Pitt has been its own worst enemy. Pitt is an 8-5 type program. Walt Harris and Dave Wannstedt both had programs at this level, and then the plug was pulled. Then you had the Haywood/Graham fiasco. If there was more stability and support from the fans and admin, then recruiting would get better.
This is Why You Recruit FL and TX
- Thread starter DiehardPanther
- Start date
PA High School football is on the decline. We live in Eastern PA and our local HS where our kids played back in the early 2000's is in the large school Lehigh Valley football conference.
A team from this conference used to be in the PA championship game or atleast in the hunt for the Eastern team representative every year.
Well not any more. The once powerful Liberty, Easton, Freedom, Beth Catholic, Whitehall, Emausas, and Parkland HS's are a shadow of what they used to be.
Eastern PA football is on a down trend due to the influx of NJ and NY kids who excel at soccer
And the impact of the NY and Philly media sensationalizing CTE which is damaging youth programs!
I can't speak for Central PA football.
Western PA football seems strong but also on a downswing compared to an earlier time.
So with East way down, Central and Western PA not as strong as in the past we can safely say PA football isn't growing more talent than in prior years!
I doubt it will support Nitters, PITT, and WVU recruiting efforts in the future.
PITT should still recruit WPIAL players but should also be developing another Top Talent pipeline where there's lots of oil!
"it's five o'clock somewhere"
Signed: Mr Buffett
Go PITT & CSU Rams!
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Eastern Pa has produced some of the most highly coveted recruits in the country the past couple years. Micah Parsons was a top 5 overall player this season. Deandre Swift ran for 800 yards for Georgia as a true freshmen. Christian Barmore is a beast going to Alabama next year. St Joes is almost always nationally ranked. The reason those schools cant compete is becuase Philly private schools can recruit and are now playing in the State tournament when they weren't in the early 2000s. It is fruitless to continue to respond because its very clear you do not know much about recruiting.
You see this is absolute nonsense... Whitehall just had this kid, Saquon Barkley... maybe you’ve heard of him.
There’s also an absolute ton of talent near philly. De’andre Swift is going to destroy the SEC next year.
The problem is Pitt isn’t landing enough marquee guys. The best player for pitt’s Defense the last few years has been whitehead.. he also happens to be one of the only high profile WPIAL players pitt has gotten lately and look at the result....
Pitt isn’t going to get them all but when you have recruits like jurkovec, Raines, Lamont wade, miles sanders, and CJ Thorpe right in your backyard, you’ve gotta land at least 2 of those guys. Paris ford was a good get but we’re seeing now there’s more to the story there with him...
Pitt signed 7 guys from Florida in 2016, 4 in 2015 and another 3 in 2017... so 14 kids from Florida Meanwhile in that same period of time PSU landed a grand total of 2 Florida recruits with one of them being an img kid not from Florida to begin with. Pitt went 5-7 last year and psu won the fiesta bowl... but yea keep touting this idea that pa football is on the decline and Florida is the promise land, it’s clearly worked
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1. Dave Wannstedt wouldn't have been an 8-5 coach in the ACC
2. Dave Wannstedt would have never (and did not ever) won anything of significance.
I get what you're saying. I don't think the Mid Atlantic is "drying up," but you're saying talent is declining in PA or parts of PA we rely on.
I just think you're kidding yourself if you think we are going to have a "talent pipeline" to FL. Perhaps a pipeline. But you're not going to like what comes out.
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Kennard Cox made the league,
Conredge Collins?
Tommie Duhart?
if only Cox....and the 5 you mention....that is 6/20. Even if 6 of say 25, then 25 to 30% of all Florida kids we recruit get to the NFL.
I dont know what to gleen from that but we certainly arent missing all the time.
We watched him play alot. He was good but his team Whitehall and the Lehigh Valley conference wasn't very good compared to 5 + years ago. This year the best player on the Whitehall team was a WR who couldn't play D1 foottball?
There are some good Eastern PA players in Catholic and private schools but many of them come from out of the area to play at those schools. For example Bethlehem Cath recruited the Cruz brothers from FL to wrestle and help make Beth Cath into a PA St championship team.
I used to run a youth program and I know for a fact the youth enrollment is down, middle school participation is down and the traditional Eastern Powers have not performed well.
Today in the Lehigh Valley conference the freshman and middle school team combine since there's not enough freshman to fill out a team. In the past the freshman played freshman football and the teams were large! All signed of declining interest in football!
Sure you can pick a player here and there for your examples but overall Eastern PA football is not getting better!
"it's five o'clock somewhere"
Signed: Mr Buffett
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See once again this simply is not true. A local u9 and u11 squad just won a national championship for their age group out of york pa. That more south central pa but still the talent is there. Even in peewee. Have you seen micah parsons tape? Or de’andre swift? Or Ricky slade? So many talented Pa kids lately and pitt isn’t getting enough of them... There’s plenty of kids from Allentown, philly, Wilkes barre and the surrounding areas but that’s not even the problem.... of the top 5 Pa recruits for 2018 the are from WEST of the Allegheny river, Pitt landed zero of them... that’s the problem.
You can try to fool yourself into believing that this current trend of leftover 3* Florida recruits is going to be the answer when playing in the same conference as teams that get the absolute cream of the crop from Florida, and what it’s going to get you is more 5-7 to 7-5 seasons playing in the pinstripe bowl against Maryland. If you want to see Pitt back in the top 25 legitimately contending for an ACC title, not just exciting one off underdog wins followed up by terrible losses to teams with less talent than pitt, than it’s going to happen locally with local recruits. I absolutely promise you pitt will not sniff an ACC title by recruiting the 3* leftover recruits that teams in their same conference don’t want, that’s what gets you to Rutgers status... stay in pa and the surrounding areas where Pitt football actually means something to kids, not in Florida where pitt is essentially the same as Purdue or Boston College to a Florida kid, in other words, they don’t care
Narduzzi will have to out recruit franklin for that to happen. He’s gotten absolutely destroyed so far in state
What's also happening in Northeast football is getting better recently. There's probably 15-20 legitamate D1 prospects north of the Pa line for 2019. I'm talking top 400-500 player with probably ten 4* recruits and a couple of guys who could even push for a 5*. These are kids from NY, Conn, Mass, etc. Pitt is positioned uniquely in the country.
Aside from PSU to the east, there really isn't another college football "Power" in the northeast. It's why PSU recovered so quickly from the sanctions. when SMU got the death penalty, there were 5 other schools in texas alone for local kids to choose from, plus Oklahoma, Alabama, LSU and plenty of other traditional southern powers so they never recovered. PSU has shown how there's a lack of competition here in the northeast for recruits, and as a result they are so much further ahead than what anyone could have ever predicted.
Pitt needs to take the PSU model of recruiting (not the whole kid raping thing, leave that alone) strictly talking recruiting here, Franklin and his staff when they got there made a point to focus on PA and the boardering states the way PSU hadn't for the last 10 or so years of the Paterno era... the results speak for themselves.
Pitt has done the Florida thing, 7 friggin recruits in 2016, how much more florida do you want? The thing is look at Jordan Whitehead... Top 100 player, hadoffers everywhere, finalists were PSU, Ohio State and WV along with Pitt, and Pitt got him. Pitt doesn't land the 4* from Florida with offers from Florida State, Miami, and Clemson. 10 out of 10 times that kid is not coming to Pitt. There's no reason though why 4-5 times out of 10 in that same scenario with a Pa recruit, more specifically a western Pa recruit Pitt shouldn't be landing that kid. If Narduzzi is ever going to get pitt to an ACC title, those are the kids he has to land, other recruits will follow nationally (ala what Clemson and PSU have done recently) but the core will always be local. Otherwise Pitt will just continue to be in "mediocre" status like they have been for the last 30 years
Aside from PSU to the east, there really isn't another college football "Power" in the northeast. It's why PSU recovered so quickly from the sanctions. when SMU got the death penalty, there were 5 other schools in texas alone for local kids to choose from, plus Oklahoma, Alabama, LSU and plenty of other traditional southern powers so they never recovered. PSU has shown how there's a lack of competition here in the northeast for recruits, and as a result they are so much further ahead than what anyone could have ever predicted.
Pitt needs to take the PSU model of recruiting (not the whole kid raping thing, leave that alone) strictly talking recruiting here, Franklin and his staff when they got there made a point to focus on PA and the boardering states the way PSU hadn't for the last 10 or so years of the Paterno era... the results speak for themselves.
Pitt has done the Florida thing, 7 friggin recruits in 2016, how much more florida do you want? The thing is look at Jordan Whitehead... Top 100 player, hadoffers everywhere, finalists were PSU, Ohio State and WV along with Pitt, and Pitt got him. Pitt doesn't land the 4* from Florida with offers from Florida State, Miami, and Clemson. 10 out of 10 times that kid is not coming to Pitt. There's no reason though why 4-5 times out of 10 in that same scenario with a Pa recruit, more specifically a western Pa recruit Pitt shouldn't be landing that kid. If Narduzzi is ever going to get pitt to an ACC title, those are the kids he has to land, other recruits will follow nationally (ala what Clemson and PSU have done recently) but the core will always be local. Otherwise Pitt will just continue to be in "mediocre" status like they have been for the last 30 years
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And part of that is his fault. When I've seen multiple recruits speak openly about the negative recruiting of the staff and none of them are signing for pitt for the most part, there's my concern. I really thought the Narduzzi extension would be appealing to recruits and add stability. the #56 recruiting class (according to ESPN) the year after an extension is not exactly "comforting". We need to get local kids to get excited for Pitt football again, get the kids from Central Catholic, Alliquippa, North Allegheny, Pine Richland, Clairton, etc all excited at the possibility of playing together in front of their city.... That's what got Whitehead here, that's what the message to kids need to be. if that doesn't happen kiss any chance of an ACC title goodbye, Pitt will never beat out Clemson, Florida State, VT and Miami for an overall conferance title without keeping at least half of the top local recruits home. it'll be the same Pin Stripe Bowl, Quick Lane Bowl, 5-7 rotation its been for 30 years
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Local u9 and u11 teams won national championships? There's national championships for that? Really?
There’s several ‘national championship’ type of events for peewee throughout the country. Most are composed of peewee teams regionally that won their league playing in a playoff style tournament. That’s what this team from York did. I believe the tourney was in either Florida or Virginia and I know there were several teams from the south there. That team was won several of those tournaments and were undefeated last year in both U9 and U11.
Obviously youth football enrollment is down, it is across the country, he’ll there’s a lot of states that want to ban tackle football for kids under 14. Everyone is terrified of their kid playing football. The thing is that isn’t unique to pa like Buffethead makes it seem, every state, Florida and Texas included the numbers are down.
All I’ve been trying to say is that this idea that Florida is somehow the promise land and it’s a pipeline of talent to pitt is complete rubbish. When we recruit a bunch of kids from Florida we go 6-6 on average, meanwhile the absolute best players pitt has had since Fitzgerald have been Pa kids but yet we have fans that insist pa talent is down.
The best defensive football player in the NFL last year is from Pa, in the upcoming draft the best non qb offensive player is from Pa... so the best non qb offensive player in college football last year is from Pa, meanwhile the best defensive football player on the planet last year was from Pa, but yet Pa football is on the decline...... if ya’ll are content with 5-7 to 7-5 with the occasional 8-9 win season every 6-7 years or so, keep recruiting Florida the way pitt has been,
if pitt wants to compete for championships and fill the stadium, get the local stars to stay home, get the local residents to look forward to going to games and see the same kids they watched kill it in HS, kill it for Pitt in college. If you’re going to rely on 3*’s from Florida who no one in the local community has ever heard of, no one is going to the stadium to watch that kid play bc they saw him in Hs, there’s no local buzz and pitt continues to stay in a state of mediocrity
A couple of things... Parkland just played for the state title 3 years ago.
EPA football is not going downhill. Imhotep, St Joe's, Archbishop Wood, soon to be Neuman Goretti, LaSalle College, and Malvern Prep are all national pipeline schools. 20 years ago Philly had 1 in Prep and they're much better now. National pipeline schools are schools where major fbs schools will often dedicate 1 coach to recruit the school, will hold combines/clinics, etc at these places because of the high volume of tier 1 kids they have.
District 3 is as good as it has always been.
District 1 is down but it's because of the private schools.
District 12 outside of Parkland has never been great at the highest classification.
Last time Parkland won the championship was 2002, & Liberty won in 2008.
During that time 2002-2010 the entire conference was strong.
Parkland is the only school hanging in there due to its large enrollment, rural geography, and they're the furthest West of all the HS's in the conference.
Parkland HS is just outside the NJ and NY media market so the NJ/NY soccer effect hasn't hit their youth programs yet.
NJ and NY families aren't moving into that area yet since the commute to NJ and NY is an extra 30 mins or more with traffic.
Now the Lehigh Valley Conference is a very weak conference top to bottom and declining.
They have their occassional standout player like Barkley but that's a one off deal.
The problem is the decline of youth football programs and the growth of soccer.
There's an influx of new residents from NJ & NY with few of them playing football.
Since the Lehigh Valley is in the NY /NJ media market CTE news is scaring parents so they enroll their kids in sports other than football.
"it's five o'clock somewhere"
Signed: Mr Buffett
Go PITT & CSU Rams!
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