Doug,
It's a negative recruitment thing. I've seen our own staff deploy the same tactics, literally can give you names of the players and hell I'll even tell you the coach that did it. They all do it. And it works pretty often. If a kid was considering EMU, WMU, MT, Troy, App St, Ark St....All the southern coaches are telling that kid you don't wanna play up north, its cold, the MAC sucks, the north doesn't care about football, parents can't come to your games, you'll transfer home after 1 year, etc.
Then they will tell you names of all the kids at high schools in your area over the last few years that did exactly that, signed with a MAC school or northern school and then transferred home. Before they all went 1-AA, but now they can transfer home and play right away anywhere. And let me tell you, this happens all the time. Anyway, now the kid being recruited really is thinking "Man, I should stay with a southern school, I don't want to end up like them!" It's negative recruiting and it works remarkably well. There's a reason MAC schools are flooded with northern players and not players from the south.
We already struggled against southern G5 teams in recruiting because our facilities and coaches suck, now it will be nearly impossible to sign kids that any SBC school wants because we won't be able to compete in any way. We will be negative recruited into oblivion on top of our already terrible facilities and coaches. So our GA, AL, FL, even TN recruiting is going to become more difficult. Hell, just ask yourself this, if you played football down south and you were being recruited by G5 programs, would you sign with a school in the MAC, Sun Belt, or AAC? Give me your pecking order....
That's what I thought.
We will be forced to look more north, because its our natural area to recruit based on our school/conference now. But those relationships don't appear over night. Can take years, even decades.
