Petrino hasn't shown he can go into any back yard and get any player. Hell, his last couple years at Louisville ,KY was coming into the city of Lville and getting a blue chip player. If you are refering to pulling Wingo out of MO wingo came to Arkansas b/c Mo doesn't properly utilize a RB in their spread system. AR was the next closest school offering particularly with a pro-style offensive coach.

I don't think that on average each SEC team only signs 1/3 from it's home state. Maybe 1/2 to the bigger schools like FL,GA, LSU ,AL signing probably 60%. Msu pretty much owns most of the state of MS and I bet they sign at least 60%. Look at rivals the last couple years. 9-17 in Alabama are usually all 4 star players if you go by rivals. I don't really go by the star system but more of how they perform 2 or 3 years later. the State of Alabama 9-17 best would have more future NFLer's than the State of Arkansas' 1-8 most years. and Yes 1-3 for Ark is probabaly better than 9-11. But that is where it's dropped off. And, Michael Dyer is the type of recruit that Petrino really needs to make an effort to talk to before you can start assuming he's gonna get all the good talent out of Arkansas like Nutt did. By the sound of Michael Dyer and the way he refers to "coach O" and "coach Malzhan" and "coach chizic" and Just "Petrino" and what Dyer is saying it certainly sounds like Petrino is scared to talk to this kid. You think we'd be hearing this kind of talk out of Dyer if Nutt was still here? Petrino probabaly won't be able to recruit this state as well as Nutt did long term b/c he don't have the personality for it. What he's gonna do is dazzle you with 4 star juco's that take half a season or more to develop and eventually get a good enough mix of them to win, then get a better job, then leave a ton of holes in the roster just like he did at Louisville.

I also think you need to look at a United states map and evaluate where the majority of the nations talent comes from. google "mapcollegegame day" or "where NFL talent comes from" which shows a rivals study a few years ago which has some cool charts. Arkansas and this entire reccruiting area is very sparsly populated with future NFL talent. Auburn is a couple hours from Atlanta which produces more talent in 1 year than Arkansas does in 5 years. Take out ATL area and the state of GA still produces more talent than Arkansas. Auburn is also very close to FL and has tradionally recruited that state very hard. They are only about 4 hours from the FL panhandle. It's easy for them to recruit FL b/c in some cases they are the closest Bcs school offering a scholarship and you'll find that about 80-90% of kids stay close to home.

In Arkansas case the closest they are to talent outside AR are Tulsa and DAllas areas. Oklahoma and Texas cherry pick those cities then other big12 schools are higher in the pecking order. Arkansas can get talent from those cities but most times it's going to be uppertier conference usa caliber talent b/c Arkansas is not very high in the pecking order for TX talent, it's about 7th to 10th.

Coaches matter but understand what Pete Carroll is. He's an old NFL coach that kids in that area want to play for. the county of LA produces more talent in 1 year than the state of Arkansas does in 10 years. So, the talent has always been there they just needed a decent coach to make it work and he has. It sounds like they have been cheating on top of it so factor cheating into your USC theory.

Over the last 10 years Auburn put alot more players in the NFL. At one point last year there were 34 active players on NFL rosters from auburn and 16 from Arkansas. Don't forget the coach that did all that OVERACHEIVING at 5-5 against Auburn you fools ran off.

This post was edited on 7/24/09 at 5:44 am