Mike Riley's Recruiting Adventures and What Nebraska Fans Should Expect Moving Forward

man eating mastodon said:
cm husker said:
cm husker said:
Recruitnik ratings are basically irrelevant and not remotely objective.
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Recruitnik ratings are basically irrelevant and not remotely objective.
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I remember hearing Saban saying having top ranked recruiting classes were important. he must be wrong if your right.
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I have no doubt that he thinks having having great recruiting classes are important. They are. I would be surprised if he said the rankings matter much. Though since Alabama benefits from the recruitniks, maybe he did play up their importance. Do you have a link or quote?

 
I think young players definitely cruise message boards and social media at the recruiting school, and the hateful chatter might make them think twice.

Then again, they will find similar chatter at virtually every other school they're considering.

The entire Internet it too angry and ill-informed for its own good, but what can you do?

 
I have the belief that recruit rankings are an important indicator only in terms consistency and being within the top 20. I know it is an arbitrary number, but bear with me.

I feel programs that can put together a string of top 20 classes have the necessary raw materials to put together a nationally relevant program. The consistency matters more than a single home run class. This due to the fact that the addition of one or two blue chip players can mean the difference between a top ten class and the 20th class. However, some kids will get injured, develop later, get into academic/policy/criminal trouble or have limited motivation. This makes it easy for a top-rated class to fail to produce. When this happens, all of a sudden class rankings no longer matter. Well, yes and no.

For that one recruiting class that does not pan out, those rankings were a poor indicator. However, a school that fills its roster with five years worth of top 20 classes is very unlikely to have that many misses or misfortune. A consistently highly ranked class (within top 20) will feed a program with enough talent that can adjust to college, a new system and sustain inevitable attrition.

Of course, it the coaches do not instill a culture of winning, accountability and player development, none of this means a darn thing.

 
cm husker said:
Youngstown has as many recruits at this point as it usually does and a 3 star, which is its first since at least 2012.

You shouldn't be allowed to rewrite history, let alone the present.

My assessment of Callahan has almost nothing to do with my personal dislike of his coaching styles and philosophies. Almost every objective measure demonstrates that he recruited no better than solich and pelini and managed a roster even worse.
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I have seen a number of your posts on different forums. You ALWAYS allow your dislike to sway your assessment, and when you do like a coach you ignore numerous facts!

 
1995 Redux said:
huskerfan2000 said:
1995 Redux said:
Hujan said:
1995 Redux said:
Hujan said:
1995 Redux said:
I truly fear all of the FIRE RILEY discussion that goes on around places like this will turn away the likes of Keyshawn and his crew. We have a bigger voice than we know.

That said, we do need a solid commit here soon before our class momentum completely dies. Hopefully once the dead period ends, we see an explosion and a strong finish.
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I still, for the life of me, don't understand why people think the fan angst has such a big impact on recruiting separate and apart from the reason for the angst in the first place.

For one, as long as the stadium is full on game days, it is only relevant if one assumes that fan angst will translate into a coach's firing and we all know that ADs don't fire successful coaches just because the fans are in uproar (assuming fans would even be in uproar if the coach was successful, itself a dubious assumption).

Two, it unrealistically assumes that other programs experiencing similar problems are magically going to have much more patient, well-behaved fans than ours. But if you're read any other teams' message boards, you'd know that the angst is at best a wash and, more realistically, other teams' boards make Nebraska's message boards look like The Reading Rainbow. You think Texas, USC, LSU, or Alabama have less caustic boards than Nebraska? They will tar and feather their coaches if the margin of victory is not to their liking. Half of our fanbase would feel guilty about getting angry at Riley if he tortured dogs in his free time and would probably find a way to blame themselves for him doing it.

Blaming the message boards for paltry recruiting is at once a very arrogant and very self-loathing thing to say, IMO.
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Forgetting that 18 year old kids who are highly touted have access to the internet is part of that line of thinking.

If they are considering school A and school B, jump on a social media website for both and randomly see positive thinking from one fan base but anger and loathing from the other, it could easily sway them the other way.

Our players see more of what we post on this message board than you think, why wouldn't a recruit come to anplace like this to see what the fans think?
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I don't doubt recruits might peruse the boards. But the false predicate in your hypothetical is that our board will be more "negative" than the boards pertaining to the other 5-7 teams the recruit is also considering. I think that's really unlikely.

And if your answer is to point out the recruit might be comparing us to successful programs with positive boards, I would counter that (1) our relative negativity would be over shadowed by the reason for it (I.e., our comparatively poor record), and (2) that any recruit worth having should be able to see that comparing the attitudes of fans on a 10-2 team to those of a 5-7 team is very apples to oranges.

Unless we are supposed to act like over medicated, loopy Stepford fans with creepy plastic smiles in the face of objectively terrible coaching decisions, I don't find the content of the board all that surprising or abnormal and neither would a recruit comparing us to TCU.
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You are missing the point. All it takes it 1 nasty comment and it could completely change a kids mind on whether or not he wants to come here.

I'm not saying we should all pump sunshine, but some of the crap that gets posted here is exactly what would make me not want to play here if it were me.
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Do you have any facts that prove the comments on here make a difference? I mean, it isn't like this site just went online, or that people just started posting their thoughts.
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No, not that a specific post or poster on here turned them away, but...

quesadilla said:
While I'd agree that negativity from the fan base is unlikely to be a huge factor for most recruits most of the time, I do think it was problem this year for the simple reason that one of the Huskers' highest profile recruits, Keyshawn Johnson, Jr., actually commented about the negative statements he heard from fans on a visit:

LINK

He's about as savvy a recruit as you'll find and while he said it wouldn't have a impact on his decision, it made enough of an impression for him to comment. The fan base and atmosphere at Memorial are supposed to be advantages for recruiting, certainly not something a 5-star recruit needs to be discounting as part of his decision process, let alone giving interviews about. That's just fodder for negative recruiting by other programs and will have a negative impact on the team's ability to recruit equally talented but less savvy recruits.

I was at the same game (Wisconsin) that led to Keyshawn's comments, as were several of my friends and relatives. We were scattered around the stadium and every one of us had a similar experience to what he had. It was enough for my wife to want to move (we were about row 15 on the 35 yard line so I told her to suck it up), and this was during a close game against a team that has completely embarrassed us in recent years, so I'm sure it was much worse later in the season.

Riley and crew certainly did a lot worthy of criticism this season but there is a world of difference between informed and honestly held critical opinions and vicious, snarky, uniformed, and disrespectful ad hominem attacks. When the later start drowning out the former, that is a huge problem for a program that touts the quality of it's fan base and game-day atmosphere as a key selling point.
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That alone is an impact enough that people should occasionally quit their bellyaching.
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because a recruit mentioned negative comments? That is your impact? Did it change his mind? Did he decide to rule out NU?

Nope, so the impact was zero!

It is very easy to blame the fans, instead of putting blame where it really belong, on the coaches for putting a crappy product on the field.

We had enough talent to win at the very least 3-4 more games this year!

EDIT: and if you are a recruit going to sites like this and allowing what is said to sway you, then you are stupid!

 
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I don't see a significant climb in recruiting with how much time we have left. Nebraska will be lucky to finish 35th. Look at Clemson how they've recruited since 2008 when we played them. They have turned in top 15 classes year in and year out with a lot of 4 star recruits too.

 
MR has to close real strong just to bring in a Top 30 class. Doesn't quite measure up to where I thought we were going.

 
I personally don't give a crap about recruiting class rankings as long as we get 2 or 3 impact players. Once the ball starts rolling and we show a record of success ,others will jump on. We need to get some play makers on defense and take some risks next year instead of sitting back. You'd think the D coaches would recognize that by now.

 
RedSavage said:
cm husker said:
Youngstown has as many recruits at this point as it usually does and a 3 star, which is its first since at least 2012.

You shouldn't be allowed to rewrite history, let alone the present.

My assessment of Callahan has almost nothing to do with my personal dislike of his coaching styles and philosophies. Almost every objective measure demonstrates that he recruited no better than solich and pelini and managed a roster even worse.
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Huh, I must have blacked out for the time when Solich and Pelini had consistent top 20 recruiting classes, with one of those being a consensus top ten class.
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I'm guessing you did. Check out this article. http://hailvarsity.com/news/college-football-recruiting/a-brief-history-of-husker-recruiting-rankings-1987-2012/2013/01/

Note in particular that Solich had classes in '98 to 2001 that were consistently in the top 20 (and top 10 among some services) as well as a class heading into '04 that was 14th when he was fired.

Callahan did have a highly ranked class in '05, when he signed 32 recruits, which was significantly more than had been signed in a single class before or since. Other than that, his classes would have been 4th or worse compared to Solich and right in line with Pelini's classes.

Also important for Nebraska fans to realize is (a) NU will never consistently have top 5 to 10 classes, and (b) top 10 classes aren't required (or shouldn't be) to win conference championships. As this shows, TO enjoyed his 90s run with classes ranked outside of the top 10 on average.

If NU can average 20th in the recruitnik rankings, with a good coach, the Huskers should be winning .700+ games every year and, 3 out of every 5 years, be in a position to win a conference championship (i.e., in the CCG or runner up in the division to the team that won the CCG). Realistically, that's what almost all teams should aim for.

 
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People keep pointing to the '05 class as proof of greatness in recruiting. I personally believe them being ranked so much higher than other classes since is a farce.

Class Average player rating

05 .8523

06 .8493

07 .8241

08 .7903

09 .7883

10 .7801

11 .8832

12 .8674

13 .8334

14 .8472

15 .8170

16 .8702 (So far)

FYI....this is from 247 sports.

The '05 class was the 5th rated class in the country and everyone rants and raves about it. Fact is, we have had classes with a higher average player rating since then. The reason it was ranked 5th was because of numbers. The class had 31 players in it. The class had 6 4* and 1 5*.

This year, so far, our average player rating is .8702. Yes, the average rating of our players right now is higher than that amazing '05 class. We are still in on some pretty highly rated players. We have 3 4* players with only 15 kids. We are still in on some more 4 star players.

We are NOT going to get anywhere close to 31 commits this year. So, by that alone, we have no chance of getting that highly ranked. But, we have a chance of having a very high average player rating. Which.....I thin is a major part of looking at a class and seeing if it should be viewed as a good class or not.

I see us ending up somewhere with 23-24 players in this class. That's a decent sized class.

 
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23-24 kids in a class is more than decent. It's full, unless you want to skirt the limits and resort to the "fire and forget" methods of the SEC.

 
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