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I imagine your face looks like your avatar every post you make.
Thank you. People need to set their expectations correctly. Feel good about the visit, who cares if they sign here.
So 1 is a gross exaggeration. And 5-8 are just plain BS. People porsting that stuff are either using hyperbole, trolling, or just stuck in a mental vaporlock of illogical thinking and/or hatred.
That said, 2-4 merit further examination and may be up for debate (at least once you remove the unqualified stuff). For instance, from my outsiders perspective, it seems Mario doesn't back-channel as much as some of the HCs that are more successful in the portal. Now, that could simply be a matter of perspective because he runs a tight ship, but I don't see many guys declaring for the portal and then committing to UM soon thereafter. We seem to get the guys taking multiple visits instead. It might also be that Mario does better with more time because he is a relationship builder (and that's part of his formula for success as an elite HS recruiter), and maybe portal recruiting isn't as suited to his strengths.
At least those seem to me to be fair questions, because there is a bit of a gap between how Mario recruits HS kids (excellent to elite level) and how he's recruiting in the portal (pretty good but not great).
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CFB is a results based industry. Our results have sucked for 20 year and have taken a step back from sad to pitiful last year. Have fun with that preseason "potential" though.
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First page of searching "Mario portal" (see below).
I understand you may want to limit this discussion to some kind of "but it's valid to say it's moving slowly in the spring portal" critique, but that would only be relevant if Miami was some sort of bizarre outlier, the only school in the country with no April Portal verbals yet.
But a couple of days ago (pre-Jaden-Davis), I posted the Top 26 Portal classes on 247. The TWO positive outliers were Colorado and Louisville. Of the other 24 top portal classes (clearly based on January transfer enrollees), 11 universities had NOT GOTTEN A SINGLE COMMIT YET. Most schools had either 1 or 2 April Portal period verbals.
So, again, Miami is not an outlier. We are right there in the mix of 24 other schools that had great January Portal classes, but have not yet brought in more than 2 April Portal verbals.
And I think you'd agree, we had a good Portal effort in 2022 (#12 Portal class, even if our ****** coaching could have been better) and we are currently sitting on the #15 Portal class for 2023, with only one Spring Portal verbal thus far. So we've had 1.5 years of good results in the Portal under Mario, and 3 weeks that are similar to what most other schools that have top-ranked Portal classes are encountering. Spring Portal gets a grade of "Incomplete".
But the negative narrative keeps being pushed.
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My issue is primarily with the other guy posting at the board in a broad stroke how all these board members talk about Mario doing nothing. That’s bull**** and an exaggeration to set up and continue to attack people for having critical opinions. And I’m not talking about trolls. Regular posters with an honest outlook. I’m not gonna watch it unfold again like it did before and stay quiet.
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Bull****, I’m being assaulted by one in this thread. There’s no broad Mario does nothing conspiracy here. There are differences in opinion with some of the critical opinions coming from contributors not trolls.
I had the same thought.
Up this point, Portal Mario isn’t HS recruiting Mario. The latter is elite. I’ve given him his flowers on the likes of Lee, Cohen, Brown and Francisco. I’ve also given criticism where it’s due and we have yet to plug a bunch of holes through said portal. If he addresses all those issues, I will happily eat crow as I want our program to succeed.
What I do hate is this blind faith and anyone questioning it being attacked. Sure some posters are just haters, but many on here bring reasonable concerns and have been bringing reasonable concerns for over a decade now on this site, and are always attacked. It happened with Golden, Richt, and Manny and they were basically right every time. I hope this time is different but up to this point from the portal side, we haven’t been elite like we are with the HS kids.
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And all of this is fair.
The issues with 2-4 are that people HAVE tried to convey that Mario back-channels and is not passively waiting for names to pop up on the Portal website. But when people with knowledge try to offer these reassurances, everything is dismissed simply because "Gaby" hasn't reported enough official visit dates or some such nonsense, which then translates into the other statements that were made (1 and 5-8).
The reality is that a ton of outreach has been done. Not every person in the Portal has reciprocal interest. @RVACane has done an excellent job of describing the phenomenon of "WRs who are not currently interested in Miami because Gattis", or a variation thereof.
The problem with "silence" or "discretion" or whatever word we use to describe Miami's efforts is that the "doubting Thomases" can't see it, they can't touch it.
As for what @RVACane is saying about "slurper bullies", I find it hilarious. A bully picks on someone inherently weaker. I haven't been naming names and going after particular posters about any of this. Have I made a few jokes about a groupthink mentality which DOUBTS that events are actually transpiring because they cannot SEE those events? Sure.
Where I also completely agree with @RVACane is that we need results. You can't ace the SAT because people know you're smart, you have to fill in the answer bubbles. Mario needs to land some April Portal verbals to substantiate the fact that he HAS been doing a lot over the past couple of months. I'm from Missouri, "show me".
But let's also not pretend that there have been a bunch of posters who have blanket-criticized Mario's Portal efforts over the past month, and have not typed up well-reasoned criticisms of specific aspects of Mario's performance.
And we should be able to joke about that. No individual poster has been singled out for pummelling, no individual poster has been harmed.
OK, fair enough. Maybe we each perceive the other viewpoints as larger and more organized than they actually are.
Speaking only for myself, I'm not picking on anyone. I'm just having a laugh or two at a LARGE group of doubters.
Stuff is happening. It's gonna take a week (or a few months until EVERYONE ENROLLS) before we can all get comfortable that Portal Mission 2.2 was a success.
@bobbydigius said it better than I ever could. Since forever here, there have been good posters who are loyal fans who have expressed opinions on problems they see with coaching and they get attacked, bullied and intimidated for it - I remember this when I joined in 2014. There’s always been another group that’s always miserable and they’re just worthless. And then there are trolls who do it and they can go.
The first group is who I’m concerned about. They shouldn’t be driven away because they give honest, well-intended criticism which doesn’t jive with the Hecht line.
I doubt people in that 1st group are blanket saying Mario can’t do anything on here.
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How may of those 26 teams had a worse record than us?
How could that be?!? The geniuses all said he's doing nothing and it's a horrible off-season...
Big weekend..secret visitor is one of the top WR from south Florida? Send a thumbs up if I’m on to sum
