| Subject: Re: Prep School recruiting |
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Date Posted: 11:48:22 01/13/22 Thu
In reply to:
ivy guy
's message, "Prep School recruiting" on 09:47:15 10/01/21 Fri
Great thread.
I have a decades of experience (as player, coach, parent in NE prep league) on this topic.
I have also lived in Texas for many years and I am highly involved in high school football here in the Lonestar state.
First point I would make is “everything” has changed compared to 30 or so years ago for High School Football. I see a bunch of generalizations being made on this topic that very well could have been true years ago---but not today.
Today high school football is a national recruiting game—key tools that helped created this, of course, include internet, ease of uploading video, sites like 24/7, and organizations like FBU.
The top NE Preps are pretty solid teams from a national point of view. However, to gain entry into the Top 50 rankings that several publications produce, NE preps will need to travel out of league.
Sadly, this tends to be the exception vs. the rule.
Maxprep will, by tradition, include Ohio and Georgia’s state champs in the top national rankings without those schools playing out of league. But for Choate or Loomis to gain entry they must travel to Florida, Texas, Ohio, California, or even NJ to earn entry onto those top lists.
At the moment, the top NE Prep programs seem uninterested as their school leaderships are under heavy pressure to put resources into many things “other than football”.
As for the top players in the NE prep league, they have LONG AGO set their sights on 1A/FCS football.
The IVY league is recruiting the “second tier” of players in the NE Prep league.
This is no longer even a debate, and you can see the All-Ivy list as a perfect example of that---the top NE prep kids are going to Michigan, Bama, West Virginia, Stanford---just like kids in Texas---they don’t want to play in the Ivy League without a chance to even compete for the 1AA Natty, and get zero NIL money.
Making matters worse, the “40 years vs. 4 year” argument for kids to go Ivy vs. FCS is no longer as strong when the jobs and economic growth in the USA are in places like Texas and Florida where the value of an IVY degree (vs. SEC, ACC) could arguably be worse, not better, in terms of joining the biz community.
Next, I have attended two IMG games in person. One against Bergen Catholic and the other against Duncanville. Both opponents are perennial powers in NJ and Texas. In both cases IMG went onto blow out wins. The big reason I saw is IMG shows up with 52 guys that are between 3 and 5 star guys and they all play special teams too. IMG, and some others at this level, are running national all-star teams---not cohesive from a spirit point of view, and zero fan base, but super talented. Bergen and Duncanville had great fight in them, and I respect them for taking the game, but they were just outclassed.
Finally, this year’s Westlake team in Texas was a public-school exception that could play with the IMG’s of the world. Three straight championships and I have watched them play a dozen times in last 5 years. The reason is not just because of their 5-star QB and some 4 star skill guys---but because they had Westlake had the best O line in the USA. Ironically, a Westlake team captain and University of Texas OL commit, is from---drum roll….a NE Prep school!
His family moved to Texas two years ago (along with another CT player) ---to get on field as NE canceled school.
The outcome interesting---both players arrived with just 1AA interest---and both left with state champ rings, a captain honor, and commits to Power 5 schools.
One may wonder if this experience means the NE kids are actually underrecruited by the Power 5
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