FlamesHighontheTide wrote:I feel like this is beating a dead horse, BUT. . . our 75 scholarship players were not FBS scholarship players. We handed out more of our scholarships to walk-ons instead of holding them for the next year. Nevertheless, that was the decision made by the coaching staff. We did pick up some juco's who we did redshirt along with Seth Nerness as well. Both him and Solomon Ajayi will DEFINITELY contribute in a BIG way next year!! The recruiting done by Gill in this FBS transition year has been very good. Picking up three 3 star players and all 3 are on the o-line and d-line. Chibueze, Lewis and Cater will be play-makers for us and all 3 are hard workers!! Just so yall know, we have more commitments right now than Alabama. So for those of us who say we haven't done much in recruiting yet. . . just wait and see the goods that will be coming our way soon.
Losing to St. Francis was a MAJOR head-scratcher but it happened. No excuses on that one. KSU and Monmouth were much older teams and had good enough offenses to out score, just check the points they put up on us. Here is something nobody wants to talk about with KSU either, the triple-option attack is so dangerous in this era of college football because only a handful of teams run it and the ones that run it well aka KSU win lots of games. Plus, if defenses don't see the triple option a lot they are more prone to miss assignments. The fact that they were a start-up program doesn't really matter. They are in a recruiting hot-bed in the South. And GA. Southern and GA Tech guys would transfer to them due to the similarity in offense. ODU is a great example when they started their football program, they came out winning!
All this to say, I know we feel as a fan base that we are in for a humiliating FBS transition, but pump the brakes and enjoy the newness of the FBS era and the new talent that will come to the Mountain and help change the tide.
This is the good description and attitude of the way a fanbase should be. Being from the Great Republic of Tennessee and somewhat in the know of certain things taking place at UT, as far as football recruits. I can tell you that the fan base does have a lot to do with recruiting. I know of at least 2 big time recruits that De-committed from UT mostly due to the fan base putting doubts in their young minds of something different from what they felt when they committed. Recruitment is a dog eat dog world, very taxing on these young kids. Each college/university has everything better than the other or rival college/university of interest, according to the individual recruiter and some of these recruiters with less morals will tell these kids anything. Believe me, even at the FCS level teams will have people/GA's researching whats going on with a perspective university through these types of forums. When they start seeing a ripple of displeasure in the water, that will quickly be turned into a tidal wave from a recruiter to a recruit. Of course for the recruiter it makes them look better and quite frankly it's their job to get a kid to De-commit and join their program.
Just because a kid commits, the recruiting process doesn't stop. I know Lewis is being sought after hard by several P5 schools and it's only going to get worse as the early signing date approaches. Not to worry he is completely locked down for Liberty. He said that he loves the coaching staff at Liberty and that is what mostly sold him on Liberty University but at the same time, that same coaching staff told him to never pick a coach, pick the school because coaches can be gone overnight. A lot of credit goes to an HC that mandates honest recruiting like that!
I guess my whole point is, be careful of going over board with claims of protesting the football program or even giving up on the program all together if things doesn't change quick enough. Because recruits will run to a more welcoming situation. No one wants to ever lose but at the FBS level if a coaching staff isn't competitive, things will fix itself. It's all revenue driven and if you don't win revenue will be down and if the revenue is down the coaches will be gone. Simple as that. You Liberty Fans really don't know what you have up in Lynchburg. IMO and several others, it is a volcano waiting to erupt with nothing but greatness and national notoriety at the FBS level.
WE BEAT COASTAL 
- By Ill flame
- By PAmedic
- By AATL
- By Sly Fox