My parents kidnapped me to Kentucky from California. It’s been 30 years in Kentucky/Nashville. I am ready to be back in California but I made a mistake building a successful business here.
I don’t think this is a valid excuse though for losing in-state kids. That said, it’s not like SC is keeping top talent in LA either.
We’re isolated in Utah. Great Basin to the west. Rocky Mountais to the east. 800 miles of desert to the south. Sparsely populated Idaho and Wyoming to the north. Not to rile anyone here, but an oppressive dominant cultural influence prevails. That’s how many view it, especially from the outside. It’s a kind of sheltered existence. When you grow up you begin to understand how steadying that influence is and you learn to appreciate it.
I mean, I’ve been to Utah. I’ve been to SLC. You have a ton of business opportunities and an NBA team. Let’s not paint it like recruiting to Starkville, Mississippi (which weirdly had a top 25 class last year).
That’s what we Utahns do: have kids and make money. Is Starkville over 300 miles from the next nearest population center? When I say we’re isolated here it’s because we are.
You talk as if Starkville has a population center.
The point is if a kid wants to leave, and many do, then they will. As the U of Utah continues to climb the ladder in football and puts players in NFL, more will come to see the opportunity at home. They’ll stay. We’re still climbing. Interesting factoid is that we’re tied with Washington for 1st in the conference in draft picks since we’ve joined the PAC. We’d be all alone in 1st if any of our players left last year, but none did, so we’re tied.
BINGO. I think they just need to pound that message. Alabama has done a great job doing the #BuiltByBama promo. Constantly using the hashtag and promoting their players in the NFL on their social:
https://twitter.com/AlabamaFTBL/status/1437072227502104587
They’ve started doing it in Hoops as well. They also send their NFL guys big swag boxes about two to three times a year to wear in their NFL press conferences etc. Most people will say “It’s Bama” but it wasn’t Bama in 2007. It took a good 14 years to build the machine. They would lose local guys constantly.
Yeah. Ours is “ Home Town Hero.”
We need better marketing.
Lol. That’s our local TV stations marketing. Weirdly, John Carpenter is from the town I live in so one of my employees made this:
#UnleashedByUtah
There. Start making Utes in the NFL promos with my hashtag. Free of charge.
I get that. It’s probably why BYU has gotten a Utah 4* recently. I know because that 4*'s dad was a QB for my brother’s HS team in the Inland Empire of California. The whole family has since moved to Provo and are pretty active with BYU.
I’m just an outsider but I know quite a few non-LDS who have considered SLC. Weirdly quite a few were from the LGBTQ+ community. Which blew my mind because of see paragraph above.
Salt Lake City is quite LGBTQ friendly
[
https://www.visitsaltlake.com › about-salt-lake › lgbt-fri…
](Salt Lake City is LGBTQ Friendly | Community & Pride Info)
Yeah, this was about 8 years ago. I was having a chat with some folks who were moving to SLC and they said that. Then my friend has a clothing line targeting that audience. She said it was a popular area for her to ship. It just blew my mind because I was raised around a bunch of LDS in the IE and never heard about that side of SLC.
This is a bad look for part of the P12:
If that “part” is Arizona, then yes, it’s a bad look
I mean we have Vanderbilt but I don’t expect this from Arizona.
Let’s face it, there are only 3 PAC12 fan bases that really show. The rest are front runners.
Could be worse:
