If you look at demographics the future of football depends on Hispanic players and fans. I work with second generation young women whose parents came here in the 80's. Soccer is still king.
There is an interesting doc that has been on HBO the last couple of years about the Latin Explosion in entertainment in America. We will need something similar in sports. Hispanics will pass whites as the majority this century. And no, I don't give a shit or care or feel threatened.
I just want Husky Football to survive
Anyway in the early 60's Jose Jiminez as a bell hop was pretty much the extent of Latin entertainment mainstream and of course Ricky Ricardo. Now it is as influential as all the Black culture we? stole.
This is also - by the way (looking at you @TierbsHsotBoobs) - why recruiting probably matters MORE for Pete than any other coach.
Recruiting is really two different things: 1. The ability to identify talent. 2. The ability to sell those people on coming to your school.
Recruiting matters more in both cases for Pete because... if his appeals don't work as much with FS black kids, and the majority of recruits are FS black kids, we are going to need to hit at a MUCH HIGHER rate than average with the kids we recruit.
It's fine if Pete wants to only recruit OKG types, slow strategy whiteys or whatever... but given that those players are only going to be about 30% of the players in CFB, we better fucking identify them correctly and convert.
It can be done, but we are self-handicapping on the front end to get back end results. It's a strategy, that's for sure.
Seriously though @Dennis_DeYoung - how do you modify the sales pitch for FAST STRATEGY? Do you tell kids it's not the hardest thing they will ever do? Do you say look at all the dudes where are starting to pun in the League? More swag? My cracker ass doesn't know the answer.
Dennis basically has this dialed in and obviously when you can point to guys in the league and show examples of how they are tearing shit up that will resonate with the guys that aren't THAT interested in playing school. There's a reason we had so much emphasis on Twitter with Budda being 1st team All Pro in his 1st year.
While I wouldn't disagree that we're recruiting in a niche market, I don't think that it's 100% true.
The Stanford comparison is obviously the most damaging when it comes to our ability to recruit middle class (or higher) kids that clearly have a vested interest in education and particularly so at certain positions (i.e. OL) where Stanford can point to a lot of NFL success (and conversely, we haven't been able to point to that). We will lose more often than not by offering the same message ... so we need to be able to tweak it a little bit as well as perhaps looking at a slightly different talent pool there where we're targeting the guys that may have Stanford aspirations but aren't necessarily able to get into Stanford.
On the other side, we clearly have had success with guys out of the Bay Area and SoCal that are going to be a little more edgy and be a bit more FAST. And, if you're looking at the most recent coaching hire, that's clearly targeted to being more of a presence in these types of markets.
Our challenge will be merging both of these groups together. I feel like our sweet spot is that we're recruiting in a concentric circle where we overlap both groups on the high edge of the FAST side of things and on the low end of the SLOW side of things. But our real sweet spot is working through just solid middle class communities where players fall somewhere in the middle.
The messaging to me needs to be some combination of the following:
1) If you want to play for a college that you can win at a high level and play in high profile games, you can do that at Washington ... this will continue to be helped by our in-conference performance, playing in New Year's 6 and CFP games, and other high level early season high profile games (i.e. Auburn next year)
2) If you want to play in the NFL and be able to go into the league at a high level on Day 1, you can do that at Washington ... this will continue to be helped by our ability to produce 1st and 2nd day draft picks and guys going into the league having success like Budda this year
3) If you want a world class education, you can get this at the University of Washington
4) The Built for Life program will add tremendous value for you whether you have a future playing football or not ... if you do play in the NFL, you will have a foundation to make better decisions and able to manage your future in a way that ensures that all of the hard work you put into your career is able to be there for you AFTER your career ... if your career ends in college you will be set up to enter your future career in a manner that allows you to be successful ... in particular point out the business connections that a UW (football) education holds for you in Seattle
5) This message is particularly true for in-state kids ... if you want to be viewed as a local legend and view Seattle as your long-term home, there's no better decision to go to the University of Washington
If you look at demographics the future of football depends on Hispanic players and fans. I work with second generation young women whose parents came here in the 80's. Soccer is still king.
There is an interesting doc that has been on HBO the last couple of years about the Latin Explosion in entertainment in America. We will need something similar in sports. Hispanics will pass whites as the majority this century. And no, I don't give a shit or care or feel threatened.
I just want Husky Football to survive
Anyway in the early 60's Jose Jiminez as a bell hop was pretty much the extent of Latin entertainment mainstream and of course Ricky Ricardo. Now it is as influential as all the Black culture we? stole.
Comments
Why did Santa Ana attack the Alamo with 200 men?
Because he only had one car.
While I wouldn't disagree that we're recruiting in a niche market, I don't think that it's 100% true.
The Stanford comparison is obviously the most damaging when it comes to our ability to recruit middle class (or higher) kids that clearly have a vested interest in education and particularly so at certain positions (i.e. OL) where Stanford can point to a lot of NFL success (and conversely, we haven't been able to point to that). We will lose more often than not by offering the same message ... so we need to be able to tweak it a little bit as well as perhaps looking at a slightly different talent pool there where we're targeting the guys that may have Stanford aspirations but aren't necessarily able to get into Stanford.
On the other side, we clearly have had success with guys out of the Bay Area and SoCal that are going to be a little more edgy and be a bit more FAST. And, if you're looking at the most recent coaching hire, that's clearly targeted to being more of a presence in these types of markets.
Our challenge will be merging both of these groups together. I feel like our sweet spot is that we're recruiting in a concentric circle where we overlap both groups on the high edge of the FAST side of things and on the low end of the SLOW side of things. But our real sweet spot is working through just solid middle class communities where players fall somewhere in the middle.
The messaging to me needs to be some combination of the following:
1) If you want to play for a college that you can win at a high level and play in high profile games, you can do that at Washington ... this will continue to be helped by our in-conference performance, playing in New Year's 6 and CFP games, and other high level early season high profile games (i.e. Auburn next year)
2) If you want to play in the NFL and be able to go into the league at a high level on Day 1, you can do that at Washington ... this will continue to be helped by our ability to produce 1st and 2nd day draft picks and guys going into the league having success like Budda this year
3) If you want a world class education, you can get this at the University of Washington
4) The Built for Life program will add tremendous value for you whether you have a future playing football or not ... if you do play in the NFL, you will have a foundation to make better decisions and able to manage your future in a way that ensures that all of the hard work you put into your career is able to be there for you AFTER your career ... if your career ends in college you will be set up to enter your future career in a manner that allows you to be successful ... in particular point out the business connections that a UW (football) education holds for you in Seattle
5) This message is particularly true for in-state kids ... if you want to be viewed as a local legend and view Seattle as your long-term home, there's no better decision to go to the University of Washington