It's been a head scratching week watching kids/families choosing to PAY MONEY to be a PWO instead of a free ride at smaller schools. Maybe my brain is getting old, but I just don't understand turning down FREE over having to have college debt for years.
Mark Porter talks about this all the time. The myth of playing DI and kids, and their parents, getting caught up in that game.
Especially when one considers NFL rosters mixed with all kinds of players from every level.
While most smaller schools do not give "free rides" even the non scholarship D-III can come close with financial aid to a good student with good test scores. The kid with a D-II offer usually gets 1/3 for athletics and can make up close to the other 2/3's with academic (Only special D-II guys get 50%-75% with 32 full scholarships to go around).
As far as laterally movement and playing downhill I thought Whitmer's Jack Linch was as good a pure MLB as there came. Many kids have the "look" to be a LB and are good enough but some, very few, have the knack that it takes to be great. Jack was undersized at 5'11"/6' but no one read and played forward and sideline to sideline like him. Not to mention he was nosey and nasty and he played with low pad level and his hips were always underneath him. He had offers from many D-II's, especially the good ones, and gave them up to be a PWO at UT. As a PWO you have to overcome so much. That coach/position coach recruited guys that are not you for a reason so he already has it in his head that they are better. With the turnover of coaches these days then you have a new position coach come in with a new philosophy and want his own guys in there. Although Jack Linch eventually earned a scholarship and cracked the starting line-up he was buried over lessor players who were coaches darlings. Had he gone to Grand Valley State I am convinced he would have been an All-American (and had some deep playoff runs).
The same can be said of many other talented kids that have taken the same route (Derich Weiland, Liam Allen, and now Justin Sheits, Victor Copeland, and PeSean Wimberly). I wish the last three well, and am glad BGSU is at least entertaining locals again.
Another thing Mark Porter said that has always stuck with me; "go where they want you, not where you want to go." Makes sense.