re: Hentges commits to Bama

quote:

---

I think it was over like an 8 year period but they all had similar numbers. They all landed about 78% of instate kids that they offered. I think that is a fair number to expect for schools like ours that are the only game in town. No one is going to land everyone in this day and age of every game being televised but if you can land about 7-8 out of 10 then you are doing pretty solid.

---

Went back and looked at all offers instead of just out of the top 10. The numbers are slightly better but no where near the numbers you found for the other schools.

2014: Offered 19 Landed 8 (42%)
2013: Offered 18 Landed 11 (61%)
2012: Offered 11 Landed 5 (45%)

2015 so far: Offered 9 Landed 3 (33%)

Again, based on info from 247, which starts to get sketchy prior to 2012.

The lost decade of Mizzou football really took Mizzou down a few notches in a lot of these kids' houses.

Mizzou made its first bowl game in 14 years right about the time he was born, so he may like Mizzou, but unless his parents went to Mizzou (I don't know) they likely weren't die hard Mizzou fans.

I think that's the same for most people in Missouri. That shite stretch of Mizzou football did a lot to kill the real fandom and sidewalk type fandom in the state. I think it will improve as people that were interested in Mizzou football in the early 2000's and had kids start coming up through the high school years in Missouri.

I say it a lot, but as a young kid in Columbia, the least cool thing you could wear was black and gold. That stretch of horrible, horrible, Mizzou football is making things a lot more difficult even now. Hopefully the fallout from that will be over soon.

It's all a theory, but I think there's something behind it.

quote:

---

The lost decade of Mizzou football really took Mizzou down a few notches

---

There was a time when we got most of the good in state kids.
Widenhofer, Stull, and Smith just wiped out Mizzou in the state and it's going to take a while to get it back

quote:

---

That's pretty surprising. Not what I would have expected at all. What do you think the reason is behind it?

---

St. Louis coaches, especially the prep league coaches, think they're better than Mizzou. A kid from CBC, Burroughs, or Chaminade, et al, is as likely to go out of state as in state. I don't have any hard numbers behind that, but that's certainly my perception of it.

quote:

---

That's pretty surprising. Not what I would have expected at all. What do you think the reason is behind it?

---

I think the others have all pretty much summed it up. The powers that be at the University all but destroyed the athletic department in the 80's and into the 90's. Only the bare minimum of investments were made into the programs. The facilities suffered. The coaching hires suffered. I think the football team probably averaged about 3 wins a year in the 80's under Widenhofer and Stull. Maybe slightly better in the 90's under Smith. It really wasn't until GP took over that the program began to resemble anything that it was prior to those decades. For those generations of fans, Mizzou was not viewed as a place you go if you were worth a damn. You only went there if you couldn't go anywhere else. The success under GP, the monies being sunk into the program, the facilities upgrades and so on really are in their infancy if you think about it. The good news is, is that the kids growing up today only know Mizzou as being a successful program. The problem is, those kids didn't grow up in a house that was adorned in black and gold because their parents grew up in those dark years. Assuming Mizzou can keep up the winning more years than not, more kids will grow up with black and gold in their house than the current generation of kids.

quote:

---

St. Louis coaches, especially the prep league coaches, think they're better than Mizzou. A kid from CBC, Burroughs, or Chaminade, et al, is as likely to go out of state as in state. I don't have any hard numbers behind that, but that's certainly my perception of it.

---

I don't know if the coaches think they're better than Mizzou as much as for years, and maybe even now, don't have an incentive to steer kids to Mizzou over tOSU or OU or Bama or FSU or wherever. I do think that is changing under GP and Ford, just not to the extent it needs to be changed to. I would only also add that it's a problem across the state. Hentges wasn't from STL. The Davis brothers weren't from STL. By my count, Mizzou got 10 commits from 23 offers out of STL over the last 3 years (43%). They got 8 commits from 18 offers in KC (44%). That was after a quick glance at 247 so my numbers could be off.