In our piece on TCU's Frog Frenzy recruiting strategy, TCU assistant Curtis Luper offered the following quote:
“It’s not feasible for a lot of people to do what we’re doing,” Luper said. “Houston could do it in Houston. Texas Tech can’t do it in Dallas. It’s more difficult for them. They have to all fly here, they have to get hotels, but we don’t have to do any of that.”
After reading and digesting the piece, our staff's thought is.... why not?
What's stopping a program from a far away port-of-call from flying its entire staff to a hot bed city, renting a house and posting up shop for a week?
Putting up nine assistants in hotel rooms for three nights at a conservative estimate of $150 a night costs a program $4,050. A cursory view of VRBO's offerings for next week in Atlanta shows many options much cheaper than that. Plan far enough in advance and a program can put its staff in a truly, as the kids say, baller house and still save money. All other costs (hotels, rental cars and the like) would remain the same as a normal week of recruiting.
If you're, say, Tennessee, what better way to show your commitment to Atlanta high school coaches than ship your entire staff there for a week? Or West Virginia in South Florida? Or, to harken back to the original quote, Texas Tech in Dallas-Fort Worth?
And since the entire staff is together with no families to go home to at night, evenings can be spent hosting and feeding high school coaches from across the city? The food could be prepared by one of your own if you've got your own Herb Hand on staff, or catered if you don't. Either way, you're walking the walk in showing just how important that city's high school coaches are to your program.
I pitched this idea to three FBS assistants and recruiting directors, and each shot back the exact same response: "Is that legal?" The truth is, we haven't checked. While I'm no compliance expert, if there's nothing stopping a staff from renting nine rooms in the same hotel, there should seemingly be nothing stopping a staff from renting a house.
As one assistant quipped to me, "That sounds like something Harbaugh would do." Indeed it does. So consider this a friendly encouragement to toss this idea amongst your staff, then start checking listings in the city that makes the most sense for your program.
And you might want to act fast, before Harbaugh really does borrow this idea and the SEC and ACC conspire to outlaw it.