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Dec 5, 2018
4:11:06pm
BamaCoug All-American
Missed yesterday's open forum about my son, Seth. Some replies & more background
I appreciate byujdmba and many of y'all wanting to get my son some love/pub from BYU coaches. I didn't read this linked thread until almost 24 hours after it was posted (life's been pretty busy with good things: we've adopted 2 newborn girls in the last 6 months, building a home, busy practice, etc ...) and my son, Seth, alerted me to the thread (he's a CB lurker). Wish I could have participated in the discussion while it was happening, but wanted to clarify a few points.

Weight:
He's 225 now and going up, not 215. He played at 210-215 for most of the season despite being around 225 during the last summer. Since he started both ways, he didn't want to put on weight during the season as he would wear out quicker playing both ways at a higher weight. He's a true team player and did what was best for his team. Yeah, yeah, I know I could have forced him and his coach to only play him at DE, and maybe that would have been better for his recruiting (could have bulked up and had more power/burst when he was on the field) but he wanted to help the team as much as he could. He's added nearly 15 pounds since the season ended a month ago. He still has a good frame and is solidly built has plenty of room to bulk up as you can see from a recent lift he posted. His opponents often tell him that he plays much stronger than he looks in a uniform.
https://twitter.com/SethFuller77/status/1069740015217971200

League:
One of the major critiques is that he plays for a small private school and it's tough to assess his talent level against weaker competition. I would remind folks that he was awarded Defensive Line MVP at BYU's 4 day padded camp... not a camp of only small private school players. His league, the AISA, is one of relatively small private schools, but not on the 1A or 2A level. The best teams in the AISA compare pretty favorably to top 3A or 4A here in Bama but can't sniff the 6A or 7A powerhouses talent- or depth-wise. His school and nearly all of the AISA schools will recruit in talented players from local public schools and give them scholarships to attend the schools. My son has started over scholarship-holding athletes for the last 3 years. He was also just named DL MVP of the AISA All Star game ... still waiting on that film.

This is also Alabama High School football. BYUMizzou posted a NCAA tweet in reply to someone bagging on Utah HS football about how Utah is pretty good in the national recruiting scene. Weirdly, the NCAA updated the data of the 18 month-old tweet BYUMizziou posted just within the last 24 hours. It shows Alabama in the top 10 nationally in the percentage of HS football players that are recruited by a D1 school at 5.5%

https://twitter.com/NCAAResearch/status/1070113788798660608

Utah is no slouch nationally (thanks mainly to Polys in SLC) at 4.6% and stands out as the top state (along with HI... again, thanks to Polys) outside of SEC/ACC country. Still, you can't compare small private schools in Utah or most of the west to the established private school programs throughout much of the south, it's just a different world all together.

The AISA has produced some great players recently (including OJ Howard) and Seth's own school has sent players to Penn State, Nebraska, and Northern Illinois just within the last 5 years. Interestingly, our coach says that they all got those offers in the week leading up to NLOI day. His coach thinks that because players in this league usually fly under the radar, that when the recruiters/schools do find a potential player, that they may lay off offering them early to not bring the attention of other schools to their "hidden player." Who knows? ... maybe he's just telling us what we want to hear, but the pattern of those other 3 D1 players from his school is intriguing. It's likely a combination of that along with schools giving up hope on their 4-5star over-offers and then dishing out the offers in the last few days/weeks.

The Film:
Don't get me started here, but the lack of quality filming from his team and opponents drives me bonkers. The magnification/zoom, the stability and the quality is usually pretty low-quality. It's frustrating and doesn't do him any favors in the recruiting realm.

The BYU/LDS/Mission issues:
It's always been his and my dreams to have him become a Cougar and that's probably somewhat of an issue with his recruiting (or lack thereof). On this side, his High School coaches haven't tried to talk him up to any other college coaches because they say they were sure he'd get an offer from BYU and would commit there. When he first came to Tuscaloosa Academy as a 7th grader, he and his older brother were nicknamed "BYU 1 and BYU 2" due to the fact that they wore BYU gear to every practice (yes, they've been raised right). Well, his coaches were shocked that he came back from BYU's 4 day padded summer camp without an offer despite being named DL MVP. Maybe they will offer him late like that but we're not holding our breath. Seth's also been very open with his coaches and everyone else that he's excited to go out on a mission as soon as he graduates. This is another factor limiting his coaches from really pumping him up to other coaching staff's ... while dealing with LDS recruits is common out west, the local schools don't often deal with LDS "mission first" recruits and are often looking to fill certain gaps/positions in the short term.

I noticed some say that they view him as a walk-on player, but, despite his 28 on the ACT (slightly below BYU's average ACT... he's planning to retake) his GPA is unfortunately not "BYU standards" at 3.2. He unfortunately identified with being "the jock" his 9-10th grade years and his cumulative GPA can't overcome his lack of effort those years. It would be a stretch to think he will have any chance to get into BYU on academics alone... so that makes walking on impossible, eh? Oh well. It creates a frustrating situation, but he's learning important life lessons in the process. He may have to go another route and it might really be what's best for him in the long run.
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Related Threads Topic: We need to get BamaCoug’s son some luv from BYU coaches. (byujdmba, Dec 4, 2018 at 12:46am)

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