The more I read about Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, the more I’m impressed with him. It’s clear he and his staff have already put a lot of thought into preparing for their program’s entry into the SEC (it helps that he’s not stepping into a new situation, as Kevin Sumlin is at Texas A&M). That thinking isn’t just about schemes and personnel matchups. It extends to recruiting, too.
Georgia’s going to be rubbing elbows with the new kid on the block.
… Pinkel said the main areas of importance outside of the Tigers’ home state are Dallas and Atlanta. The good thing for Pinkel and his staff is that it’s only about an hour longer drive to Atlanta compared to Dallas. It still accounts for 10-plus hours on the road, but if you’re going to take the time to head to Dallas, you might as well make it out to the hub of the South.
And for Pinkel, it’s well worth it.
“If you look at statistics and analysis of BCS players, they come out of the metroplex around Dallas and then you look at the greater Atlanta area,” he said. “The parallels are staggering between those two cities. They produce a lot of athletes.”
The good news, at least in the short term, is that Missouri’s staff has little experience recruiting Georgia. The bad news is that over time, Pinkel’s got a solid track record of building recruiting pipelines to Missouri – his first roster had around 10 or 11 players from Texas and now has more than 30.