Originally Posted by Anonymous
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Classic example of the hypocrisy is the debacle of Gilman football a few years ago. Old Poogy recruited top football players who overwhelmed and destroyed the other MIAA schools, Their solution, not play Gilman in Football. While they are on the winning end with recruitment, alls ok,,,soon as they start getting beaten by bigger and stronger players, quit... And that is at the High School level not youth.

Not quite. Poggi recruited from across the country for athletics, and brought in kids who were physically exceptional - much bigger, stronger, and faster than the other kids in the MIAA.

If a recruiting pool is a roughly 20 mile radius surrounding a school, the coach can expect a certain number of strong athletes to matriculate each year around which to build a team and a program, and expects to compete with other schools with the same constraints.

If the recruiting pool is the entire US, then it isn't an MIAA team anymore - it is a US team, and it looks more like college recruiting than a local high school. It was like a D3 school playing an NFL team. - it wasn't just unfair, it was unsafe.

There were other problems with the approach. Parents who had paid tuition since lower school suddenly had to watch the ringers come in and displace the kids who had grown up in the school. Kids who were solid players in middle school were unable to play much in upper school due to the recruiting program.

It was costly - the coach insisted on a certain number of scholarships each year in order to feed the machine he built.

It caused problems in school, as many of the recruited players struggled with rigorous academics.

Other schools complained, but the MIAA couldn't do much. Eventually, the other schools saw the only choice was to opt out.

Notice they didn't stop playing the other MIAA teams - just the one that had an unfair advantage.

Eventually, things changed. Poggi moved on. The other MIAA A conference teams returned to playing against Gilman.[/quote]

Except no MIAA schools ever stopped playing Gilman in football. They waited until Biff went to St. Frances, then they refused to play them.[/quote]

The "golden seal" that Biff broke (along with, I recall, the girls softball coach at McD who successfully recruited out of state "more than usual"), was bringing "more than the unique case" out of state ringer into Gilman. Suddenly it was 6 kids. Then 10. And as the guy posted above, that's when the Gilman crowd started to bark.

But the comparison "Oh the racism" to the St. Frances thing is nuanced. Biff saw - and exploited - racial sensitivities by going to St. Frances and saying, "If it was fine for me to recruit 10 out of staters to Gilman, why can't I recruit 25 to St. Frances?"

Which would be a great debate, except that 10 was a problem at Gilman.

6 would have eventually been a problem at Gilman. But yes as long as it was 1,2,3 studs, the Gilman folks were as happy as could be with their Texas recruit. Would the MIAA schools have pitched a fit if Biff brought 1, 2, or 3 studs out of state to St. Frances? Maybe so, and if so, that would be racist.

Also (not sure whose comment), it's not 20 miles. It's more like 60-70 miles but the gravity is weaker away from the school. Kids come from across the shore to attend St. Mary's. Kids from PG, Annapolis, and PA attend Loyola, Gilman, and McD. Once the commute starts to hit about 40 miles, the more local schools should be able to recruit more effectively (Gunston on the shore, GP/Bullis/DeMatha in PG/MoCo). Nobody's taking a bus past DeMatha to attend Calvert Hall every day. Or taking the MARC past Georgetown Prep so they can get a seat at Gilman/Loyola.