RayWill said:
SO hear me out. I have hesitated to share this but after Sat it is a moot point now. My hunting partner has a son whom is being recruited by the Griz. In fact he is scheduled for an official gameday visit soon. He is also being recruited by EWU and IDAHO and MSU. Now his father is a Griz fan and we have went to many Griz games together and the kid has been to the stadium many times. He was wanting to be a Griz. He has proven so far to be a real stud at defensive end this season. He went to Camps at EWU Idaho and UM over the summer. Idaho is really recruiting him after he schooled everyone in drills at D-End. His performance at UM camps I am told was similar. Hauck told him he was on their radar and after his performance at camp and they were highly interested, but that he only has a limited number of scholarships and that the philosophy is that they offer in state kids first. Since he is from Idaho that he wont have an offer for him until late in recruiting to see if he needs the schollie for an instate recruit.
This sat wrong with him. There are several other kids on the same high school team UM was recruiting as well and they were all told the same thing, according to him. As such my buddies kid had told me he was leaning towards Idaho and not UM even if an offer came as he thinks that Hauck is out of touch. He feels that he should recruit the best kids he can from whatever state they are from to improve the team.
He watched the game vs NAU. That seemed to pretty much sealed the deal. He says that it is evident that they are lost, have no identity on offense or defense and that he felt the entire coaching staff is stuck in the past. He said the majority of the pitches from UM so far have been about the tradition and past accomplishments and nothing about the here and now. He said they are a dying program and he wants to play for a team that is on the rise. All I know is Montana seems to have lost an opportunity at a potentially great asset and I am sure that is not the only one.
First time... long time... but had to respond to this.
I've attended many camps, including the Griz camp as a coach. I can tell you that many teams that take their kids to these camps feel that their best players are worthy of recruitment and offers. Fathers of those kids feel strongly that their kids are worthy of those offers. I've coached kids that have done very well at camps and out competed kids that were receiving more attention, but didn't get the attention they felt (or their coach or dad) felt they deserved. This may be a bit unfair, but if your friend's son was a scholarship level athlete and fit the program, he would have been more prioritized. If he's evaluated as a walk-on or low-level partial (books) type kid, then yes, he might lose out to a similarly evaluated player from MT or someone with ties to the program. Might not be fair, but that's life...
End of the day, Montana has to fill a roster with bodies. A good deal of the limited amount of scholarships these days are going to go to transfers that can fill holes and contribute right away (look at the 2 deep...). The rest of the scholarships are going to be offered to a hand full of high school kids, usually a few MT kids might sign a full offer and several full-scholly level out-of-state guys will sign full offers. The rest of the signing class will be PWO's and splitting scholarships amongst 3 or 4 players...