has about the best reputation in America. There are a lot of kids out there--and a lot of current players on campus--who would have never considered going to Nebraska if it weren't for their coaches explaining to them that they needed to sit down and talk with the Nebraska coaches because those guys play big-time football, and they'll take care of you.

Let me give one more very humbling example of how far we'd fallen as far as public awareness. I was teaching overseas near military bases where U.S. troops were cycling through every several months. My staff were often invited to various social gatherings on the base, so I went there regularly. I often wore a cap or sweatshirt or something that was Huskers related. You would not believe how many 20-year-old males who love football and even followed their local team did NOT know what the "N" stood for, though recognition was much better when it was exactly like the football helmet with a red "N" on a white background, and anything that said "Huskers" or similar helped even more. When we talked about college football, it was almost entirely regional knowledge. A South Carolina guy was a big Clemson fan, and he knew a lot about the ACC and the SEC ... and nothing else. The Texans knew Texas ... and nothing else. The Mississippi guys knew Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and the SEC ... and nothing else. There weren't a lot of guys there from either coast, but most of them either didn't follow college football very much, or else they followed USC (West Coast) or Notre Dame, Penn State, et al. (East Coast). (As a sidenote, while the U.S. military has guys from everywhere, the frontline troops are overwhelmingly from rural areas.) The only guys who knew much about Nebraska (besides the Iowa guys, who hated us) were the old Big 8 footprint ... and people who had watched Nebraska in the 90s. Now here's the part that stings: That was during the Callahan era. Other than the name "Ndamukong Suh" what would any of the people from any of those places have heard about Nebraska football since then?

A junior in high school now is probably about 17 years old, which means he was born in 2002, after Crouch was done. He was 7 years old when Suh tore apart Colt McCoy, and--unless his father was a big college football fan--he wouldn't have noticed unless he lived in either Texas or the Nebraska neighborhood. Most college football fans don't start following a team more closely until sometime around junior high and the start of high school, so that would mean that they probably picked a favorite team or conference around 2014 to 2017. Does the hole that we're in seem a little more severe now?

Let me end on the good news: Frost is doing all of the things that will get serious recruits' attention very quickly, and coaches are going to trust his staff to take care of their players and push them to graduate. Especially among kids coming from fatherless homes, it's hard to emphasize how much influence those coaches' opinions matter. Beyond that, Nebraska needs a heck of a lot more than a winning season or a bowl game to change that mental map of American kids. It's all incremental, though, so we start with rebuilding our reputation in the 500-mile radius, getting every one of those prospects. A little more success and that radius expands. Our coaches understand this, and they're already doing everything they can to pave that pathway. You'll know it's working when you start hearing Iowa fans moaning about losing Iowa prospects to Nebraska, and then (hopefully) we start taking St. Louis prospects from Ohio State and the SEC, and so on. With all of that said, Nebraska is a heck of a long ways from Florida, Houston, or Southern California, and that's why our coaches' connections to coaches there matter so much.

MABC, I've decided I want you to write my eulogy.

I'm confident you'll paint a much better picture of my life and behavior than any of my family members would/could and likely better than most paid fiction writers.

Thanks in advance and ......no pressure.
 
My sense is that there are a lot of media outlets who are looking for a UCF year 2 kind of 2019 season and that's not gonna happen. I hope recruits are not holding off on making a commitment based on seeing if that happens.

Doubling the win total from last year and being competitive in the West Division would be a good start. That kind of turnaround would get the attention of a lot of recruits IMO.

As far as recruits on 247 being cool to NU, I have found that particular indicator is not always true or updated very often.
 
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all we have to do, is go and win the games we are favored to win, that means we go AT LEAST 9-3, that translates into a very nice recruiting year, prob a top 10 recruiting year,
 
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agree with the ball coach, todays high school player follows college football alright, but they dont really start following teams til they are old enuf to understand the game somewhat, or go to H.S. games or college games, or play little league. That means they have about a 6-7 year football memory, as a jr or sr. . Most High school players would vaguely remember Bo Pelini, Brady Hoke or Mack Brown, if at all.
 
agree with the ball coach, todays high school player follows college football alright, but they dont really start following teams til they are old enuf to understand the game somewhat, or go to H.S. games or college games, or play little league. That means they have about a 6-7 year football memory, as a jr or sr. . Most High school players would vaguely remember Bo Pelini, Brady Hoke or Mack Brown, if at all.

But their coaches remember them. In the case of Mack Brown, he has made an immediate impact on HS recruiting in NC because he had built such great relationships with the high school coaches across the state.
 
agree with the ball coach, todays high school player follows college football alright, but they dont really start following teams til they are old enuf to understand the game somewhat, or go to H.S. games or college games, or play little league. That means they have about a 6-7 year football memory, as a jr or sr. . Most High school players would vaguely remember Bo Pelini, Brady Hoke or Mack Brown, if at all.

Probably true for Bo and Hoke. People in Austin would typically ask me, "Do you guys still have that hothead as coach -- what's his name?" lol, that's about all Bo was known for outside of Nebraska. And Hoke, he wasn't at Michigan very long and only had one really good season (his first).

Mack is a bit different, as he was at UT for 16 years, won a national title -- and then remained relevant for the 4 years he was out of coaching, working as a color commentator and studio analyst for ESPN. Let alone the other obvious fact that Texas is a high school football hot bed, so his name still resonates down here.

But yes, your general point being that high school kids' memories are mostly limited to whatever happened in the past 5-10 years is what matters most.
 



In the case of Mack Brown, he has made an immediate impact on HS recruiting in NC because he had built such great relationships with the high school coaches across the state.
24498
 
hate to even think it, but there is a hell of alot of pressure on players and coaches to produce positive results this year. the longer we take the longer we'll have to climb
 
My sense is that there are a lot of media outlets who are looking for a UCF year 2 kind of 2019 season and that's not gonna happen. I hope recruits are not holding off on making a commitment based on seeing if that happens.

Doubling the win total from last year and being competitive in the West Division would be a good start. That kind of turnaround would get the attention of a lot of recruits IMO.

As far as recruits on 247 being cool to NU, I have found that particular indicator is not always true or updated very often.
To expand on this and for some comparison... Mike Riley had 9 recruits verballed already at this point (not counting any decommits he had) to begin his year 2 class after going 6-7. 5 of those were four stars.

Recruits are bullish on Nebraska right now. No one is holding off to see how year 2 goes, as recruits will commit based on momentum. Expect 1-2 verbals coming here in June at minimum. Lack of commits means very little. Lots of kids love us, they just haven’t pulled the trigger.
 
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Nebraska will have some really important guys taking OVs over the first 3-weekends in June. Top of the board kids. Will have several other unofficial visits too. Two of those weekends correspond with FNL's. It'd be a pretty good look if they could get crowds similar to that of the one they got in the summer of 2017 when almost 7000 attended.
 
Well said and painfully true. The good thing going for us with recruits nationwide is the name Scott Frost. His name is well known everywhere with what he did at UCF. We got a 3-4 year window to take advantage of that. If we are mediocre over the next 2 years, recruiting is going to be even more tough that is was a couple years ago. This may be our last chance at relevance. If we excel, the sky's the limit.
Agreed Davey....Very intelligent comment, you MUST be from Aurora.:Rockon: I can’t wait for the season to start!! GBR!
 

At this point I hope we are getting only the best of offers we have out there. I think we are going to have a special season this year......at least special relative to what we have had in many years. This could be a pendulum swinger for many recruits. I want to make sure we aren't full before that happens.
 

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