From the Oregon Board

[ozfan]

This was copied from the Oregon board.

""From someone who has lived in Texas and attended/coached at a powerhouse football high school, let me give my two cents.

This is how the game is played down here. Unfortunately, there are a lot of top prospects (football and basketball) with no positive male role models in their lives. No fathers, sometimes no mothers as well, and they are raised by grandparents or older family members. These kids are preyed upon by "uncles" like Will Lyles, who will tell you they are just trying to help the kid (and they do help in the short-run) but in the long-run, they have one motive--hope the kid hits it big and leach some of his money.

High school football coaches SHOULD be positive role models as well, but they too have their own agendas. Each of the major high schools in the state have coaching staffs loyal to certain programs. There are UT schools, A&M schools, OU schools etc. etc. My high school had a big-time prospect attend LSU and get kicked out because of his own stupid mistakes...but the coaches are too loyal to the kid and refuse to admit his wrong-doings....now LSU coaches are banned from the school's campus. Coaches handle the mail for many of the kids, and discard letters from schools they don't "trust"--not allowing the kids to make their own decisions.

These dual forces control every aspect of the prospect's recruitment. Unless you have a relationship with one of them, or sometimes both, you have no shot at the kid. Often, these relationships are formed through money or favors. You are not directly paying for a kid, just paying for the opportunity to get him (because there are dozens of other schools also paying or giving favors). Say a big-time prospect from Houston has "mentor" handling his recruiting. The mentor knows the coaching staffs from Cal, Oregon, Oklahoma and LSU. When these schools ask the kid to take an official visit, he will ask the mentor who will say "sure I've heard good things about those schools". If Michigan tries to jump in without a forged relationship, he will tell the prospect "no, I don't think Michigan would be a good fit".

As Lyles said, you are paying for influence. It's very funny on here to see other schools casting stones, as I can assure you in the last 10 years every major program has used a Lyles-type to get in with a kid. How do you think USC got Joe McKnight? What exactly did Cal pay Lyles for if he provided them the same worthless material he did to Oregon. If the NCAA had the resources and capability to investigate this issue fully, 90 schools would be on probation next year.

Oregon's problem is how incredibly stupid they were about it. As a Duck fan, I am not embarrassed that they decided to play the game--this does not make me unethical or a cheat, just a realist about the shady underworld of recruiting in this region. If you want to be a big-time program, you need kids out of Texas. If you want kids out of Texas, it's what you have to do. It's embarrassing that AD officials and our coaching staff were stupid enough to send emails, text messages and use personal cell phones (instead of burners) in their dealings with Lyles. Oregon deserves to be punished, and if Kelly does get forced out I'd like to see Scott Frost take the reigns.""

The bad thing is a lot of what this person is saying is true. The SMU coaches are having a hard time recruiting local talent from a lot of schools and will continue to do so until they win the loacal coaches over.