TCU Football is taking a different approach when it comes to recruiting. In a tweet posted by TCU’s official football page, a graphic showed the names of all the main coaches and where they would be recruiting this week. But what caught the attention of some wasn’t that all of the coaches are out on the recruiting trail, but where they are going.
On the road again, searching for some future FROGS 🐸 pic.twitter.com/ZJi6KDVuJS
— TCU Football (@TCUFootball) January 22, 2024
Recruiting From the Backyard
There was a time when 80% of players for every team were recruited from their own home state. For example, if looking at the 2000 Florida State National Champion team, most of their players were in-state talent kids from the Sunshine State. In contrast, 2023’s Michigan team had very few players from Michigan. In fact, going down their roster, less than 20% of their roster consisted of in-state talent.
In today’s game, with so much access to film, budgets for official visits, and huge NIL opportunities, the once ‘pipeline’ states are a thing of the past.
Except apparently for TCU Football.
Rather than sending coaches to different parts of the country, TCU is staying right at home, sending coaches to Dallas (40 minutes), Dallas Fort Worth Metro area (0 minutes), Waco (1 hour, 30 minutes), and Houston (4 hours). This isn’t to say that TCU isn’t actively in the portal or recruiting from other places, but to spend significant time and resources on in-state talent is going against the common recruiting practices done by most other coaches.
In fact, 18 of their current 22 signees for 2024 are from the state of Texas. Compare that to Texas (12 out of 22), Texas A&M (5 out of 14), or Texas Tech (7 out of 15), and it becomes pretty clear that TCU is going against the grain on this.
TCU Football’s Quiet Transfer Portal
TCU hasn’t had a very active transfer portal this offseason. They got a great quarterback transfer from Vanderbilt and lost Chandler Morris to the portal, but for the most part, it has been a somewhat uneventful month. In fact, over the past two weeks, there have only been two transfer announcements, with Morris leaving for North Texas, and Andre Shelton Jr. coming over from New Mexico State.
For comparison, there have been more than 200 players in college football who have entered the portal and 250 players who have enrolled in another school in that same time span.
Again, this trend doesn’t show that TCU isn’t actively involved in the transfer portal; it just shows that they are putting more emphasis on in-state talent than teams like Ole Miss, who have their coach literally driving to Alabama’s campus to meet with potential transfers.
Getting Things Turned Around
After an excellent 2022 season, the TCU Horned Frogs never seemed to recover from the beating they took from Georgia in the National Championship Game. TCU failed to make a bowl game and is desperately looking for answers to get back to the win column next season.
It will be interesting to see whether Sonny Dikes and his strategy of going really hard on recurring in-state kids will pay off. We may not see the results of this strategy for a few years as these players will have to gain experience at the FBS level.
For what it’s worth, I think rivalries and teams are more exciting when the teams are filled with talent and teams who grew up watching the rivalries. So, in that way, I hope it pays off.
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