2020 DE Aaron Witt commits!

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On "flipping" - the old days of the gentlemen's agreement is long gone. If a kid commits to School A, that might just make School B and C recruit him that much harder. The Early signing date was supposed to address that, but all it did was move up the timetable and make schools try that harder to flip key recruits. If a kid is truly 100% committed, great. but, if a kid (or his parents.......) starts having second thoughts, and School B is putting on a big push, then it's not that hard to understand why kids might flip.

Imagine being a Purdue commitment, then watching Purdue play against the Gophers last week. Or conversely, imagine being a Gopher commit, and watching the Illinois game. I'm actually surprised there isn't more flipping going on.
 



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Go Gophers!!
 

Funny reading back on this thread. A lot of frozen takes


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Official visit to Iowa planned for him


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Seriously. What does Iowa have that his home state of Minnesota doesn't have?
 





I can't fault kids for looking at other schools but to be honest Minnesota football isn't a big hotbed so I don't get too concerned with missing out on in state talent.
 


SM_25 said:
Witt is as legit as they come. He wouldn't commit to Minnesota if he wasn't 100% in. Hopefully him and Manns can propel the rest of the 2020 class into staying home.
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Oops

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4four4 said:
I can't fault kids for looking at other schools but to be honest Minnesota football isn't a big hotbed so I don't get too concerned with missing out on in state talent.
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I make a point of not getting overly invested in a recruit until after signing day at the earliest and even then it is pretty pointless to project much until they get on campus and actually prove they can play. Stinks when guys, especially local ones, decommit but it is what it is.

There are a lot of solid football players in this state but the true impact guys are few and far between so yeah odds are a kid like Witt wasn't going to be a star but he could of been a very good player potentially. All part of recruiting, guys "commit" then change their mind, some come back some move on....
 

He has now tweeted out offers from Ohio, NDSU, Wyoming, and Northern Iowa. Interesting social media behavior right away... is this spiteful?


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4four4 said:
I can't fault kids for looking at other schools but to be honest Minnesota football isn't a big hotbed so I don't get too concerned with missing out on in state talent.
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Same here. It's cool when a kid from Minnesota can go to the U and succeed; but, if there is a kid from another state out there that is a deserving person/player and wants to be here I'm perfectly fine with that, too.
So, basically...I don't care where the recruits come from. I am just as happy for a guy like Daniel Faalele as I am for a Carter Coughlin.
Best of luck to Aaron Witt, whichever weird Iowa school he chooses.
 

as we've said before, it's a catch-22 with in-state talent.

If a Gopher coach misses out on an in-state player, people will complain.

But, if they bring in some kid from Georgia or Texas who becomes a major contributor, nobody mentions where they came from.

As a result, the Gopher coaches are almost forced to go after in-state kids, even if there are better kids from other states they could be recruiting. For every Blaise Andries - an in-state kid who pans out - there is an in-state kid playing on the scout team and standing on the sidelines on game day.
 

AtTheLibrary said:
He has now tweeted out offers from Ohio, NDSU, Wyoming, and Northern Iowa. Interesting social media behavior right away... is this spiteful?


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High power offers
 


There went our top 25 class. Coyle must be pissed.
 



What is the real reason behind the decommitment?
 

This seems odd. Seems like he really wanted to come here.
But I'm not going to worry about it too much.
Many months to go and the people who need to know will know what the situation is. For us it's mainly speculation.
 

I don't stay up until 11:00 at night analyzing D-line depth charts but aren't we deep at D-end? Looks like a bunch of Wyoming, NDSU type offers.
 

STrib: Winona product Aaron Witt decommits from the Gophers

A local recruit has re-opened his commitment.

Aaron Witt, a three-star defensive end out of Winona, shared on Twitter his decision to decommit from the Gophers. The 6-5, 230-pound strong-sider initially committed back in November.

He's the second class of 2020 commit to reverse his decision since Monday, with junior college linebacker Juwan Mitchell reclassifying to 2019 and joining Texas.

http://www.startribune.com/winona-product-aaron-witt-decommits-from-the-gophers/509972522/

Go Gophers!!
 

short ornery norwegian said:
as we've said before, it's a catch-22 with in-state talent.

If a Gopher coach misses out on an in-state player, people will complain.

But, if they bring in some kid from Georgia or Texas who becomes a major contributor, nobody mentions where they came from.

As a result, the Gopher coaches are almost forced to go after in-state kids, even if there are better kids from other states they could be recruiting. For every Blaise Andries - an in-state kid who pans out - there is an in-state kid playing on the scout team and standing on the sidelines on game day.
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Agree with your first part but not the part in bold. The only thing forcing the coaches to recruit local players is the desire to maintain a good relationship with the local high school coaches and of course to get the best in-state talent when possible. They could care less what the fans think.

I am sure it is common at a lot of places but Minnesotans especially are in love with the idea of a kid being "one of us". Don't get me wrong, I love the hometown success story as well. But on the whole, I could care less where a kid comes from and frankly in football I am all for kids coming from states where high school football is played at a high level because it definitely is not in this state.

I do some work with a 6A in-state program that is consistently ranked in the top 10 and it is kind of sad because the team isn't that good from a talent standpoint the other teams are just worse.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Agree with your first part but not the part in bold. The only thing forcing the coaches to recruit local players is the desire to maintain a good relationship with the local high school coaches and of course to get the best in-state talent when possible. They could care less what the fans think.

I am sure it is common at a lot of places but Minnesotans especially are in love with the idea of a kid being "one of us". Don't get me wrong, I love the hometown success story as well. But on the whole, I could care less where a kid comes from and frankly in football I am all for kids coming from states where high school football is played at a high level because it definitely is not in this state.

I do some work with a 6A in-state program that is consistently ranked in the top 10 and it is kind of sad because the team isn't that good from a talent standpoint the other teams are just worse.
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I agree with this. In 4 years, would Aaron Witt contribute at OSU, Michigan or Alabama? I say no and it is time we start thinking about the Gophers competing at a much higher level than we have in many years.
 

GopherDog1 said:
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I agree with this. In 4 years, would Aaron Witt contribute at OSU, Michigan or Alabama? I say no and it is time we start thinking about the Gophers competing at a much higher level than we have in many years.
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There is no doubt our baseline recruiting has to pick up and it has noticeably since PJ took over.

But, I would also argue we will never recruit on an equal footing with OSU, Michigan or Alabama. So, it becomes huge to find kids that can develop into NFL caliber players that aren't recruited by the big dogs, and there are literally 100s of those kids out there. It is a matter of identifying them, recruiting them, and developing them. Wisconsin and Iowa have made a living of doing that over the years. They consistently put 2-star and 3-star kids (and walksons) into the NFL that never got a sniff from OSU, Michigan, and Alabama. And, guess what? They also beat Michigan and OSU occasionally. We need to join those ranks on a more consistent basis.

I don't know if Witt is one of those kids, but Iowa is after him hard and he plans to visit there next month. That tells me he could potentially be one of those guys.
 


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