We’re hearing it over and over about how relentless Mario and his staff are about recruiting and connecting with the kids AND their families on a personal basis. Obviously paying big dividends early and often.
A lot of people still don't get it. They're still in a Golden/Manny era mindset when it comes to recruiting. I get it, it'll take time, but most people really don't understand how relentless this guy is and forget he's just getting started. Doesn't even have the entire infrastructure in place yet.
And people also fail to understand that Oregon isn't necessarily the easiest place to recruit. They started coming up in the late 90s with a lot of kids the bigger West coast programs passed on, and even in the early 2000s when they started getting really good, a lot of that was with juco and "second chance" type kids with grade and off field issues. Honestly not a lot of that changed up until the Mario era.
Eugene kind of sucks. There's not much at all besides the campus. It's rainy, it's gray, it's cold, and if you're a city kid who isn't into like hiking and trecking through foggy forests and all that stuff there's not a lot there for you. In the winter it's pitch dark by like 4:00 p.m. It's also isolated. Yeah you could shlep over to Portland in about 2 hours but a lot of that is more of the same. I love the PNW but I'm a middle-aged white guy. Mario was on the verge of like a top three class, and now he's in Miami. A bit of a different sell to big time recruits, and y'all don't understand just how crazy relentless Mario is on trail. If we don't get a guy, it wasn't for lack of trying or not knowing how to recruit him, like the old days.
As for mayo and mac and cheese, I'm pretty sure that is a pasty white person Midwest kind of thing. I think my buddy from rural Michigan does that, because his mom used to. Pretty unfathomable it would wind up in food for recruit in florida.