All this talk of recruiting stars and rankings

Caw Caw · January 28, 2014

http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/2014/five-star-quarterbacks-last-decade/

Some interesting insight on 5-star blue chip QB's and how they panned out. I think it's awesome to remember going into signing day how flawed some of these systems are. It's really always a gamble with a freshly graduated KID. And like we've seen this last year a good coaching staff can make them collegiate quality athletes and more importantly, men.

Cheers

jdennis82 · January 28, 2014

This entire recruiting process these days seems largely built around feeding the narcisism of 17-18 yr olds. Whether it's promoting uniforms over tradition, desperately trying to hang on to "commits" as they find they miss the attention garnered by the recruiting process and go looking around again, or the all-star games and televised school decisions, many players come into college with a very skewed sense of reality.

Unfortunately, I think recruiting and then managing the physical tools of a player is only part of the role of the coaching staff

PlummMeanGreen · January 28, 2014

True story:

Late, great U of Texas and Lone Star State icon Darrell K. Royal was once in a recruits home and non-chalantley sat down in a living room chair. The "would be" recruit came up to Coach Royal and said: "That's my dads's chair."

Doesn't seem too long after that took place that DKR had had enough and retired with what many thought would be a young age for him to retire. (North Texas played DKR's Longhorns in his last year (1976) as UT's HFC and the Mean Green almost beat the Horns, losing 17 to 14 in the last minutes).

Would be safe to say that that one living room incident did not cause the UT coach to retire, but I think such things and even what the then "Slick Willie-like" OU coach Barry Switzer was doing in the area of recruiting and denial of wrong-doing at every turn made that decision to become a permanent golfer,fishermen and listener of Willie Nelson music an even easier one for DKR.

Remember when DKR accused OU of spying on their practices and Switzer 100% denied that happening? Well, a few years later the Bootlegger's Boy would say that OU was (in deed) spying on those UT practices. Lying even back then seemed to be OK with some; that is, unless they got caught.

GMG!

Edited January 28, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

GrayEagle · January 28, 2014

I have two thoughts about the article. Recruiting is not an exact science and why should this article concern us?

The rating system is only an attempt to measure the talent of the player. Height, weight, speed, statistics, and achievements are measurable. Heart, determination, motivation and other human traits are not. It is still the best assessment that we have but it is far from perfect. I will say, however, that over time 5-stars will do better than 4-stars who will do better than 3-stars, etc. The results could be as low as 51% and still ring true.

Now, how many four or five star athletes do the G5 members get? The answer is generally zero unless he is a transfer from a P5 school. In fact, look at the complete scoreboard and you will find that about 20-25 teams are the only ones involved. All are upper echelon achievers of the Power 5 conferences which at least "sort of" means that they work. So why should we care, I mean really care, about four or five star athletes?

The real gap that should be our concern is between two and three star players. The 3-star players are usually pretty solid most of the time. The 2-star players often include the "late bloomers" and need to be very carefully selected. Some have caught the attention of some recruiting services but are all but ignored by others. Some are evaluated with a lower score and not reevaluated after they significantly improve. But, most of those that are rated two stars are lesser talented. Some may be projects. They have the raw skills that can be improved by coaching and conditioning. They may be worthy candidates but need time to develop. In our position we need to grab those that need the least developing in order to improve our standing. Once we have achieved parity with the better programs then we can really search for the hidden gems and not be worried if we miss on a few.

PlummMeanGreen · January 28, 2014

And one reason, Gray Eagle, that I think recruiting services might miss more Texans who fall thru the cracks is that we have more who play HS football (approx 160,000) than any state in the USA plus.....consider that many of those recruits schools never in their 4 year HS careers make the Texas UIL state play-offs which means they don't get that very strategic focus from recruiting services.

I think we might agree that a respectable number of our past 2 stars more than exceeded that HS talent ranking given to them but at the college level.

The one who may have been our only 4 or 5 star recruit during the Fry era was (sadly) a total bust.

3 things In recruiting 2 star Texas HS products (some of whom are even on the cusp of being a 3 star recruit)

(1) recruit speed

(2) recruit size (preferably with quick feet and a frame which can develop in the weigh room) and then...

(3) recruit kids from winning football programs no matter what UIL classification.

Many of us think we have a coaching staff who knows how to evaluate talent with the best and then also know how to motivate them once their recruits are living in the Mean Green Village That is a good thing for us who bleed green (in difference shades of green, of course)..

Edited January 28, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

DT 90 · January 28, 2014

This entire recruiting process these days seems largely built around feeding the narcisism of 17-18 yr olds. Whether it's promoting uniforms over tradition, desperately trying to hang on to "commits" as they find they miss the attention garnered by the recruiting process and go looking around again, or the all-star games and televised school decisions, many players come into college with a very skewed sense of reality.

Unfortunately, I think recruiting and then managing the physical tools of a player is only part of the role of the coaching staff

The recruiting process is actually built around the all mighty dollar. Randy Rogers and all the "recruiting services" and all the "camps" are not free. No different than in baseball.

SilverEagle · January 28, 2014

Interesting article. After all the information in the article about the number of yards these QB threw for, I finally saw maybe one reference to championships. To me, the bottom line is getting a win for your team in a pressure situation, such as conference championships....and bowl wins. I'd be more impressed with stats like "conference games won in the fourth quarter with either a close score or their team behind more than two scores"

The Eric Sozas of the world would flourish under that catagory.

BTW "Caw Caw", welcome to the board! It's nice that a Baltimore Ravens fan stopped by to join us.

Edited January 28, 2014 by SilverEagle

BigDanTeague · January 28, 2014

The recruiting process is actually built around the all mighty dollar. Randy Rogers and all the "recruiting services" and all the "camps" are not free. No different than in baseball.

There are many, many free camps and combines.

North Texas Shep · January 29, 2014

All I am saying is on NCAA 14 on my XBOX I stole a 5 star QB from Alabama last second and he is pretty darn great. UNT year 2020 is about to win their 3rd National Championship!

PlummMeanGreen · January 29, 2014

Even more amazing with me is BillySee58's excellent research which even shows about 5 of our 2 star Mean Green recruits all within a gnat's whisker of having the numbers to attain 3 star status with Rivals. Honest to goodness, isn't that close enough?

We will have a good class and it looks like some of these new incoming UNT freshmen will be key to our 2014 season, too.

:bling: So Texas Friday Night Heros............you (really) wanna' play your true freshmen year? Then check out North Texas! UNT is graduating 22 seniors so opportunity is more than knocking the door down!

Edited January 29, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

PlummMeanGreen · January 29, 2014

The recruiting process is actually built around the all mighty dollar. Randy Rogers and all the "recruiting services" and all the "camps" are not free. No different than in baseball.

Many of you would already know this, but Randy Roger's son (Jeff) is a former linebacker at North Texas and is a special teams coach for the Denver Broncos of Super Bowl This Sunday Evening fame.

SSP · January 29, 2014

Its also important to note that more than 25% of the HS football players offered D1 scholarships dont even have a ranking on Rivals or Scout.

untjim1995 · January 29, 2014

To me, recruiting at our level (outside of the top 40 programs in the country) is completely dependent on development. A coach like McCarney knows how to steadily develop a player, particularly a lineman, through strength and conditioning and through solid coaching. Patterson at TCU has done a fantastic job of this, too, up to the point where they now get higher rated classes. Interestingly, TCU's success in recruiting has been inversely related to their on-field performance--of course, the MWC vs the Big XII has a lot to do with that, too!!

What we realize now is that Coach Mac just needs to get guys here that want to get better. If he gets that mindset here, there is a great chance that he will become a solid contributor, regardless of ranking. Its so different from the UT Recruiting rags in this state that have overrated any kid that Texas recruits because "they must be great to get UTs attention". That mentality has lead to entitlement and comfortabiility in Club-Med Austin, which eventually led to the fall backwards. Charlie Strong will have to get rid of that mentality to get UT back up to the top of the Big XII, but most likely, he will try to do just that with a lot of players that are overrated because UT Recruiting Rag Authors have gotten paid for their "content", meaning that they sold their readers what they want to read.