Unfortunately though the vast majority of croots we need reside in SEC country.
*nod* You're right about that. But something like the soldier's paradox works for recruits.
Ever wonder why a soldier who has been through battle after battle continues to slog on to the next? Why he doesn't give up and run away, desert?
Part of it is loyalty...duty...selflessness. But part of it is the soldier's paradox.
Most soldiers start their careers with some degree of eagerness to see battle. I mean, you train for something week after week, month after month, year after year until you're REALLY good at it, and you kind of want to finally get out there and test yourself. You want to take your turn. Soldiers don't talk about that a lot, but it's generally true of most of them. There's a readiness. An eagerness.
And you never think you're going to be the one in your squad to get seriously injured or killed. It has been called "the immortality of youth," but it's not really about how old or young you are. It's just a sense of the odds being in your favor. It's not gonna be me. And I'm going to see to it that it's none of my buddies, either. We'll make it okay.
Then, after you've been bloodied for the first time, once you've "seen the elephant," the calculus kind of starts to change. See, the guys who learn BEST how brutal and unforgiving battle can be, they're the ones who died, or got shipped home with injuries. The ones who keep going, they mostly came through the battle okay. Horrified by what they saw, perhaps, but still ticking, limbs intact, no bad wounds.
And a reinforced sense of destiny. Of the survivor. Of being suited to succeed in this world.
I could keep going, but that's enough to cover how it applies to football recruits coming out of high school.
They're like the soldiers in training. They have a (perhaps naive) confidence that things will be okay for them. That somehow it will work out. That guy over there who lost his commitment? He just wasn't a lucky one. That won't happen to me.
And so these stories, sometimes trumped up as they are in this case, about a coaching staff who didn't give that recruit the consideration he deserved, well, that doesn't really affect ME. I'm not going to get stuck like that. I'll survive, I can make it through, I'll be okay.
And they mostly are okay. Having to pull back offers, that doesn't happen often at all. Most who get offers, and then commit, they sign. So the lads are generally right; they'll be okay.
TLDR: we'll be fine. Recruits who will consider coming to play for Tennessee, they're still going to consider it, even after our rivals try to make a big deal out of this one fella being turned down in the 11th hour.
It's a non-event, in the grander scheme. And the soldiers continue to march forward.