Shift in Recruiting Boundaries

[BillySee58]

In Brett Vito’s recent article about the Ragsdale and Vailea commitments, he made a statement that interested me.

”UNT rarely ventures far from the talent-rich Dallas-Fort Worth area, and Texas in general, when it comes to football recruiting.”

This is certainly something that had been established as a generally true statement for a while, but we are seeing a shift under Littrell. In the 2020 class we signed just 3 players from the DFW Metroplex (Kortlin Rausaw, Garnett Burke, and Tavorice Weaver). Meanwhile we signed 6 high school players from out of state, and have 4 HS commits in our 2021 class already from out of state.

In Mccarney’s 5 recruiting classes we had just 11 out of state high school signees. In state, Mccarney really hit East Texas hard especially a few years in, while Littrell has actually favored Houston over DFW in recent years.

What these trends seem to show to me is that these guys, both non-Native Texans, took the job and looked at the DFW metroplex early on and figured that made the most sense to focus our recruiting efforts. This obviously makes a lot of sense at the surface level, but I think both learned the hard way that UNT does not exactly have a great reputation in the area and in many ways that makes it more of an uphill battle recruiting local kids as opposed to kids out of the metroplex. We see this especially in Denton ISD and Argyle.

It’s an unfortunate reality that we face in recruiting but the goal is to put together the best team, not the team with the most local recruits. It is going to take periods of prolonged winning to offset the reputation we have throughout most of the metroplex but lining our depth chart with high caliber recruits is a great start. 

Edited July 27, 2020 by BillySee58

[MeanGreenTexan]

Good thoughts Billy.  
So far, there have been 4 superstar HS recruits under Littrell.  2 from Oklahoma, 1 from Houston, and 1 from Florida via Abilene.  
 

I think you’re onto something.

[DeepGreen]

1 hour ago, BillySee58 said:

..."but I think both learned the hard way that UNT does not exactly have a great reputation in the area and in many ways that makes it more of an uphill battle recruiting local kids..."

Due to the fact that UNT was always in the shadows of the old Southwest Conference.  "The conference in the State of Texas".  Recruiting wise, and with very few exceptions, NT could not go up against the teams in that conference for top players in the State.

[BillySee58]

1 hour ago, DeepGreen said:

Due to the fact that UNT was always in the shadows of the old Southwest Conference.  "The conference in the State of Texas".  Recruiting wise, and with very few exceptions, NT could not go up against the teams in that conference for top players in the State.

Yeah that has been the case for a while so it makes sense how ingrained it is in the minds of DFW area coaches, many of whom grew up here and know that totem pole well. I also wonder what the Todd Dodge fiasco did for our reputation among high school coaches. Is the prevailing sentiment “Todd Dodge was a great coach but he had no chance of being successful at that school” or something along those lines? And how many coaches’ opinions soured on our program because of that, because maybe they were watching more closely then because of Dodge?

Would love to hear @GMG24 chime in and share his thoughts on his experience with the perception of the UNT Football program among the DFW coaching community.

Edited July 27, 2020 by BillySee58

[MeanGreenZen]

I don’t think we have a “bad” reputation in this area, it is more like DFW is overrecruited. 

Many coaches across the country get hired because of DFW recruiting ties and they have to deliver kids. 

There are certainly many good players in the Metroplex, but it is a better value to shop where the inventory hasn’t been picked through. 

Edited July 27, 2020 by MeanGreenZen

[MCMLXXX]

Oklahoma seems a natural recruiting ground for our location. Given the problems Tulsa seems to be facing I hope we are able to take advantage of the opportunity.

[GrandGreen]

If anything NT is slowly improving their recruiting in the area.   It is almost impossible to out recruit your conference affiliation, NT is seldom going to beat out P5's for players or even the AAC.  

NT is not signing Nevada athletes because they can't recruit regional players, they are signing out of state players because they believe they will be successful here. 

[BillySee58]

1 hour ago, GrandGreen said:

If anything NT is slowly improving their recruiting in the area.   It is almost impossible to out recruit your conference affiliation, NT is seldom going to beat out P5's for players or even the AAC.  

NT is not signing Nevada athletes because they can't recruit regional players, they are signing out of state players because they believe they will be successful here. 

I think my points can be true AND it can be true that we are improving our recruiting in the area. My points are more about the clear shift in focus away from the DFW area. We aren’t prioritizing it to the degree we have in the past, which is why we ended up with just 3 HS signees from DFW last class.

Or maybe a better way to put it is we aren’t relying on the DFW metroplex to produce a large chunk of our signees. We have expanded our footprint and shifted more of our focus towards Houston and Oklahoma than we have traditionally (i.e. Dodge era, Mccarney era, early Littrell era).

[BillySee58]

4 hours ago, MCMLXXX said:

Oklahoma seems a natural recruiting ground for our location. Given the problems Tulsa seems to be facing I hope we are able to take advantage of the opportunity.

Agreed. We have been beating them out a good bit lately.

5 hours ago, MeanGreenZen said:

I don’t think we have a “bad” reputation in this area, it is more like DFW is overrecruited. 

Many coaches across the country get hired because of DFW recruiting ties and they have to deliver kids. 

There are certainly many good players in the Metroplex, but it is a better value to shop where the inventory hasn’t been picked through. 

Maybe it’s not necessarily a bad reputation, but you often see G5 schools sign high caliber recruits from their backyard who they would not have signed if proximity had not been in their favor. Like a Miami kid choosing FAU over P5s. We have never had that situation play out for us with schools like Denton Ryan, Guyer, or Argyle.

And in general, with a lot of the kids we have signed who had a lot of other options, many have been from Houston or out of state. I get not every kid wants to stay close to home, but we are clearly having MORE success in situations where we are NOT able to pitch proximity which I think says more about the area and our perception than our coaches’ recruiting abilities.

[Coach Andy Mac]

3 hours ago, BillySee58 said:

Given the problems Tulsa seems to be facing I hope we are able to take advantage of the opportunity.

It is a good point as we have been beating them out more than we had before.  That said, they won't keep Monty another year and they will hire someone who can win and recruit so it won't last 4ever.  It's a travesty that they are in the AAC and we are not but the sins of the past.