NewZipsFan

That Scout article was from November 8th. Not sure what the situation is with him. I'll see what I can dig up.

I just talked to someone in the campus bookstore, and was told they are ORDERING t-shirts!!!! I LOVE UA! People don't just talk about things...... They actually DO them!! The MAC better start Fearing The Dadgum Roo!!!

I see the connection now... Another player on the team is being/was being recruited by Colorado State - Todd Stroud's former employer. Todd is from that area of Florida.

He is also doing something that many coaches would not ---- he is honoring the commitments made by the previous staff. He cares about the student- athletes and knows that he can get the very best out of them.

Isn't he an I-formation RB? You won't see much/if any I-formation in Coach Bowden's offense. If he doesn't have great speed and be able to catch the ball - that may be a reason he hasn't been offered yet.

A lot of great coaches have started in the MAC, but if things go according to plan, this great coach would like to finish his career in the MAC

Mandel is my least favorite sports writer in the country. He's got his own agenda, and is rarely objective or unbiased. He holds grudges, and can sometimes just be nasty for the sake of being nasty. That's why I was a little surprised that he wrote something relatively complimentary. I personally think he has an inferiority complex - and didn't like the fact that a great football coach, actually became a pretty dadgum good writer for Yahoo for four years; whereas Stewy will NEVER be a football coach

Boy likes to makes tackles : James Turner Highlights on Hudl

Not normally a big Mandel fan, but figured I'd post this anyway I will agree with his assessment of the Mike Leach hire -- LOVE that crazy pirate SI - Grading out Coaching Hires

UCF has shown flashes of being a very good program. They should be a lot better than they are, IMO, because of where they are. There is a ton of talent all around them - new stadium, Orlando area, etc. etc.. The first game of the season is going to be VERY interesting.

I think it's probably a combination of both. Must be happy with what we've already got, and comfortable that anyone he's bringing in will be able to compete for the starting job. The great thing about having someone behind you working/playing hard to take your spot, is that it will either bring out your competitive spirit and make you better; or it will prove that the new guy deserves the spot.

I'm fairly sure that it wasn't a "drive by". When Coach Bowden wants someone/something ... He's not going to leave anythiing to chance.

I don't think anyone wants me to have that much "power". Trust me

I'm told that the QB situation is a good one. Coach Bowden has always been an OC/QB Coach/HC - so no one understands better how important the RIGHT QB is to the success of a football team.

I believe that there may have been an official home visit this evening to this young man - and he should now be 100% locked in.

Saw this on Facebook, and thought it was hysterical.

He said dadgum

Not sure - I did see that he visited Army on 1-6. I'll see what I can dig up.

Found it --- Recruiting is a lowdown, dirty game By Terry Bowden, Yahoo! Sports February 5, 2007 Wednesday is National Signing Day. As the day approaches, I am reminded of how vicious recruiting can get in these final days before an athlete has to decide where he wants to go to school. I often am asked if I miss coaching and would ever like to get back into the game. And to be quite honest with you, it's getting harder and harder to find reasons why I'm not back in already. Regardless, there is one aspect of the job that never gets old and quite often gets out of hand – and that is recruiting. Invariably it seems that every year in the final days before signing day, after all the nice things have been said, it quite often comes down to negative recruiting. You know what I'm talking about. After a year of courting a high school recruit, a coach has said about every nice thing he can say about his school, and with a week or so left there's nothing left to do but rip the opposition. "You don't want to go to State, the girls are ugly. You don't want to go to Tech, the guys are all in jail. You don't want to go to the University, they don't drive nice enough cars." You know the drift. So for the first time in print, here's a true story of one of the best (or should I say worst) examples of negative recruiting I ever experienced. It was 1994, after my second year at Auburn. We had just completed a two-year run, going 20-1-1. Although we were finishing up probation from the prior coaching staff and had not been able to go to a bowl or compete for the national championship, the fact that we started my tenure at Auburn with 20 straight victories was getting us into the homes of some of the best players in the country. It was the last week of recruiting, and the No. 1 defensive player in the state of Florida was named Martavius Houston. He was a defensive back from Boyd Anderson High School in Fort Lauderdale, and he had the choice of going to any school in the country. However, by this final week he had narrowed his decision down to two schools. He was either going to go to Auburn and play for me or he was going to go to Florida State and play for my ol' man, Bobby Bowden (I'm sure you've heard of him). Per NCAA rules, the head coach is allowed only one official home visit. I strategically looked at the calendar for the best chance for me to go into his home and hopefully close the deal. I decided to have my home visit from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday night. He had a basketball game Friday night, which would keep him busy, and he had no more official school visits left for the final weekend. I made up my mind that Thursday night was do-or-die time with this recruit. I booked the flight to Fort Lauderdale and rented a nice Lincoln Town Car in order to impress him when I drove up. As I met him and his mother on the front porch, I immediately hugged his mom and told her how much I loved her and turned to Martavius and said, "Son, you're going to win a Heisman Trophy at Auburn University." I followed them into the house and proceeded to sing his praises – nonstop – for an hour and a half. I said, "Son, you are the No. 1 recruit on my list, the best player I've ever seen, I'm going to make you my star, I'm going to make you my captain, and you're going to win two Heisman trophies at Auburn. Only Archie Griffin at Ohio State has ever done that." The more I talked, the bigger his eyes got, and the more he started leaning off the front of that chair. As most coaches will tell you, when you get a "leaner" you need to seal the deal right then and there. I wanted to stick my cell phone in his face and say, "you call that Bobby Bowden right now and tell him you don't want to go to FSU, that you want to be an Auburn Tiger." However, high school coaches do a great job of prepping these young men by telling them not to get pressured into making a decision in front of the head coach but instead to wait until they can be alone with their family and loved ones so they can make a rational decision. So although he didn't verbally commit right there, I believed I had done the best selling job ever – I knew I had him. As we walked back out onto the front porch, before I said goodbye, I turned to his mom one last time, hugged her neck and reminded her how much I loved her. Then, with all the sincerity I could muster, I looked that young man directly in the eyes and said, "I have never told anybody this before, but you're gonna win three Heisman trophies at Auburn. You'd win four, but you're gonna be in the NFL by then." As I turned to leave, a long black, stretch limousine pulled up in front of the house. A little, short driver with one of those driver's caps and half-jackets on got out, walked all the way around the back of the limousine and opened the back door next to the curb. Out stepped my ol' man. He had scheduled his official visit for 7:30 p.m. on the same night. As he waddled up that sidewalk wearing that silly-looking safari hat and those red/yellow/green sunglasses that he always wears, my eyes got as big as saucers and my jaw dropped. My ol' man stepped up on the porch, said hello to that mama, shook Martavius' hand, turned to me, patted me on the head (in front of both of them) and said, "Terry, when you get home, your mama wants you to call her." That's all he said! You talk about dirty recruiting – it doesn't get any dirtier. Nobody has ever been "who's your daddy-ed" worse than that. I mean, who do you want to play for – BOBBY – or terry? I'm sure every coach out there has his war stories to tell. I just thought you'd like to hear mine. Incidentally, Martavius Houston had a great career at Auburn University. Terry Bowden is Yahoo! Sports' college football analyst. For more information about Terry, visit his official website Updated on Monday, Mar 12, 2007 10:31 am, EDT Email to a Friend | View Popular

There's a great recruiting story that both Coach Bowdens tell about recruiting against each other for a DE at that same high school - Boyd Anderson (and it happens to be my alma mater as a weird coincidence!). Our Coach Bowden won, and the guy played at Auburn. I read it somewhere years ago - will try to find it. Mitch Richmond who played 10 plus years in the NBA was from Boyd Anderson.

I posted this in the main forum, but since it's a recruiting article, figured I'd put it here also. Coach Bowden was interviewed by ESPN's Mark Schlabach about the importance of recruiting in state QBs. Good stuff! ESPN.com Column

More great press for Akron and Coach Bowden. Recruiting in- state QBs The main link is on ESPN's CF Home page.

Finding Football Players By Terry Bowden Yahoo! Sports http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news...b-players052508 The decision has been made to keep head coaches off the road during spring recruiting, but that doesn’t mean the process can afford to slow down. Assistant coaches are allowed to be out evaluating football players for 20 days in May and they need to get as much done as possible. Most of the top players have already been identified and evaluated, but there is still plenty of talent to be found. There is also the PR aspect of spring recruiting. Coaches must get to as many in-state high schools as possible even if they don’t have any prospects just to keep the local coaches happy. You don’t ever want to get the reputation of overlooking the homegrown talent – even if there isn’t much of it – to get players from somewhere else. But what if there isn’t enough local or state talent to fill your needs? Where do you go from there? There were 202 top-division players signed this year within a 75-mile radius of USC but there were only five total recruits from the entire state of West Virginia. No two teams face the same set of demographic circumstances and no two teams can adopt the same recruiting plan. Still, there has to be some method to this recruiting madness. First of all, except for a few elite programs, the closer a recruit lives to your campus, the more likely it is that you will be able to sign him and the more kids you can sign from the state in which your university resides, the better off you will be. There is just something about the support and coverage that a recruit gets back home that makes it a better proposition if he is from the same state. When I was the head coach at Auburn, Atlanta was closer than Birmingham to our campus, but if I spent more time in Georgia than in Alabama you can bet I would hear about it at my next booster meeting. The thing to remember is that not only do you need to go where the players are but also where you have a chance to get them. To go back to my Auburn example, when I would make the two-hour trip to recruit in Birmingham, you could pretty much count on the fact that almost every kid in that high school was going to be either an Auburn or an Alabama fan. And, more importantly, the recruit who you were after likely grew up an Auburn or Alabama fan as well. However, when I headed the other direction to Atlanta, which was only an hour and a half away, Georgia and Georgia Tech would more often than not be the schools of choice. Recruiting by states Rank State Top div. Stay Going Total schools In. Out. Top Div in state St. St. Recruits 1 Texas 10 161 213 374 2 Florida 7 123 235 358 3 California 7 109 238 347 4 Georgia 2 23 135 158 5 Ohio 8 72 74 146 6 Alabama 5 47 48 95 7 Louisiana 5 45 37 82 8 Penns 3 32 47 79 9 Mississippi 3 38 36 74 10 Illinois 3 19 44 63 11 Michigan 5 35 25 60 12 Virginia 2 25 32 57 13 NCarolina 5 32 20 52 14 New Jer 1 9 41 50 15 S Carolina 2 18 30 48 16 Tennessee 4 17 30 47 17 Arizona 2 11 35 46 18 Maryland 1 9 35 44 19 Indiana 4 18 20 38 T-20 Oklahoma 3 16 19 35 T-20 Colorado 2 16 19 35 22 Wash 2 20 11 31 23 Arkansas 2 20 8 28 24 Missouri 1 9 18 27 25 Kansas 2 8 17 25 T-26 New York 2 11 13 24 T-26 Hawaii 1 9 15 24 28 Utah 3 16 3 19 29 Kentucky 2 6 10 16 30 Minnesota 1 5 10 15 31 Nevada 2 5 9 14 T-32 Iowa 2 6 6 12 T-32 Wisconsin 1 7 5 12 T-32 Conn. 1 2 10 12 35 D.C. 0 0 11 11 T-36 Idaho 2 7 3 10 T-36 Nebraska 1 6 4 10 T-36 Oregon 2 3 7 10 39 Mass. 1 3 4 7 40 New Mex 2 4 2 6 41 W Virginia 2 1 4 5 T-42 Delaware 0 0 3 3 T-42 Montana 0 0 3 3 T-44 New Ham 0 0 2 2 T-44 S Dakota 0 0 2 2 T-46 Wyoming 1 1 0 1 T-46 Alaska 0 0 1 1 T-48 N Dakota 0 0 0 0 T-48 Rh Island 0 0 0 0 T-48 Maine 0 0 0 0 T-48 Vermont 0 0 0 0 I had a couple of simple rules to guesstimate my chances of actually signing a prospect. When I walked into a high school and looked into a classroom, if 80 percent of the students were wearing one particular school’s hat, then there was about an 80 percent chance that prospect was going to go to that school when signing day rolled around. I called this the hat rule. If I was recruiting a kid a little bit farther away, I used the hop rule. That is, if I was looking at a prospect in Dallas, I would count all the top-division schools (there are 10 in Texas alone) he would have to hop over get to Auburn. My chances of signing the young man would get smaller each time he had to hop over another school. That doesn’t mean you don’t spend a lot of time in Georgia if you’re the head coach at Auburn. There were 158 high school players in Georgia who signed top-division scholarships and only 23 stayed in-state (there are only two in-state, top-division schools). You also need to look at how easy it is to get from your school to where the prospects are. Don’t think for a second that it doesn’t matter that there are a lot of direct airline flights into Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas and Houston when it comes to the number of recruits from those metro areas. You can spend a lot of time at Syracuse driving around the state of New York looking for football players (there were only 24 top-division signees from New York this year) or you can take a 2 ½ hour flight down to Miami and be in the middle of more than 140 prospects within about an hour-and-a-half drive from the airport. Where would you want to be? The fact is, the location of an institution relative to where the athletes are is a lot more important than how good of a recruiter the coach might be. In other words, Nick Saban and Les Miles were much better recruiters at LSU than they ever were while they were coaching at Michigan State and Oklahoma State. If you are going to try to figure out where all of the prospects are this year, a good place to start is to find out where they all came from last year. I came across a fantastic web site, www.mapgameplan.com, that gives you an in-depth analysis of exactly where each recruit came from this past year. Not only does it tell you which state had the most recruits, but also which major city had the most recruits. It tells you which prospects stayed in-state and which ones signed with a college from out-of-state. So, where are the players? • Texas, Florida and California had more than twice as many recruits as any of the other states. • Georgia and Ohio round out the ‘Fab Five’ best recruiting states in the country. More than 50 percent of all top-division signees came from these five states. • Mississippi had the most top-division athletes per capita in the United States with one per every 39,443 people. (California has one per 105,341) • Louisiana had more top-division signees than Pennsylvania. • Nebraska had only 10 top-division recruits. Terry Bowden is Yahoo! Sports' college football analyst. For more information about Terry, visit his official web site. Send Terry a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast. Updated Sunday, May 25, 2008

"or two"...... Gotta give him a little rope!