Jimbo Fisher getting the job done recruiting at Florida State

Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher earned his reputation as a recruiter more than coaching. When he got to Florida State, they hired him to be the head coach-in-waiting, the offensive coordinator and the recruiting coordinator under Bobby Bowden.

He actually took over the recruiting when he was under Bowden and was running the show. He’s always been a relentless, aggressive recruiter, along the lines of Nick Saban and Urban Meyer.

The fact that Florida is struggling right now is helping FSU immensely. They’ve always neutralized each other but now Florida State has dominated in recruiting in the state. In the past, Bowden dominated because Steve Spurrier was not a great recruiter, just a real good coach.

Ron Zook and Urban Meyer were great recruiters, so Florida was getting better players. But after Urban left, Florida State was getting the better players again, and now they have talent like they did in the 1990s.

Florida State for the most part stays in-state, but they go after superstars from around the rest of the south, and they’ll go anywhere for a quarterback. It looks like their philosophy is you recruit your own state first, potential first-round picks you recruit anywhere in the south and then quarterbacks wherever they’re available.

Pre-Bowden, Florida State was an average program, never really among the elites. Bowden made them a consistent national name. They were never really much before him.

UNC rewind

The North Carolina weekend looked like a success, not only in terms of a win, but also from a recruiting standpoint.

It was a great weekend as opposed to the Stanford weekend when everyone was complaining about the weather and the wind; it was a miserable kind of day. The North Carolina game is the kind of recruiting day that you hope for. I think everything kind of worked out well.

Everything seems to be running smoothly. They’ve come into the 21st century with not only the training table, but the Gug is state of the art, and Notre Dame has really just about what everyone is looking for, when you talk collectively about the parents and the kids. The kids look for how many guys they put into the NFL, facilities and girls. The parents are always looking at the academics. And Notre Dame’s got everything.

And they’re undefeated, and that’s why you saw Brandon Wimbush turn it around and flip from Penn State to ND. The reason is, nowadays we’re living in an age of what have you done for me lately, and that lately is usually three or four weeks. Notre Dame is undefeated.

Wallace thoughts

New commit Bo Wallace is the best pass-rusher in Louisiana this year. He plays SEC football, which is what Notre Dame wants. Aggressive, fast and instinctive – those are the guys that SEC has.

Jaylon Smith plays SEC-type football, but Notre Dame needs a whole team of those guys.