Dickie Dunn wrote:slappybrown wrote:Dickie Dunn wrote:It definitely doesn't make Pitt better next season, but I fail to see how this looks terrible or is disasterous from a recruiting standpoint.
Prospective recruit asks Chryst about the Shell transfer, "He wasn't my recruit, he was promised things by the prior coaching staff that I didn't agree with, he didn't want to put in the work to earn his playing time, and that ultimately prevented him from being the type of young man that we see as "Pitt material", but you are that type of young man, so here's what we see in your future if you decide to become a Pitt Panther..."
Boom, over. I highly doubt this is an issue for the majority of prospective recruits. Players transfer all the time. If recruits were worried about why someone was transferring out of a program, no one would commit anywhere. Results on the field are what matter most when luring big time recruits. Shell is about to disappear like a fart in the wind and likely will end up buried on some other program's depth chart. If this has any affect on recruiting, hopefully it gets Shai McKenzie's mouth watering about playing time as a freshman.
Trashing prior players who transferred isn't what I'd want to hear from a coach.
That's a far cry from trashing. Saying he was a lazy POS who didn't feel like practicing, milked injuries to get out of training, and was a cancerous malcontent and the program is better off without him, that's trashing a former player. My example was explaining the situation while highlighting what the coaching staff expects from its players. "He didn't want to do this stuff, but we know that you can." You deflect the question while pumping up the attributes of the recruit you're talking to.
To me, telling a recruit that some other player "didn't want to work hard" or that he "wasn't the kind of young man that is Pitt material" sounds like trashing. The later is also sanctimonious BS, but that's just me. I'm sure such a tact might work with some recruits, but not others. Have to know your audience, I guess.