Just read the headline of the linked article;

Illinois Football offers scholarships to a trio of four-star Florida natives - The Champaign Room

THIS is why WE MUST recruit more regionally and form the JUCO ranks. The best players in the State of Florida are being offered bu schools from all accross the country and from the Power5 Conferences every day. This leaves US the remainders who either are not good enough to play in a Power Conference program and for those remainders we still have to compete with UCF, USF, FIU and all the other Group of 5 schools, who are doing VERY WELL with our homegrown talent.

If we insist on the old fashioned "beliEf" that their is enough talent in S. Florida for us to recruit and compete, think again. I wish I were wrong but a BIG reason we have slid backwards, even in the 3rd year of Coach P, is we are NOT filling our IMMEDIATE needs and have l;ttle depth STILL!

I pray the TEAM turns it on and around this weekend and proves me wrong but WHY LIMIT OURSELVES TALENT WISE, IT IS NOT SMART!

GeorgiaOwl said

Just read the headline of the linked article;

Illinois Football offers scholarships to a trio of four-star Florida natives - The Champaign Room

THIS is why WE MUST recruit more regionally and form the JUCO ranks. The best players in the State of Florida are being offered bu schools from all accross the country and from the Power5 Conferences every day. This leaves US the remainders who either are not good enough to play in a Power Conference program and for those remainders we still have to compete with UCF, USF, FIU and all the other Group of 5 schools, who are doing VERY WELL with our homegrown talent.

If we insist on the old fashioned "beliEf" that their is enough talent in S. Florida for us to recruit and compete, think again. I wish I were wrong but a BIG reason we have slid backwards, even in the 3rd year of Coach P, is we are NOT filling our IMMEDIATE needs and have l;ttle depth STILL!

I pray the TEAM turns it on and around this weekend and proves me wrong but WHY LIMIT OURSELVES TALENT WISE, IT IS NOT SMART!

Posted On: Sep 23rd 2016, 3:26 PM #359645

I do agree we should bring on the JC players to fill those needs like this year with DT. But South Florida has to be our main talent pool when it comes to High School talent.

Main pool yes but i would say something like 50% tops, there is a ton of talent in other states that we cannot afford to ignore. The JUCO route offers us a chance a higher talent players who for whatever reasons could not go the regular college route, be it grades, injuries, etc….

And that 50% Florida talent needs to be of a higher quality as well. We should not be losing players to WKU, Marshall, Toledo, Akron or ANY other Group of 5 level teams. Until we get to where a MINIMUM of our recruits are 3* or better we will struggle. And I mean Rivals 3*, not Scout who rates many players higher. We need Quality not just Quantity!

GeorgiaOwl said

Main pool yes but i would say something like 50% tops, there is a ton of talent in other states that we cannot afford to ignore. The JUCO route offers us a chance a higher talent players who for whatever reasons could not go the regular college route, be it grades, injuries, etc….

And that 50% Florida talent needs to be of a higher quality as well. We should not be losing players to WKU, Marshall, Toledo, Akron or ANY other Group of 5 level teams. Until we get to where a MINIMUM of our recruits are 3* or better we will struggle. And I mean Rivals 3*, not Scout who rates many players higher. We need Quality not just Quantity!

Posted On: Sep 23rd 2016, 5:55 PM #359649

I agree with some of this.

There does seem to be a ton more 3 star recruits then there were 10 years ago.  247 rates anybody with a DI offer a 3 star it seems.

Anyway, I think we should have brought some JUCO in for Charlie's first few years while his recruiting classes developed and became upper classmen.  I remember reading the article where he and Chun agreed not to bring in any JUCO and cringed.

Our problem is, until we show that we can develop players and win football games we are going to have trouble taking that next step in recruiting.

Good news, we are building the right things from an infrastructure standpoint and investing enough in football…if we get the right coaches we will begin to see 4 star recruits in the near future.