Super Bowl Update

By now, you may have read the ESPN piece on The Cost of Recruiting, where all the FBS schools had their recruiting budgets listed over the past two years.

Troy's was at $87,330 for 2011 and $81,816 for 2010.

To contrast, here's the other schools in the Sun Belt and how much they spent on recruiting over the last two years.

ARKANSAS STATE - $123,086 - $99,353
FAU - $111,456 - $98,372
FIU - $183,748 - $124,672
ULL - $132,922 - $128,590
ULM - $44,057 - N/A
MIDDLE TENNESSEE - $203,596 - $164,343
NORTH TEXAS - $126,064 - $115,011
TROY - $87,330 - $81,816
WESTERN KENTUCKY - $170,323 - $149,541

I'm not sure why Troy's is a good bit lower than most schools, but head coach Larry Blakeney said he's never had any constraints on recruiting.

"There's never been anywhere we couldn't go," Blakeney said. "I've never been told I couldn't go anywhere, and neither have my coaches. I've never had a problem with that and never had to beg for money."

I guess the point is that Troy isn't hampered by anything when it comes to recruiting. That may have been the original thought when this article came out and it had me wondering as well. If there's a lead on a guy in California, they can go after him. My guess is other schools recruit players in a bigger recruiting base because of geography and have to make more flights or spend more to fly kids to campus. Troy usually gets a couple of recruits from the Kansas junior colleges, but the recruiting base is in Alabama, Georgia and Florida - and now they're recruiting Mississippi high schools more. That's a large recruiting base with every school still within six hours or so. That means all driving trips. On the other end, if Western Kentucky wants to recruit someone from St. Augustine, Fla., that's plane tickets on multiple occasions to the school/home and a plane ticket for a prospect's official visit.

Troy recruited a lot more out of south Florida in the latter part of the last decade, but most of those recruits didn't pan out. Troy wasn't recruiting in Jacksonville at that point and now they are, as coach Jeff Beckles has a big presence there. Some of Troy's higher-rated recruits from the last class - Shaquille Beverly, Brandon Brooks, Bobby Walker - come from Jacksonville and I still expect Troy to get good players out of there for the foreseeable future. It's also a driving trip and not a plane ride.

Stay tuned for Sun Belt/Troy stories on Sunday and Monday.