(Some) Positive Recruiting Thoughts

[Caw Caw]

Some things i've noticed about this staffs recruiting:

- High Value on Two-Way Players

- Size doesn't matter (har-har) particularly for skill positions

- They've target kids in their own backyard first (a complaint against former staffs)

- They've limited JUCOs unless exactly what they are looking for (another complaint against former staffs)

- They believe in Denton/UNT as selling point, not a weakness (another another complaint against former staffs)

- Will take players outside of planned recruitment if they believe in the player enough (Siggers @ RB)

- Emphasis on work ethic and character (definitely going to cost you some in recruiting)

Now, before you maul me with your this is another dumpster fire hire comments, I agree we can obviously do better. Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about culture shifts and aspects people may not have though of. Look at the list above, particularly in the areas that were complaints, these are being targeted in addressed. Second, I think we can all agree that Mac valued size and forty times over play making ability. I encourage you to watch the film and not just the rankings move, and genuinely critic the kids to add to the conversation. At UNT, as the ship gets righted, we're going to have identify talent and develop it. That's part of this game, and I think at the G5 level on of the most important parts. I remember two particularly talented QBs recently with cannons, stars, and good offers at some point in their career (Dajon and DaMarcus Smith) who we lamented the staffs development of. We've had the highly-ranked-just-behind-johnny-football kid as well, and he transferred out as well.

We are trending in the right direction, but UNT is no overnight fix. I've mentioned in other posts, that most of our single-offer guys were offered and committed very early in the process, and when we back filled the class, they were guys who have had other offers. If we were spending today scrambling to fill with kids who didn't ahve any other offers, we could sound the alarm, but at this point, North Texas thought that these guys, offers or not, were the guys they wanted. You don't have to hold our coache's opinions with any real esteem, I can't make that judgement for you, but it is a little early to say that they can't identify or develop the talent they need to succeed here.

Another point I'll make is that UTSA and a lot of competitors with great class ranks have dedicated writers and subscribers for both sites. There news is up to date on those sites. As I've mentioned, and others who follow recruiting, we get less time spent genuinely evaluating our kids because we don't have a pay base for those sites. It is in the business interest of those sites, which have dedicated UTSA writers, to spend time on their classes. Now, obviously that doesn't make up for all the difference. We did get beat out in some cases. Evaluating the coaches based on one and a half classes, after a turnaround season seems pretty naive to me. UTSA has beaten us heads up more times than we have them, along with most our conference mates. Things will improve, recruiting will improve but it won't be instant. As long as we keep moving forward and trending the right way, i'm not ready to write the staff off.