Recruiting strategy

Ben Gooding · May 23, 2017

3 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

Because Louisiana Tech has had some serious success at football for a long time and puts its emphasis on the football team being its primary window to the university. You know, just like most schools do in this region of the country. Its what Arkansas State, ULL, ULM, USM, Texas State, UTSA, and Troy have done. UAB and UTEP have used basketball as their primary window. Rice, Tulane, SMU, and Tulsa use their sports to compliment their private education and urban locations as their main window.

We don't. Texas HS coaches know this, as well as their parents. Its why we get beat out for recruits in our own backyard. To be honest, its very questionable if this is fixable. We won the SBC 4 years in a row--the recruiting bump was basically nil, which is why we couldn't beat anyone in OOC play back then and why Dickey's teams fell apart and he got fired. We won the HoD Bowl and finished 9-4--and that got us the lowest rated recruiting class in the country the following season, where we dropped back down to 4-8.

Maybe Seth Littrell will improve this-his first full recruiting season was not real impressive, but maybe that will change as he continues to rebuild the system here and gets in the right players to run their offense. All we know is that the recruiting rankings every year are always ugly for us, when compared to other G5s. I don't even count the P5s because of their advantages from budgets, conference affiliations, and reputations. When we lose a recruit to Rice or SMU, as much as I hate it, I get it. But losing them to the Louisiana schools, Arkansas State, UTSA, UTEP, and Texas State just disheartens me--because I know that their staffs aren't fighting apathy and disdain from the TX HS Coaches and parents like we do...and its all been self-inflicted because of the lack of leadership and the apathetic culture. Its the cancer we cannot seem to beat.

I don't get it either. But I think it's an uphill climb that we have started to climb. But at least we have chosen to climb it and that brings optimism. The opportunity is there and though I have not been overly pleased with this coaching staffs in game success, I still think they are moving in the right direction. We have to continue to show progression this season. It's critical.

Ben Gooding · May 23, 2017

Just to hit on the topic for a minute, recruiting strategy...

As I stated earlier, UNT is 113th in team overall roster talent going into the 2016 football season. I believe that puts us at 11th in CUSA, only in front of UTEP & Charlotte. UNT going into the 2016 season had 20 3* players on the roster. Some of them obviously don't pan out, like some of the 4 and 5 star recruits don't pan out either. But the more 3* players a team at our level has, the odds of success increases substantially. The proof is there. With that said, 311 3* players were on FCS rosters going into the 2016 season. Many of these FCS programs are in a days drive of Denton. Why aren't these players on UNT's roster? I think we agree that most kids want the bigger offer, or the bigger opportunity to showcase their talents, or to receive a better education. Or just to say they played college football at the highest level. Now granted I know that all 311 players are not going to fit what this coaching staff wants to do with their team. But at the same time, I am more than certain many of them would fit. A recruiting strategy I would like to see is get as many 3 stars on the roster as humanly possible and let the chips fall where they may. My money is that the chips fall in our favor far more often than not, which is unfortunately the contrary right now. And the best team talent in every conference either won their conference or were near the top of their conference standings, G5 & P5.

Top CUSA Teams Roster Layout (Going into the 2016 season) -

La Tech - 37 three star players

Middle - 36 three star players

Marshall - 35 three star players

Southern Miss - 31 three star players

FAU/UTSA/Rice - 26 three star players

*CUSA Champ WKU - 21 three star players (Had superior QB play)

The gold standard of the conference (with the exception being WKU because of stellar QB play in Doughty and now White) is almost doubling us up in talent. We could start to match this if we create a different approach and go after best available players that otherwise would be playing at the FCS level. It's kind of the Gary Patterson approach that I spoke of earlier in this thread. Go after what is there for the taking, and plug them into your system where the coaches think they best fit. JMO

Edited May 23, 2017 by Ben Gooding

untjim1995 · May 23, 2017

40 minutes ago, Ben Gooding said:

I don't get it either. But I think it's an uphill climb that we have started to climb. But at least we have chosen to climb it and that brings optimism. The opportunity is there and though I have not been overly pleased with this coaching staffs in game success, I still think they are moving in the right direction. We have to continue to show progression this season. It's critical.

I completely agree. I think that a 6+ win season is a must to continue to create and keep momentum. The schedule is there for it to happen.

Wins over Lamar and UAB are no-brainers. No chance games are at Iowa and La Tech. Wins over SMU, USM, UTSA, UTEP, Rice, Army, ODU, and FAU are all possible, so lets say we split those, giving us 4 more wins. Now you are bowling again. If we don't win 6 games with an easier schedule than last year, I'll be disappointed.

Ben Gooding · May 23, 2017

1 minute ago, untjim1995 said:

I completely agree. I think that a 6+ win season is a must to continue to create and keep momentum. The schedule is there for it to happen.

Wins over Lamar and UAB are no-brainers. No chance games are at Iowa and La Tech. Wins over SMU, USM, UTSA, UTEP, Rice, Army, ODU, and FAU are all possible, so lets say we split those, giving us 4 more wins. Now you are bowling again. If we don't win 6 games with an easier schedule than last year, I'll be disappointed.

I don't want to say 6-6 or bust. But it's kind of at that point. I mean I will not be ready to crucify Littrell for a 5-7 season, but I will be pretty upset at a 4-8 or worse type season.

untjim1995 · May 23, 2017

6 minutes ago, Ben Gooding said:

I don't want to say 6-6 or bust. But it's kind of at that point. I mean I will not be ready to crucify Littrell for a 5-7 season, but I will be pretty upset at a 4-8 or worse type season.

I mean the reality is that Littrell is our coach for at least two more years, no matter what. But if he wants to ever be a head coach anywhere else, he'd be well served to not have a 4 win season with this schedule---ESPECIALLY if UTSA, Rice, and UTEP finish above us. If that happens, the recruiting we have seen here in the last few years will look swell compared to what will happen in that scenario. Think McCarney-esque...

Ben Gooding · May 23, 2017

4 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

I mean the reality is that Littrell is our coach for at least two more years, no matter what. But if he wants to ever be a head coach anywhere else, he'd be well served to not have a 4 win season with this schedule---ESPECIALLY if UTSA, Rice, and UTEP finish above us. If that happens, the recruiting we have seen here in the last few years will look swell compared to what will happen in that scenario. Think McCarney-esque...

Yeah. But if we do, goes back to how I think we should approach recruiting. There were 311 3-star rated guys per 247Sports on FCS rosters. When that number is that high, we damn well better have 40+ three star players on our roster at any given time. Because look, what we are doing is apparently not working and hasn't really worked for ongoing decades. We need to moneyball this roster to relevance by cherry picking these FCS commits during all recruiting cycles. No, it will not thrust us to national relevance. But it will start to make us consistently competitive vs all teams in our conference.

The Fake Lonnie Finch · May 23, 2017

On 5/19/2017 at 9:40 PM, GMG24 said:

Anyone else wish we recruited the Deep South more? If I was a coach in CUSA I'd be in every school from Louisiana to Florida/Georgia. Primarily Florida, too much speed down there.

Years ago, I good man named The Fake Lonnie Finch researched and posted a study on national championships to compare California, Florida, and Texas talent.

The long and short of it was that, since 1970:
-only one Texas school had won a national title: Texas in 2005
-only one California school during that time period won a national title, and the did it four times: USC, 1972, 1974, 2003, and 2004
-all three major Florida schools won multiple national titles: Miami in 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001; Florida State in 1993, 1999, and 2013; Florida in 1996, 2006, and 2008.

That's 11 to Florida schools, four to one California school, and one to one Texas school.

Moreover, if you add in Southern and Southeast school who have won titles since 1970, it tilts even further to the side of that region:
-Alabama: 1973, 1978, 1979, 1992, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015
-Georgia: 1980
-Clemson: 1981, 2016
-Georgia Tech: 1990
-Tennessee: 1998
-LSU: 2003, 2007
-Auburn: 2010

That's 16 to Southern/Southeastern schools, plus the 11 from Florida for 27 national titles over the past 47 years. (NOTE: 22 of those titles from a school in either of these three: Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.)

Schools from the South/Southeast region have won 14 of the past 20 national titles, including 10 of the last 11. Ohio State in 2014 was the only school to break into the streak.

So, yes...if we had a way to get into the Southeast, it would be great. However, we are having a hard enough time selling the program to DFW area kids at this point. So, let's not put the cart before the horse.

I'm always a proponent, though, of getting the best player no matter where they are. It's what built program in the middle of nowhere like Oklahoma and Nebraska for decades.

Edited May 23, 2017 by The Fake Lonnie Finch