If I'm not mistaken Alabama and Oklahoma have the same rule about living in a dorm for the first 3 years.
Might want to check out the dorm situation for those UT football players. Your description sounds like a description of the typical student dorm. That is not an accurate description of the living conditions in the football players dorm or even close to it. As stated earlier about the brothers, L$U. We shouldn't need any more stories of $100K briefcases to be believers.
I don't know if $$ payments still happen in college football, but there were reports of stuff like (academic?) scholarship to 3rd parties, etc... Some of such things are not strictly illegal and would be tough to pin down, I guess. Anyway, who knows! In A&M's and LSU's case, the current players being happy and excited on how things are gong, is also helping a lot. No matter how good the current Texas payers feel about Charlie Strong, and wouldn't have anything bad to say, they cannot be selling the place as well as the players sell A&M and LSU. And we should expect that many of them are still not that happy about Mack leaving - after all, they all loved the guy. Then the excitement level of the random people they meet on visits, and all that. However hard you try, you cannot create such a fully-positive atmosphere till we start playing and winning some games. especially so, when many people the recruits talk to, have hardly even seen the new head coach who has been there for 3 weeks but has been traveling all over the place, chasing recruits. These things affect recruiting, and young guys don't have the ability to think of all these things when they make decisions. Add a girlfriend or something into the mix, and the kids can go elsewhere rather easily! And yes, stuff like dorm rooms can cause trouble in the short run. All it takes is one current player making some remarks about trouble in doing laundry or in seeing a girlfriend something, and that is all a young kid would remember (okay, there are worse things that they could ***** about too ). But once the dorm and other rules are in place, and everybody realizes that Charlie is a "lovable task master" like his UL players found out, things will change. Charlie has made his approach work in the past, and it is a good thing if he continues to keep his reputation as a bit of a unique coach. There will always be top players who are attracted to that, and he will have monopoly on all of them - if he is at a place like Texas and is winning. It is like Stanford's academic rules, in some sense. They still get good players because top players who fit the rule will look at them first. It is always better to play the game a bit different than others than join the bandwagon and be an also-ran.
OK 88 - I'll take a stab... I never let myself believe that Saban was a possibility, so I tried to keep my expectations down to avoid heavy disappointment. However, since it was THE major topic for a while, I did form an opinion that the biggest PRO by far would've been his effect on the first 2 recruiting classes. There would've been more than just a bump in recruiting. I could very easily picture Saban reeling in almost anybody that he wanted, from Nick Harvey to Leonard Fournette. Why - because commiting to a coach is the #1 thing for MOST (not all) of these recruits. (Future Teammates #2 IMO ). Now, as for Charlie - it's not his fault that he's not Saban, but he's not. However, that doesn't mean he won't eventually achieve that status. Why was he not uber successful this recruiting class??? I mean the guy had a whole 2 weeks to sell these guys on a brand new coach that they didn't know that much about. And therein lies the problem... Who besides me has been following Louisville Football the last few years??? That's right - nobody...including me (I just threw that in ) I hate ou, but I know a lot about their team, coaches, etc. When Charlie was first being considered, was when I learned how good his defenses have really been, or anything else about him for that matter, & I'm sure most of our recruits that never visited or considered them would fall into that same category. So in reality, that's a lot to ask for a high level recruit - to totally embrace a new coach in 2 weeks or less, over some of the coaches that they really liked a lot & almost got their commitment in the first place. If Charlie wins like I think he will, by 2 years from now we will start competing for top class each year. We are very fortunate that the fine young men we are signing today, loved the University of Texas enough to give Coach Strong a chance. We might not've had as highly ranked as usual class, but we are getting some real winners, & a couple that I wouldn't trade for ANY recruit at their position The future is Bright !!! HOOK 'EM, Texdoc
Two final points: 1. I've seen the new dorms in person. Even the worse west campus apartments are still better. We won a national title in 2005 with players living off campus. Living in a dorm simply hurts recruiting, makes player's lives slightly more miserable, and is completely unnecessary to winning. I bet plenty of schools win with players living off campus. I would also add that roommates more quickly tire of each other when they are in the same room than when they have separate rooms. While you can win with or without players living in dorms, I think it is a stupid policy that if anything has a slightly negative effect on team moral and recruiting. I half wonder if the people defending dorms were R.A.s in college haha. 2. I find it interesting people are upset that some players decomitted from Texas when Brown left but are okay with Poona Ford following Strong from Louisville. Obviously Poona Ford does not bleed orange, did not choose UT for UT, and is just here for the coach. According to some posters, we do not want those guys.
I have to agree with Htown77, dorms are the worst. I took one look at Jester and then convinced three other buddies going to UT from my hometown to rent a house. Of course I had a different view when I sent my two sons to UT and put them in dorms the first year. There would have been open rebellion if I even suggested a second year in the dorms. Not good for recruiting and will be used against us.
HHD, then if you were lucky 24 months after moving out of the dorm you got to either live live in Minot, ND or spend time on an all expense paid "trip" to Southeast Asia!
