Why have the Razorbacks seemed to back off from one time Defensive line commit Emmitt Gooden when he was so openly stating his desire to become a Razorback and play alongside his good friend Sosa Agim?
I had heard that at one time it might be his academics, but that hasn’t detered Tennessee and West Virginia to offer him.
Just seems like this is a position of need for the team and it doesn’t seem to make sense to me.
I had the good fortune to cross paths with one of our starting LB’s and likely returning starter again next year and asked him if knew what was up with this situation and he said he was just as confused as to why he wasn’t already signed or still committed to sign n national signing day because we could certainly use another big man in the D-line rotation.
He’s been linked to a “pay to play” issue that follows around Miss State. He even told a recruiting company that whoever is paying is who he will go to. That was right after he committed to the Hogs. One day afterwards.
All these other schools stop recruiting him after a while, and his grades have been an issue as well. As of Jan he was still having to take a remedial class to get the level necessary to qualify.
If he can’t take his grades serious enough (I.e., high school and now JUCO), how is he going to do at a large university? To my knowledge, that pushed a lot of schools away from him as well.
Moveover, It’s all about him. I’m not knocking him. It’s his life, but if you run a team approach and you have a guy who is only worried about himself, then you have a cancer on your team. No matter how good he is, he could be a headache that you don’t want to have.
IF - - - I say IF - - he is even creditably SUSPECTED of having advertised his services on a “pay for play” basis, with the corroboration of a definitely-obvious mercenary attitude, - - - then that determination - (along with his reported “math grade” problem) - - - would constitute more than a sufficiency of detrimental fodder to warrant looking elsewhere in recruitment efforts IMHO.
Well he signed with Tennessee. Weird that he really wanted to come to Arkansas and we didn’t pursue him. Something’s there for sure but it didn’t bother Tennessee’s apparently.