Why Do Tennessee Kids

#52
#52
Gimme a break! Tennessee is in the top ten in recruiting nearly every year. I'm glad Fulmer is gone but he was a fine recruiter and really sold kids parents on the program. Kiffin and his staff will probably be at least as good and likely even better than Fulmer. Most kids in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina are as close to Knoxville as kids playing in Memphis. Talent in Tennessee is inordinately heavy in the Memphis area which is closer to seven other SEC schools than it is to Knoxville. I would love it if Kiffin could start pulling all the best kids from that area, but it's not realistic to believe he ever will.
 
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#53
#53
Dating back to Majors it seemed to me that the majority of Tennessee kids that did sign got lost in the shuffle and it left a bad tatse in some HS coaches mouth. Not saying all, there have been plenty who gave great contributions. This carried over to Fulmer for whatever reason and some didn't even get offered by UT. On the flip side some of the talent Fulmer did sign from in state probably wouldn't even got a sniff from Kiffin. Case in point had he not already been offered I don't think the Rhea County kid gets an offer from CLK but had Kiffin pulled the offer it could have hurt future recruiting efforts locally.
 
#58
#58
I think some of it has to do with our geography -- we are surrounded by eight other states and it's a less of a drive to DC from Knoxville than it is to Memphis. That plus our state is kind of divided into three parts.

I've lived in TN the majority of my life and could care less about what's going on in Memphis and have had to look up locations of towns in middle and west TN on a map after hearing their names for the first time.

Granted, TN is the 'official' state school... many kids don't connect because it's further east than other programs of interest.
 
#59
#59
rexvol said:
Not want to play for the Vols? It seems like the top flight kids in state all want to go elswhere. The ones we do land, we have to fight tooth and nail for. Texas, UF, Bama, Georgia, LSU, are examples of state kids having a desire to stay in state. why is that not the cause here?
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I'd say a couple of things factor in. One, UT really isn't close to the areas with the big concentrations of talent. Other schools can rightly say they are closer. Two, knowing that and knowing the lack of instate talent, CPF invested more in recruiting out of state and let relationships with schools and coaches suffer.

Kiffin has said he wants to rebuild those relationships but it will take work. He can't change the fact that LSU, Ole Miss, Ark, Bama, etc are about as close to Memphis as UT is... and if a kid is going to go as far away as Knoxville then why not an hour or two further?

The fact that no one wanted to hear when CPF was being run down and eventually fired is that UT is a very difficult place to recruit to in a way that competes with other top SEC teams. That's a simple fact that will not change soon.
 
#60
#60
GmanTN said:
Alabama, Arkansas, Ole Miss and Miss St have a stronger following in west TN.
Memphis was all but forgotten by the previous staff who had a terrible track record there.
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Did they really or did they just decide recruiting Atlanta and Florida might be a better use of limited resources?

I know it is tempting for many of you to just assume the worst of Fulmer but he wasn't an idiot.

Comparatively speaking, has UT gotten more great players from Ga and western NC or Memphis?
 
#61
#61
That's why USC drove the Raiders and Rams out of LA. It was affecting high school kids interest in the Trojans.

It's the same reason why GT and UGA are trying to get rid of the Falcons and why UF, FSU and Miami have been trying to push the Dolphins and Jags out of the state for years.
 
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#62
#62
Winning trumps distance easy.

Miami recruits great from all across the country, and its more geographically displaced than Knoxville being at the bottom end of a long peninsula. Southern Cal recruits whever they want and LA is at the bottom end of a MUCH larger state than Tennessee. The state of Texas is huge, kids come to Austin from all over the state even though many are closer to Lubbock, College Station, or even Norman.

When we start kicking @$$ on the field again, the Tennessee kids will come. When its "cool" to be a Vol because we are a bad A program, the Tennessee kids will be beating down our door. Ten years of boring football is why they aren't coming, the kids are growing up watching other programs win championships, not the Vols.
 
#64
#64
cd12 said:
Dating back to Majors it seemed to me that the majority of Tennessee kids that did sign got lost in the shuffle and it left a bad tatse in some HS coaches mouth. Not saying all, there have been plenty who gave great contributions. This carried over to Fulmer for whatever reason and some didn't even get offered by UT. On the flip side some of the talent Fulmer did sign from in state probably wouldn't even got a sniff from Kiffin. Case in point had he not already been offered I don't think the Rhea County kid gets an offer from CLK but had Kiffin pulled the offer it could have hurt future recruiting efforts locally.
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More truth here than you know. In Nashville we refer to Brentwood as Brentwood, AL. Auburn and Alabama have a lock in that area with a lot of top tier talent. I heard it from several sources close to many of the High Schools in that area that Fulmer rubbed the coaches in that area raw by speaking to kids then not offering. It was a coaching thing that caused this.

We used to get a ton of talent from the Huntington, Milan, Dyer county, Memphis area. I don't know what happened there exactly, but I know it is all going to ole miss, ,miss st. and arky. Our coaches have not been in that area much. Personally, I would rather have a 3 star player with a love for TN than a 5 star trying to find his fastest path to the NFL.
 
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