WOW other services really like our job

GoMeanGreen1999 · February 3, 2006

Sarcasim there of course. Check out this one:

http://scout.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=9&c=14&yr=2006

Coffee and TV · February 3, 2006

Why is Air Force so low? Do they have recruits who have yet to get through all the hurdles of being accepted into an academy?

bigrobdsp · February 3, 2006

I have decided to disregaurd the recruiting sites information. the only review that I saw that was decent was in a local paper (I dont remember which one) but they were the only review that I have seen that took the time to look at our needs and rate how we addressed them. their review was favorable, not spectatcular, but they thought that we did well. I think we did a fine job of addressing our needs at OL, DL and QB. we dont have any 5star guys, but we have only ever had 1 highly rated recruit and our other guys panned out just fine. with good coaching I dont see any reason why we wont be just as good as we were in the good years.

IslandEagle · February 3, 2006

Sarcasim there of course. Check out this one:
http://scout.scout.com/a.z?s=73&p=9&c=14&yr=2006
My Webpage
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The problem with these ranking services is that we have NEVER finished first in Sun Belt recruiting according to them. The best we did was 2nd and most years we have been ranked 2-5th. So, according to them we should have never won the Sun Belt, much less won it four times in a row. In fact, MTSU's recruiting class was ranked 1st two years in a row and 2nd one year. Yet, they have never won the conference.

Like I said earlier, I'll rate this class when I see how they perform on the field.

PlummMeanGreen · February 4, 2006

And many of us will have cardiac arrests when any SBC school (no matter how they rank among each other in the annual SBC recruiting breakdown); anyway, many of us will be in shock when any SBC school breaks into the Top 50 (forget the Top 25, that's only reserved for the UTEP's, Bowling Green's, Boise State's, remember them?, our old Big West foe who went up the food chain with their football program while we stayed the same or even went further south now?) and Top 25 is only reserved for any MAC school that is toward the top of that league's football standings.

The Sun Belt Conference is (literally) in a league of its own among all the other NCAA D1-A conferences and that is why so many now in the MG Nation just want to see something different at UNT for a change, ie, those with the talent and higher aspirations to give us a higher profile co-existance that will move us up and out of this annual "Bottom of the Barrell" co-existence. UNT athletic officials seem to be quite fine with (still) only being at the top of the SBC, no matter where we stand among the other 119 NCAA D1-A schools (which is somewhere between #100 and up of late). That M.O. will eventually get some of them run out of Denton and the Lone Star State (of which that part cannot happen soon enough for the many of us who know w/o a shadow of a doubt that we can do much better in Mean Green Country).

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Like one of our biggest athletic donors told me recently, "we' ve just not kept all this overall mediocrity on the UNT payroll as long as we have with this present group." I thought back to what he said and concurred that he was absolutely right on about that.

Usually, continuous under .500 performances across the board for a number of years is a "not so subtle" hint that tells most athletic employees that its really time to move on (voluntarily or involuntarily), but at UNT, hellsbells, they want to stick around for even more years while being employees who are part of or smack dab in the middle of all the NT Athletic Department mediocrity; they want to take on a new house mortgage; and then they want to run for mayor or city council of Denton. (Just kiddin' about that part, of course).

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BACK TO THE TOP 25: Can we at UNT when all the necessary changes are finally and eventually made, emulate the MAC's top football schools to be at the top of the SBC, but do it from a Top 25 vantage point? Didn't seem that winning the SBC helped Arkansas State do anything that caught the fancy of those who cast Top 25 votes, either. So thankfully, its not just a UNT thing.

COULD THIS BE MAGIC? Coach Mike Price made it happen for UTEP because its always top D1-A athletic personnel who make such things happen. Such talent comes in as a head football coach and turns a 5 or 6 year plan of planned progress into a 1 or 2 year plan. At what stage of the game will UNT reach Top 25 status, folks? What is our plan in Denton to do such and why haven't we heard of such a plan? Perhaps the reason why on that is that there is no plan other than the plan of keeping a few of our best fans happy by being alums of a school whose football program is the Best of the Worst.

AND..............I just don't think the "NCAA D1-A Football Fairy" suddenly passed over El Paso and the UTEP campus throwing magic dust that turned what has been a traditional basketball school most all of our lives into one that for the first time in its school's history was no longer a stranger to Top 25 rankings.

UNT deserves no less than what UTEP is getting.

Edited February 4, 2006 by PlummMeanGreen

MeanGreen61 · February 4, 2006

Posted originally by Harry.

The following excerpt is from an interview taken from the OU Scout.com site:

One OU coach has told us this about recruit rankings:

"Basically they're a joke. If they were true, we, (and other top schools), would recruit off of them. It takes us several months of evaluations to separate the best from the rest. But these recruit rankings pop up and many people start thinking they're the ten commandments or something.

Sure everyone can pick out an Adrian Peterson, but there aren’t many of those out there. And generally, the skill positions are a bit easier for coaches and fans to identify, but even at that, how to you find the top ten - twenty in the country?

That's who we set our sights on. You have to - to stay at the level that we're at.

But many times, even with skill athletes, it's his supporting cast that makes him stand out. Coaches have to consider that. We have to know that a quarterback has a great receiver, or maybe he has none - that makes a huge difference in his completion percentage. How good is his offensive line, or the competition he's playing?

At many power programs, kids are sometimes a backup until their senior year. I mean what do you do with a kid who is waiting in the wings but has a great player a year or two ahead of him?

In the offensive and defensive line, many kids are dominant because of a size mismatch. But in college, that won't be the case. Technique and skill are bigger factors, and many times you don't see those things clearly until their senior seasons."

As to current prospects, (and their rankings), another OU coach said;

"Who does these things? (Recruit Rankings). Are you kidding me? It's a total joke when you have guys who are dominant ranked behind good, but not great players."

So how do the average fans determine who's best?

"Just look at who's offering them, and who's not. That's the first clue. But most of the higher ranked guys are going to come from the well known stomping grounds. Those guys show up early, because they are easier to identify.

We (coaches), can't visit every school and every hamlet either. So many times, we see a prospect on film when we are looking at someone else. We make a few calls, send someone out to who knows where, and suddenly we have someone who very few people know about.

Now here at Oklahoma, when we offer - it's usually all over the internet in about three hours, so sure, there are times when we prefer to keep a kid quiet. Why tell your opponent about finding a gold mine?

So a lot of times someone will pop up from nowhere and people think maybe we've lost our minds. Are you kidding me? We have twenty five scholarships a year and we don't pass them out like Kleenex!

When we offer some obscure prospect somewhere you can bet he's probably playing at a small school, or at a school with zero talent around him.

We signed a receiver like that last year, and how was he ranked? But watch that guy and I'll guarantee you in four years he'll out perform almost every guy on the top ranked receiver list last year. You can repeat that story at least two or three times every year.

So yeah, we look at the rankings, but they're primarily always a source of amusement for us."

PlummMeanGreen · February 4, 2006

But OU seems to be getting a different kind of recruiting results while they hang in and around the Top 5 and Top 10 on an annual basis while UNT is now getting ever so close to that vaunted Bottom 10 elite list.

Not real sure OU and UNT should be mentioned in the same breath at this time of our football history and recent performance.

Edited February 4, 2006 by PlummMeanGreen

MeanGreen61 · February 4, 2006

Not real sure OU and UNT should be mentioned in the same breath at this time of our football history and recent performance.
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Why not, EVERYTHING ELSE is! Actually it's just a post about what an OU coach had to say about recruit ratings.

Edited February 4, 2006 by MeanGreen61

February 4, 2006

If the recruiting services are such a joke, why is it that somewhere between 90-100% of their original list is chosen by the BCS schools. Of course, they're not completely accurate because some things such as heart, desire to succeed, etc. cannot be measured. But these lists are based on height, weight, speed, and past performances and are fairly accurate in that regard.

It's funny, if we were getting the three-star athletes, we'd beat our chests and shout about it. Remember the 2001 class when we got 6-8 top names in the state. How many turned out to be duds?

Look at the top 10 in four years and tell me how many are in the bottom 69. It's not foolproof (in other words they're not going to end up in that order) but it'll be closer than any other barometer that I know of.

Middle has been beating us on signing day but they were taking marginal academics which they eventually lost. Yes, we did beat them four times in a row but the margin of victory has been between five and ten points. Good victories, but not vast superiority.

OU may think that the list is a joke but see how close the players that they pick follow the ratings.

IslandEagle · February 4, 2006

If the recruiting services are such a joke, why is it that somewhere between 90-100% of their original list is chosen by the BCS schools. Of course, they're not completely accurate because some things such as heart, desire to succeed, etc. cannot be measured. But these lists are based on height, weight, speed, and past performances and are fairly accurate in that regard.
It's funny, if we were getting the three-star athletes, we'd beat our chests and shout about it. Remember the 2001 class when we got 6-8 top names in the state. How many turned out to be duds?
Look at the top 10 in four years and tell me how many are in the bottom 69. It's not foolproof (in other words they're not going to end up in that order) but it'll be closer than any other barometer that I know of.
Middle has been beating us on signing day but they were taking marginal academics which they eventually lost. Yes, we did beat them four times in a row but the margin of victory has been between five and ten points. Good victories, but not vast superiority.
OU may think that the list is a joke but see how close the players that they pick follow the ratings.
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I think we are comparing apples and oranges here. Certainly the ability to pick the "elite" players is pretty good and if you get a top 100 nationally ranked player you have a decent chance that the kid will make an impact, assuming he turns out not to be a nut-case, makes grades and is motivated to play. When you get down to the 2 star and even 3-star, you degree of certainty is much less. Certainly the fact that North Texas has never ranked 1st in Sun Belt recruiting, but won 4 conference championships is proof that the system at that level is fairly inaccurate. Also, while we were going to Bowls and SMU was losing consistently, they still "beat" us in recruiting 2 of the 4 years in question. Of course, SMU picked up a good class last year and that showed immediately on the field and it was ranked as a good class, but they had a "good" class signed 3 years ago and it never materialized.