Stars matter: NFL draft edition

Army of Dad · May 6, 2016

2 hours ago, casual fan said:

All of them must have been ineligible because FBS schools never overlook talented players.

Oh, wait a minute. Josh McCown started out at smu but transferred to Sam Houston State.

He passed for 3,481 yards and 32 TDs as a senior at Sam Houston and won the Walter Payton Award given to the top D 1-AA player.

Cooper Kupp won it last year and has moved past Jerry Rice's FCS total. He will be a senior next year at Eastern Washington.

Interestingly enough both Kupp's father and grandfather were on different Dallas Cowboy rosters.

So you basically have no idea. Players get overlooked, but sometimes its not a talent evaluation miss.

casual fan · May 9, 2016

On 5/6/2016 at 4:59 PM, Army of Dad said:

So you basically have no idea. Players get overlooked, but sometimes its not a talent evaluation miss.

NCAA Division 1 schools must meet a set of standards that apply to athletes in all sports.

Football is the only Division 1 sport subdivided into 2 divisions (FBS and FCS).

Division 2 schools have a different set of standards and so forth, down to JUCOs.

Harvard, Yale, etc. may set their standards higher. Other schools may accept the NCAA minimum. It depends on the school.

Point is many really good FCS players just get overlooked every year.

Army of Dad · May 9, 2016

18 minutes ago, casual fan said:

NCAA Division 1 schools must meet a set of standards that apply to athletes in all sports.

Football is the only Division 1 sport subdivided into 2 divisions (FBS and FCS).

Division 2 schools have a different set of standards and so forth, down to JUCOs.

Harvard, Yale, etc. may set their standards higher. Other schools may accept the NCAA minimum. It depends on the school.

Point is many really good FCS players just get overlooked every year.

Entire conferences have their own standards. This is how Tony Mitchell ended up coming to UNT and not Mizzou.

I've already agreed that evaluations are not foolproof. I was pointing out that not all NFL players from below FBS are from pure evaluation mistakes. You throw out a number of non-FBS NFLers with no context. It's also possible that some of those players started off at a FBS school and transferred to FCS so they could play right away just as it's possible they had academic issues out of HS or they developed more than anyone thought.

Cerebus · May 9, 2016

On 5/6/2016 at 2:21 PM, casual fan said:

All of them must have been ineligible because FBS schools never overlook talented players.

Oh, wait a minute. Josh McCown started out at smu but transferred to Sam Houston State.

He passed for 3,481 yards and 32 TDs as a senior at Sam Houston and won the Walter Payton Award given to the top D 1-AA player.

Cooper Kupp won it last year and has moved past Jerry Rice's FCS total. He will be a senior next year at Eastern Washington.

Interestingly enough both Kupp's father and grandfather were on different Dallas Cowboy rosters.

The plural of anecdote isn't evidence.

For every Josh McCown (or any other exception you can think of) there are 100s who would never crack the practice team on any FBS team. There are always examples of highly rated players busting, and lightly recruited players doing well. They are the outliers. Highly rated players do better than low rated players as an average.

It's no coincidence that NT was the most successful under Dickey, who was able to recruit double digit DaMN State Top 100s. We have recruited a total of 2 the entire time since he has been gone.

Aldo · May 9, 2016

3 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

We have recruited a total of 2 the entire time since he has been gone.

foutsrouts · May 9, 2016

14 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

The plural of anecdote isn't evidence.

For every Josh McCown (or any other exception you can think of) there are 100s who would never crack the practice team on any FBS team. There are always examples of highly rated players busting, and lightly recruited players doing well. They are the outliers. Highly rated players do better than low rated players as an average.

It's no coincidence that NT was the most successful under Dickey, who was able to recruit double digit DaMN State Top 100s. We have recruited a total of 2 the entire time since he has been gone.

Very true. DD had the luxury of competing in what was basically a 1AA conference, but he certainly made the best of it in the early 2000's. Our dropoff in local recruit star status is very sad, and what makes it even more sad is that kids are so much more informed these days before signing that LOI. We've clearly got a reputation problem.

untjim1995 · May 9, 2016

22 hours ago, foutsrouts said:

Very true. DD had the luxury of competing in what was basically a 1AA conference, but he certainly made the best of it in the early 2000's. Our dropoff in local recruit star status is very sad, and what makes it even more sad is that kids are so much more informed these days before signing that LOI. We've clearly got a reputation problem.

This is the biggest concern we have. Whatever you think about Dan McCarney's coaching, its impossible not to recognize his motivational and positive mindset he came here with in 2011. I truly believe he had no idea that getting kids here would be a hard sell. And by the time he got fired, we had beaten him down so bad that Darrell Dickey's attitude started to show up in his words and actions. Maybe he and his staff didn't recruit hard because they didn't think it would be a tough thing to do, but it was fairly obvious that they had no idea how much baggage our reputation has hurt us in recruiting. Except for Dickey's one or two classes that had some strongly-rated kids in it, our classes have generally been subpar for where we are located. I still think that its this reputation for apathy and losing that keeps TX HS kids, coaches, and parents from looking at us as anything but a safety net.

Its this--and really only this--that will determine if Littrell can fix things around here. He has to get kids here that have talent coming in and that they need that talent to get developed. Right now, we just don't have much a lot of that kind of talent here on this roster, at least yet. I have a feeling its gonna start getting better and in more numbers in the next few years ahead, if Littrell's pedigree means anything--and I believe it just might...

Edited May 10, 2016 by untjim1995

UNTLifer · May 10, 2016

Dickey road the coat tails of one excellent recruiting class. Don't act like he was the Nick Saban of the Sun Belt.

MeanGreenTexan · May 10, 2016

9 minutes ago, UNTLifer said:

Dickey road the coat tails of one excellent recruiting class. Don't act like he was the Nick Saban of the Sun Belt.

I thought this has been thoroughly debunked. I'm sure @Cerebus will have a link handy.

untjim1995 · May 10, 2016

2 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Dickey road the coat tails of one excellent recruiting class. Don't act like he was the Nick Saban of the Sun Belt.

He was the Nick Saban of the league from 2001-2004. It just fell apart for him and for us when he didn't parlay his SBC success into another job, while his assistants got hired away, and recruiting to a toilet bowl went back to what it normally was.

Dickey--and UNT--had perfect timing to get into a league with other teams that were also in a bad way...Idaho, NMSU, Utah State, Arkansas State, ULM, and ULL were all pretty bad teams, while MUTS was also a program that was ready to play at this level from the get go and Troy was just moving up to FBS in 2003 as a full member.

casual fan · May 10, 2016

On 5/9/2016 at 0:54 PM, Cerebus said:

The plural of anecdote isn't evidence.

For every Josh McCown (or any other exception you can think of) there are 100s who would never crack the practice team on any FBS team. There are always examples of highly rated players busting, and lightly recruited players doing well. They are the outliers. Highly rated players do better than low rated players as an average.

It's no coincidence that NT was the most successful under Dickey, who was able to recruit double digit DaMN State Top 100s. We have recruited a total of 2 the entire time since he has been gone.

What do Antonio Brown, Clay Mathews, Jordy Nelson, T J Ward, Ezekiel Ansah, Logan Makins, Rashad Johnson, Stephen Gostkouski, Ricky Wagner, Joe Berger, Spencer Long, and many others have in common? They were all walk-ons in college. JJ Watt walked on after going to Central Michigan as a TE. They were going to move him to the OL when he left and became a walk-on at Wisconsin. They were all 2 stars or less and got overlooked. When our last coach missed on QB after QB, he was roasted for missing. FBS coaches are paid big bucks to evaluate talent whither they have 2, 3, 4, or no stars. (see Boise State)

Cerebus · May 11, 2016

On 5/10/2016 at 5:42 PM, casual fan said:

What do Antonio Brown, Clay Mathews, Jordy Nelson, T J Ward, Ezekiel Ansah, Logan Makins, Rashad Johnson, Stephen Gostkouski, Ricky Wagner, Joe Berger, Spencer Long, and many others have in common?

What happened to the other 200,000 other walkons?

Boise State had 14 Rivals ***s last year, 13 more than we did. I imagine their much better recruiting is what lead to them having much better records than us.

TreeFiddy · May 11, 2016

Size, speed, strength is a frequently recurring trait among highly rated players. No question that the difference between a marginal 3 star and a 2 star or unranked player can be minimal, especially when dealing with kids that are still developing/maturing. However, kids that are ranked high 3, 4, and 5 stars hit way more often than they hit and those that are not not miss way more often than they hit.

Hard, but not impossible, to consistently start with less talented/less polished players and turn them in to all conference players before they graduate when compared to starting with a more finished product. It seems to me that a few guys out there either have a method to their madness or they are really lucky. Recruiting into a system probably helps when you can't just get bigger/faster/stronger.

Probably no coincidence that the league's top teams are consistently in the top 5 of recruiting based on rankings.

Edited May 11, 2016 by TreeFiddy

techdawg88 · May 11, 2016

LaTech's first round pick this year, Vernon Butler, was only a 2 star coming out of MS

https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/6000

UNT90 · May 11, 2016

On May 10, 2016 at 11:36 AM, untjim1995 said:

He was the Nick Saban of the league from 2001-2004. It just fell apart for him and for us when he didn't parlay his SBC success into another job, while his assistants got hired away, and recruiting to a toilet bowl went back to what it normally was.

Dickey--and UNT--had perfect timing to get into a league with other teams that were also in a bad way...Idaho, NMSU, Utah State, Arkansas State, ULM, and ULL were all pretty bad teams, while MUTS was also a program that was ready to play at this level from the get go and Troy was just moving up to FBS in 2003 as a full member.

Or it fell apart when he realized what the Hattiesburg Hustler was and just stopped trying...

UNTLifer · May 12, 2016

On May 10, 2016 at 11:36 AM, untjim1995 said:

He was the Nick Saban of the league from 2001-2004. It just fell apart for him and for us when he didn't parlay his SBC success into another job, while his assistants got hired away, and recruiting to a toilet bowl went back to what it normally was.

Dickey--and UNT--had perfect timing to get into a league with other teams that were also in a bad way...Idaho, NMSU, Utah State, Arkansas State, ULM, and ULL were all pretty bad teams, while MUTS was also a program that was ready to play at this level from the get go and Troy was just moving up to FBS in 2003 as a full member.

Paragraph 2 above explains DD's success. He was a nice guy but he did not work hard on recruiting. It never improved even with the winning streak.

Cerebus · May 12, 2016

17 hours ago, UNTLifer said:

Paragraph 2 above explains DD's success. He was a nice guy but he did not work hard on recruiting. It never improved even with the winning streak.

Dickey and staff worked their asses off, if a bunch of high ***'s just fall into people laps from time to time then how has it never happened again? Then every proven recruiter kept getting picked off because of our near ULM level budget at the time.

I get it, he wasn't a friendly hand shaking good ole boy. He rubbed people the wrong way. He also had a terrible working relationship with mgmt and real health problems he had to deal with.

I'll maybe be convinced DD was a slacker when ANYONE ELSE is able to produce HALF of what he did with more than DOUBLE the assets that he did.

untjim1995 · May 12, 2016

3 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Dickey and staff worked their asses off, if a bunch of high ***'s just fall into people laps from time to time then how has it never happened again? Then every proven recruiter kept getting picked off because of our near ULM level budget at the time.

I get it, he wasn't a friendly hand shaking good ole boy. He rubbed people the wrong way. He also had a terrible working relationship with mgmt and real health problems he had to deal with.

I'll maybe be convinced DD was a slacker when ANYONE ELSE is able to produce HALF of what he did with more than DOUBLE the assets that he did.

Sadly, you are dead-on about the Dickster. He sucked as a communicator, glad-handler, and as pitch man for your university. His offensive gameplan was the pure definition of boring, eliciting the funniest cheer of all-time by a bunch of UNT fans at a game that was very winnable at TCU--"Throw the Ball!! Throw the Ball!!", since we basically ran the ball up the middle every down of the game just to get it over with, even though we were only losing 13-3 going into the 4th quarter. But, amazingly, got some great recruits by our standards to come here and play at a toilet bowl in a toilet conference, and he got some solid results. How those results cannot be exceeded is just beyond most sports fans, but it hasn't even been close. I guess that's why we have the Darrell Dickey Practice Fields here, when he left here with a 42-66 record...so you are right, until then, and I cannot believe I am typing this, Darrell Dickey's tenure represents the best we can do until proven otherwise. I thought Dan McCarney's 2013 team would springboard this thing, but his lack of new recruiting in his first 4 years on the job killed that from happening. So the Dickster's reign as best football coach at UNT since we moved back up in 1995 to FBS still stands.

casual fan · May 12, 2016

19 hours ago, Cerebus said:

What happened to the other 200,000 other walkons?

Boise State had 14 Rivals ***s last year, 13 more than we did. I imagine their much better recruiting is what lead to them having much better records than us.

Between current NFL players from FCS teams, players who were walk-ons, D3 etc. there are too many to list, Probably over 200 right now.

There are a lot good plays that get overlooked.

It is true Boise had 14 *** this year.

They made their big breakthough by beating Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl.

The had 14 players above 2 stars in the 4 signing classes prior to that win.

That's less than 4 per class. Boise became Boise in part by recognizing overlooked and under recruited talent.

UNT can't slug it out with UT, LSU, or A&M for recruits. UNT must be able to find overlooked talent in order to fill out a good class.

6 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

Dickey and staff worked their asses off, if a bunch of high ***'s just fall into people laps from time to time then how has it never happened again? Then every proven recruiter kept getting picked off because of our near ULM level budget at the time.

I get it, he wasn't a friendly hand shaking good ole boy. He rubbed people the wrong way. He also had a terrible working relationship with mgmt and real health problems he had to deal with.

I'll maybe be convinced DD was a slacker when ANYONE ELSE is able to produce HALF of what he did with more than DOUBLE the assets that he did.

+1

I remember a quote from him saying he had to convince his own coaches to make an offer to Booger Kennedy because he was short.

GOMG2013 · May 12, 2016

I'm sure Dickey was a good coach, but to look at today's football landscape and compare it to the early 2000s is just silly.

Why do UNT fans fail to realize recruiting has changed? The fans are just as guilty as the UNT AD.

2000s, SMU was horrible and in the WAC. UH was horrible. Baylor was horrible. TCU was in the WAC and they were improving, but not even close to the household name they are now. A&M was very average. Okst had a history of losing. It's not even close. Come on...

Not trying to give anyone a pass, but who can't recruit against losers? The biggest problem is UNT didn't capitalize when it had the chance. Probably should have done a lot more damage during that time.

foutsrouts · May 12, 2016

31 minutes ago, GOMG2013 said:

I'm sure Dickey was a good coach, but to look at today's football landscape and compare it to the early 2000s is just silly.

Why do UNT fans fail to realize recruiting has changed? The fans are just as guilty as the UNT AD.

2000s, SMU was horrible and in the WAC. UH was horrible. Baylor was horrible. TCU was in the WAC and they were improving, but not even close to the household name they are now. A&M was very average. Okst had a history of losing. It's not even close. Come on...

Not trying to give anyone a pass, but who can't recruit against losers? The biggest problem is UNT didn't capitalize when it had the chance. Probably should have done a lot more damage during that time.

We've just never been able to throw together any consistency over a period of years. The N.O. Bowl years we're a start, but we were pretty much in a 1AA conference at the time, so we really didn't impress enough recruits (or fans) to seriously jump on board and awaken that elusive jolly green sleeping giant. That's especially true since we didn't have much in the way of big OOC wins during those bowl years. Almost makes me wish we would have stuck with DD, but of course a lot of the blame for his departure lands squarely on him. Let us hope that Seth is finally the cure, because there are more than a couple of negative words out there that rhyme with his name.

:pow:

MeanGreenHoops · May 13, 2016

Nothing ever built up during the New Orleans Bowl years because we were off to terrible starts every year.

So many people complain about our OOC, but I'd be fine with 4 home games against the Denton high schools, if it got us off to a 4-0 start for a few years. Mix in a .500 record in conference and all of the sudden we are 8-4. DO that and people start to talk about it. Maybe the next year we go 9-3. Do you really think anyone besides a few on this board pay attention to who we play? I don't. I think they just see we are 1-3 again and think well maybe next year.

Winning is the only thing we haven't tried around here.

untjim1995 · May 13, 2016

4 hours ago, MeanGreenHoops said:

Nothing ever built up during the New Orleans Bowl years because we were off to terrible starts every year.

So many people complain about our OOC, but I'd be fine with 4 home games against the Denton high schools, if it got us off to a 4-0 start for a few years. Mix in a .500 record in conference and all of the sudden we are 8-4. DO that and people start to talk about it. Maybe the next year we go 9-3. Do you really think anyone besides a few on this board pay attention to who we play? I don't. I think they just see we are 1-3 again and think well maybe next year.

Winning is the only thing we haven't tried around here.

You can't pay the bills here with that approach. The AD has made it clear that we will always have one bodybag game (to pay the bills) and one FCS game, which is often the equivalent of a Denton HS team (see Nicholls St), along with a home game each year against SMU or Army.

Only way we start off 4-0 in any year is to have the bodybag game after that first month.