(07-01-2016 05:59 PM)ExcitedOwl18 Wrote:  I think we need to be spread our wings a little bit more, but need to be surgical about it.

We shouldn't try to offer and recruit every good player from Bangor to San Diego, because you'll never be able to develop the relationships with high school coaches.

We need to pick an area and focus on it for a few years.

Some suggestions:

Atlanta
Central Florida
Charlotte
Hampton Roads

I think the 'high school coach' angle is over-rated for the guys from say Bangor who might consider Rice, who was also considering Harvard or Northwestern or Stanford. I think the Academic counselor might actually be a stronger angle....

We're not talking about kids that need to be talked into the academic challenge.... They've already embraced that. We're selling Rice academics to someone that values academics. We're selling that if they don't get the p5 offer they want, then we still meet their academic challenges and are unique in g5. Rather than take the offer from Kansas or maybe Minnesota... consider being at the TOP of g5 with great academics rather than being at the bottom of p5 with good, but not great academics.

but of course implicit in my suggestion was something similar to yours in that if we are pursuing people also interested in Duke (just picking them) are most likely to be in areas where Duke recruits.

Using your metrics, I'd actually strongly suggest California... especially central valley. There are numerous p5 schools out here with excellent academics... who also play good football... but if you fall just below their athletic standards, your choices are quite limited and the academics fall off pretty precipitously unless you leave the state. Also, I find lots of similarities between the CV and Texas, especially like the San Antonio area. In addition, Rice (especially the Jones School) has VERY strong connections in Silicon Valley... Stanford and Cal's back yard.... and of course, Cali has lots of great players like Texas.

Again, don't think we're really disagreeing... In fact I think we're essentially agreeing... just slightly different perspectives.

I'm approaching recruiting outside our traditional areas based more on 'who' than 'where'. The recruiting services already do an awful lot of identification of the 'who' for us... and let me see if I can say this well...

The top recruits are choosing between the top schools... almost without regard to whether their coach has a relationship with that school or not... Most often, UT recruits are choosing between UT, A&M, OU, Baylor and LSU. UTSA recruits are choosing between UTSA, UNT and USL. There is a fair amount of 'regional' recruiting going on there. Rice recruits (not from Texas) are often deciding between Rice, Air Force, a school close to their home and one other. We are the 'Alabama' of academics... or at least we're a top 10... and there really aren't many others in our bucket... not a p5 school, but some recent football success and first rate academics. We really need to exploit this angle.