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Coach Phillips (recruiting coordinator) was on the radio show tonight and said we have 19 commitments and 13 are from Ohio. Sounds like we have put more emphasis on the Columbus area this year.

I really don't like to fall into the recruit Ohio football players only mentality, but I've noticed that the majority of the players getting into some sort of trouble recently are from out of state. I'm not saying that more Florida kids are trouble than Ohio kids, but recruiting kids from Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania presents more opportunities to get to know the kid outside of the football field. It gives you opportunities to talk to him more, get to know what his family is like, understand his background, and really gauge what kind of student, person, and athlete you're looking at. I really think that if we are able to recruit more from Ohio and the surrounding states, we'll see a better disciplined and more focused team than if we are always picking up kids from Florida and other southern states. Now that's not to discredit John Lanning (Georgia), Antonio Smith (Florida), Omar Jacobs (Florida), Cole Magner (Alaska), or all the other talented, hardworking, good kids we've recruited from far away states in the past several years.

The bottom line is, you recruit your home state well, you do well on the field. The minute you start getting beat out for kids within your home turf and have to go searching and begging out of the region, you're in big trouble.

The problem with Ohio is there are eight FBS schools to compete with. I know Florida has a ton as well, but none of those schools are in our conference. Florida has always been known for speed, and that is the kind of player that can thrive in our offense. Recruiting well in state however means we may be poking our heads a little higher than the other MAC schools. We need to continue to go find highly talented, high character players to be a successful team regardless of where they come from.

It isn't just the schools within Ohio we need to worry about, but all of the other MAC schools (Ball State has over 30 players from Ohio), the Big Ten Schools, a number of the Big East schools, Boston College, Notre Dame, Marshall, etc. Granted, BG cannot compete with many of the better "BCS schools" for recruits. There is plenty of talent in Ohio if BG can get its hands on it, however.

Good to hear we're having a solid year in Ohio...just like last year.

BEAT THE COWBOYS!

Good to hear. Hopefully there will be a few western PA kids as well.

If you can recruit Ohio well there is no reason we shouldn't get good players. I've never bought into not recruiting Ohio hard, there are as many good players if not more here than any other state. If we got all our players from Ohio that would be ok with me.

if its the disciplined lineman you want, then by all means recruit ohio. there are tons of those midwest farm boys. if its talent that will help you compete against the big schools in the skill positions get the hell out of ohio and the midwest all together.

big cornfed lineman = ohio/midwest

athletic fast ellusive skill players = south, texas, cali

Yeah avoid those skill position guys from the Midwest..we wouldn't want to risk signing any more kids like Partridge, Barnes, or Turner, right?

Flip...I got your back!

or Harris, or Sanders, or Pope....

How about we go after the best athletes who have good character where ever they may live.

moneymaker02 wrote:if its the disciplined lineman you want, then by all means recruit ohio. there are tons of those midwest farm boys. if its talent that will help you compete against the big schools in the skill positions get the hell out of ohio and the midwest all together.

big cornfed lineman = ohio/midwest

athletic fast ellusive skill players = south, texas, cali

Ohio doesn't produce any skill players.....right....

Today's PD lists still another kid from Mentor headed BG way. Don't know how to post a link, so I'll just paraphrase a bit.

"The Mentor-Bowling Green football pipeline continues. Mentor free safety Tim Moore has made an oral commitment to Bowling Green. He joins a long list of Cardinals who have headed to Bowling Green, including Mentor head coach Steve Trivisonno and current Falcons Bart Tanski and JJ Laseak.
"I liked the program. I got to know the coaches and felt right at home. They treated me real good every time I went to visit and the seemed like good guys.Safety coach Adam Gonzaga said he had big plans for me and he can't wait til next year."

Moore is 5-11, 185 and a 2nd year starter with 1 Int. this year. Plans to major in business or education.

BTW, the NINETEEN commits is interesting in that Rivals (at my last look) only showed 12 and Scout, which seems way behind, only showed 7 when I looked last. Are the others of the 19 NOT firm? Of course, NOTHING is firm until Feb., but it's always neat to be able to see stuff on these kids ahead of time.

Class of 61 wrote:
BTW, the NINETEEN commits is interesting in that Rivals (at my last look) only showed 12 and Scout, which seems way behind, only showed 7 when I looked last. Are the others of the 19 NOT firm? Of course, NOTHING is firm until Feb., but it's always neat to be able to see stuff on these kids ahead of time.

Same as always '61. The recruiting websites only can report on what info they get, usually that comes from the recruits themselves. Oftentimes the kids we're recruiting are not the high profile guys that are getting calls from these websites. Unless our recruits are calling the sites to tell them they would have no way of knowing that they've committed to BG.