In today’s college football recruiting world, the term “arms race” has been thrown around a lot.
The top schools are doing everything they can to improve their facilities and add the newest state-of-the-art technology to both keep their players in the best shape possible and persuade future players to join them.
The Oregon Ducks are as guilty of this as anyone. They were recently named by the nation’s top recruits as the school with the best facilities in the country. For some prospects, it’s not about that, though. For them, it’s the people that make up the team.
Four-star running back Jayden Limar is one of those guys. He’s an elite prospect out of Lake Stevens, Washington, ranked by 247Sports as the No. 14 RB in the 2023 recruiting class. He holds offers from big-boy schools Ohio State, Miami, Michigan, Notre Dame and USC among others. He visited Eugene this past weekend and, when asked to compare it to South Bend or College Station, gave an answer that surprised me.
“Everybody’s got nice stuff at this point in the game, so honestly the main thing that changes a visit, or makes it better than another is how you connect with the people while you’re there,” Limar told me. “If you connect with a lot of the coaches on a deeper level, then that visit will feel a lot better than the other ones. I feel like I really can’t compare any school to another because you connect with everybody differently.”
So did he find that connection with Dan Lanning and the coaching staff at Oregon? We were lucky enough to discuss that and a ton more after Limar’s visit to Eugene. Here is that conversation: