Now that the dust has cleared, I thought I’d take a look at how recruiting went this year in the state of Louisiana. By my count, 91 kids signed BCS scholarship papers this year. That’s a little down from recent years and far below the 110 inked back in 2015, when Tulane was signing 15 kids as Johnson and Rollins enrolled, in my view, several FCS-level recruits.
This year, LSU was the leader with 13 signees from the state. Tulane and Louisiana Tech each signed 8 with ULM (6) and ULL (4) bringing up the rear. So 39 of the 91 BCS signees stayed “home” (42%). This percentage has been slowly going down from the over 50% it was a few years ago when P5 schools like Kansas and G5 schools like Colorado State and Ball State were rarely seen in the state. TCU with five and Mississippi State with 4 led the “out of state” schools in signatures. Arkansas and Kansas had three each.
The overall number could be down for a number of reasons. For example Idaho signed three Louisiana kids this year but they are returning in 2018 to FCS status. Possibly more important is the new 25 man limit making schools more wary of “marginal” students who might not be able to enroll but still count against their recruiting totals. Every year several highly regarded recruits fail to sign BCS-level contracts for one reason or another. This year at least ten consensus “three-star” kids have signed with no one in the BCS or even FCS ranks. That suggests to me they are at best marginal academic prospects, but that’s just a guess.
Generally speaking, I think the top 50 or so prospects from the state are P5 quality. Those are the ones we need and this year we got our share.
Roll Wave!!!
This year, LSU was the leader with 13 signees from the state. Tulane and Louisiana Tech each signed 8 with ULM (6) and ULL (4) bringing up the rear. So 39 of the 91 BCS signees stayed “home” (42%). This percentage has been slowly going down from the over 50% it was a few years ago when P5 schools like Kansas and G5 schools like Colorado State and Ball State were rarely seen in the state. TCU with five and Mississippi State with 4 led the “out of state” schools in signatures. Arkansas and Kansas had three each.
The overall number could be down for a number of reasons. For example Idaho signed three Louisiana kids this year but they are returning in 2018 to FCS status. Possibly more important is the new 25 man limit making schools more wary of “marginal” students who might not be able to enroll but still count against their recruiting totals. Every year several highly regarded recruits fail to sign BCS-level contracts for one reason or another. This year at least ten consensus “three-star” kids have signed with no one in the BCS or even FCS ranks. That suggests to me they are at best marginal academic prospects, but that’s just a guess.
Generally speaking, I think the top 50 or so prospects from the state are P5 quality. Those are the ones we need and this year we got our share.
Roll Wave!!!
