That is his job but not his only charge. Mario is recruiting against the Larry Johnson Srs. and Brent Venerables who’ve both coached a number of highly regarded DL and have them on speed dial to not only attest to they won a lot of games but helped them become 1st rounders.
Mario didn’t go get Jason Taylor because he has a track record of developing kids. It was name recognition and he could tell/show them what they needed to do to get to the next level and actually be good at the next level. Because that’s what 4 and 5 star kids care about. And if we’re going head to head for a DE with an Ohio State we definitely should have a plan to help make them what NFL teams desire or we’ll lose out everytime.
I just asked an ACC AC "what makes a player sign with your school, tell me 4-5 things" he asked if he can just answer
money for all of them.
As someone that is around extremely high level 12-25 year old athletes in a variety of sports every single day here is what they care about:
Money / gifts (swag, dinners, cleats/sneakers, flights etc)
(Social Media)
Attention
Making Parent / Uncle Roscoe
happy
What you can do
for them (1st rounders), not what you did for you (Taylor's career)
You really think a 17 year old has seen Jason Taylor play football? Unless they think he's Vin Diesel they have never seen the guy until they get on campus.
Mario hired JT because he was a pipeline to STA players and hopefully will continue to be. His job is to keep Saban, Dabo, Kirby, etc away from STA because of "relationships" having been the STA DC. Hope the HC and AD really like him, etc.
Same reason Devin Bush Sr was at Michigan. Biff Poggi was at Mich. The reason Freeze and Malzahn got their initial college breaks: they were tied to HS 5-stars. Until he becomes an elite on field coach / developer (he can tag himself to Bain which is great)
