Link: Distances SEC schools have ranged to fill their rosters...

If you want a good example of what fishy recruiting looks like, take a look at where Ole Miss is on the list. They're surrounded by Vanderbilt and Missouri, two schools that are not exactly recruiting powerhouses (so they obviously have to look far and wide to get SEC level talent). This wouldn't be notable if not for the fact that Ole Miss has been attracting top recruits, who wanted to come from out west or up north just to play for the mighty Ole Miss. Alabama and Florida are two recruiting powerhouses, that can attract talent from all over, yet for reasons that are not clear to anyone who doesn't believe they were bought and paid for, somehow top level talent traveled 100 more miles (on average) to go to Ole Miss.

That's right, top recruits would rather travel farther to play for Ole Miss than Alabama or Florida.

That list gives me even more respect for Dan Mullen. How a larger school hasn't snapped him up is beyond me.

I guess the unknown stat is each schools budget for recruiting. RTO is totally correct about Mississippi State. They may not give Mullen enough money to travel further. I'm so glad Bama gives Coach Saban the money he needs to go after any recruit. If MSU is averaging 170 miles, they're doing little to no flying. That's a severe limitation on recruiting in the SEC.

MSU and Ole Miss have always struggled with the fact that a lot of kids just don't qualify for NCAA eligibility out of their public education. They also have Alabama to the East and LSU to the South snapping up the ones who do qualify.


Why do you think the Rebs got in trouble with ACT scores?

This is interesting. With as much national recruiting as we do, I would have thought we'd be higher on the list.

colbysullivan said:

This is interesting. With as much national recruiting as we do, I would have thought we'd be higher on the list.

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There's a lot of little tidbits hidden in the data. You have Vanderbilt who performs and recruits at a low level, and goes far and wide to sign what is obviously a lower tier of recruits. You have Miss. St. which puts together a surprisingly competitive team just by combing their region for talent while Alabama and Ole Miss are busy picking up higher ranked players from farther away (and leaving low hanging fruit for Miss. St). Texas and Georgia unsurprisingly don't have to travel far for talent, since their areas are loaded with it.

Don't be fooled into thinking higher is better though, it isn't that simple. What Ole Miss was able to do isn't really possible without additional enticement, top recruits don't generally leave the heart of Big 12 or Big 10 country for instance. The better contrast for Alabama is Auburn, Alabama recruits are 100 miles further out on average, which is statistically significant (especially if you consider Auburn generally recruits fairly well and is already in the middle of the list).

KrAzY3 said:

There's a lot of little tidbits hidden in the data. You have Vanderbilt who performs and recruits at a low level, and goes far and wide to sign what is obviously a lower tier of recruits. You have Miss. St. which puts together a surprisingly competitive team just by combing their region for talent while Alabama and Ole Miss are busy picking up higher ranked players from farther away (and leaving low hanging fruit for Miss. St). Texas and Georgia unsurprisingly don't have to travel far for talent, since their areas are loaded with it.

Don't be fooled into thinking higher is better though, it isn't that simple. What Ole Miss was able to do isn't really possible without additional enticement, top recruits don't generally leave the heart of Big 12 or Big 10 country for instance. The better contrast for Alabama is Auburn, Alabama recruits are 100 miles further out on average, which is statistically significant (especially if you consider Auburn generally recruits fairly well and is already in the middle of the list).

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Somewhat surprising Texas traveled further (albeit 7 miles) than Tennessee.

bamachile said:

That list gives me even more respect for Dan Mullen. How a larger school hasn't snapped him up is beyond me.

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Let me tell you PART of what I know for a fact is going on with Mullen.

I attended high school at Caledonia, MS from 1984-1987. We were not a very good team, but we did have one or two players who it would have been VERY interesting to see how they turned out. Not one single time did we ever see ANY recruiter from Ole Miss, MSU, or Southern...or anywhere else in the state....at our little high school. But Mullen and his assistants are out on the recruiting trail on the Friday nights AT THE HIGH SCHOOLS IN PERSON, scouting players and signing autographs. (They obviously don't do this on nights before either a BIG game or a road game, but they are there - several of my high school classmates who still live there have seen them).

Mullen is out trying to find the diamonds in the rough - because he HAS to, he doesn't have any other choice. This is why I think he'd be the perfect guy to turn around Nebraska, maybe not to their Tom Osborne end of career level but certainly to that late 70s-early 80s one or two losses per year with the occasional bad year of three losses thrown in.


On a side note - across the river from us is Hamilton High School. There was a player some of you may have heard of out of there named Don Smith, who was an All-SEC quarterback for Miss State around 1985-86 or so. He was an option quarterback - so good, in fact, that Coach Bryant was trying to get him to come to Alabama. A reliable source of mine told me that in the fall of 1981 (when Smith would have been a junior) that there were some Alabama recruiters at the airport in Columbus trying to rent a car and figure out how to get to Hamilton, Mississippi (a hole in the wall on the map). Back then (unlike now so much) it was common for folks trying to recruit players to "hide" a particular player from other folks being able to see him. I don't know if our guys ever got a look at Smith, but I have heard he was 'hid out' in the fall of 1982 prior to heading to Miss State.

And if his name sounds vaguely familiar, not only did he play for Perkins in Tampa (second round draft pick) as an RB but he scored the first Buffalo TD in Super Bowl XXV. In 1994 - only four years after his final NFL carry, which was the Super Bowl TD - he was sentenced to a mandatory 15-year prison term for buying cocaine.

KrAzY3 said:

There's a lot of little tidbits hidden in the data. You have Vanderbilt who performs and recruits at a low level, and goes far and wide to sign what is obviously a lower tier of recruits. You have Miss. St. which puts together a surprisingly competitive team just by combing their region for talent while Alabama and Ole Miss are busy picking up higher ranked players from farther away (and leaving low hanging fruit for Miss. St). Texas and Georgia unsurprisingly don't have to travel far for talent, since their areas are loaded with it.

Don't be fooled into thinking higher is better though, it isn't that simple. What Ole Miss was able to do isn't really possible without additional enticement, top recruits don't generally leave the heart of Big 12 or Big 10 country for instance. The better contrast for Alabama is Auburn, Alabama recruits are 100 miles further out on average, which is statistically significant (especially if you consider Auburn generally recruits fairly well and is already in the middle of the list).

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Atlanta is nearly 100 miles farther from Tuscaloosa than Auburn, which would explain some of the increased distance too.

RTR91 said:

Somewhat surprising Texas traveled further (albeit 7 miles) than Tennessee.

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Might have something to do with the size of Texas, in general. If you could turn Texas over to the east it would reach the Atlantic ocean. If you could turn it over to the west, it would reach the Pacific.

BamaMoon said:

Might have something to do with the size of Texas, in general. If you could turn Texas over to the east it would reach the Atlantic ocean. If you could turn it over to the west, it would reach the Pacific.

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And yet here we are, with nothing nicer than South Padre's rust-hued water to show for it...