What do College Football Recruits Care About?
Let's have the discussion here. Because I have to head to work, I'll keep my thoughts brief. I think kids fall into two categories:
1. Kids who have a strong parental unit and/or actually approach college as a place to get a valuable degree that will help you outside of football.
2. Kids who look at their college decision as a 3-5 year "where is the best place to play ball?" decision.
I think both groups care (to varying degrees with each individual) about facilities, relationships with the coaches, exposure, winning, how they fit in the social scene, early PT opportunities, and distance from home. I think the first group cares also about degree value, prestige of the university, strength in their intended major, graduation rates, the alumni network, and how the college will help them after graduation.
The latter group typically cares about hot chicks, weather, parties, how lax the rules are, $$$/benefits they can get, how the school puts kids in the pros, etc. That's not to say all of these kids are necessarily about breaking rules... because for sure the majority of them aren't looking to do that. For instance, Jimmy Clausen was a group 2 kid... he came here to be taught by Charlie Weis. What I'm saying is that they approach college as football first and look at it as a semi-pro opportunity to get to the NFL.
I think it's interesting to look at how ND succeeds with kids is group 1 but fails with kids in group 2. Even when we get group 2 kids to come to ND... they typically end up transferring or not panning out. Either that or they end up decommitting before NSD because they were using us as an insurance policy. There are exceptions, but it's the norm. In this year's class I can't think of one person who is a group 2 kid. I think you could put Deontay Greenberry and Gunner Kiel in that group... maybe... because the deciding factors for each seemed largely football based... but at the same time they also were swayed to ND from other places for largely non-football reasons. This is in stark contrast to how Weis recruited.
Anyways, I open it up here to discussion. The talk in the Davonte Neal thread got me thinking about this. The truth is, if they're really looking at this as a 40 year decision, from past results it seems like we're in better shape than most are saying. There are exceptions like Wayne Lyons and Noor Davis but in general we win the "long term decision" showdown with most schools... especially schools like Arizona, OU, and Ohio State.
