AndyDufresne

Thanks Caveman. I thought I'd get call a troll at least once. I've been reading this board for a long time. Just now decided to join and poke a stick at the hottest topic on this board in recent months. You do make a pretty good point though. Recruits are committing earlier and earlier. Soon, coaching staffs will be in the stands at Pop Warner games. Pediatric doctors will be hired to give bone growth and muscle mass projections. Another decade and the coaching staff will be hanging out in maternity wards along with their crack staff of geneticists.

Well the good news is that we should be back up to 6 commits after this weekend. Hopefully this starts a positive roll for the staff. Possibly 7.

yes, i can. it's embarrassing how some of "the greatest fans in college football" have been wailing and gnashing their teeth over early recruiting returns, particularly when it's been a recruiting dead period over the summer. dont tell that to practially all of the Big 12 teams who already have double digit commits..... big the greatest fans in the world doesnt mean you have to be silent and grin and bear it So not being silent to you is complaining on a message board? Why not express your concerns in an e-mail to Tom Osborne, Bo Pelini, or Ted Gilmore? Make sure to let us know how it goes. Here is Bo Pelini's secretary's e-mail address: lleupold@huskers.com Here is Ted Gilmore's: triggins@huskers.com Here's Tom Osborne's assistant: ahackbart@huskers.com You could always try bpelini@huskers.com, tgilmore@huskers.com, or tosborne@huskers.com as well, as the format among the assistants is consistent. If you really don't want to "grin and bear it", voice your concerns to those that can effect change.

It is funny that you mention truth. You have called this recruiting season "disastrous". We have had two decommits, and you call that an "alarming" rate. Your perception seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from those that think that things couldn't be better. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I agree with you that our staff needs to take a hard look at how things have gone during the dog days of summer and adjust their strategies. We need a recruiting coordinator that is going to keep the coaches on task. We need the support staff to do a much better job(welcome Mr. Austin Everson). On the other hand, I will wait to pass any final judgement on this class. "Disastrous" is a word best saved for February (or even a couple of years down the road if you really want to assess performance). "Alarming" is more than losing a guy that we wanted and one that we didn't. "Leftovers" is best used when we actually have knowledge of the coaches' recruiting board. 4 out of our 5 4-star commits from the 2009 class didn't commit until after October 1st. Now I'm not saying that our class will be stellar, but I don't think the sky has fallen either. You can keep your finger poised over the panic button, but quit pressing it so often right now.

Odd that the #16 21 CB in the country has no offers from the top teams in the country. Considering where these lower rated players are going: 24 Victor Hampton DB 5-11/170 Florida 25 Tyrann Mathieu DB 5-10/175 LSU 26 Derek Owens DB 5-11/180 Georgia 29 Aaron Colvin DB 6-0/180 Oklahoma 70 Deion Belue DB 6-0/175 Alabama I'm thinking the outlier here is the Rivals ratings. OTOH he's better than what this class has right now at CB which is nothing. I guess we'll see what happens come signing day. well we can disagree.... but someone will be regardless about this kid.... i hope your right and it wont be us........ all i am saying it was better to have 3rd rated prospect our to ARK and 21 rater CB rather than no CB or some guy signing up from the bottom of the board.... Just because a prospect is rated lower by Rivals doesn't mean that they are at the bottom of the board. Would you also say that it is better to have the 3rd rated propect in Arkansas and 21st rated CB sign, then not qualify, then it would be to sign a guy from the bottom of the board and actually have them make it to campus?

Hope you're right, Brian. But who's going to be on that list and was it the guys we were really after? hell no is the answer to that one. we will get the "leftovers".....i hope this staff learned something from this disastrous recruiting season....... Overreact much?

My thoughts exactly. Let's hope NU gets it in high gear for recruiting during the season. John Talman was on the Shick and Nick show this morning. He stated that he thinks that the decommitment is a case of Nebraska cooling on Anterio. He said he was surprised at the offer in the first place because Bo usually places value in having bigger corners and some reports were that Sloan was 5'8" and 165 lbs. He stated that Anterio was not able to schedule visits because of his academic issues. He also expects recruiting to pick up beginning this weekend. On a side note, we have 5 commits (Rodriguez, Moudy, Gabbert, Evans, and Vestal).

I have heard that the effort put into recruiting has intensified since late July. While I do believe that there were coaches who were not putting in the necessary diligence into recruiting for much of the summer, this appears to have been rectified for the most part. I don't think that the lack of contact with Sloan was a continuance of the lack of summer effort, but was more the fact that his chance of qualification has outweighed his potential in the eyes of our coaches. Looking at the current roster and the number of available scholarships we will have available for the 2010 class, I think that we take 1 cornerback (2 at the absolute most). Do we really want this ship taken by someone who has a good chance of being academically ineligible? As for your statement about our staff offering every 5* player and using Rivals to send out letters, you obviously have absolutely no insight into how Pelini and staff recruit because this couldn't be further from the truth. As for getting 5-star players, wait until next years class (one or two could announce as early as this fall).

Word is that Sloan was an academic risk that the coaches didn't need with such a small class. If insiders like RRT and HTO over at HuskersIllustrated aren't upset about this one, then neither am I.

I think that you are discounting the importance of talent and the methods the recruiting services use to rate it. I think it is fairly safe to assume that the best evaluators of high school talent work for the highest bidders. While I obviously don't have payroll data available to me, I would guess that the biggest paychecks come from the top teams and not Rivals or Scout. Basing at least part of their player ratings on offers only seems like a sound business move to me. If Rivals or Scout lose whatever credibility that they do have with their subscribers, they will not remain in business. It is within their own best interests to publish the most accurate ratings that they can by using whatever information is available to them. As for talent, I like to think of talent as raw material. As a bad analogy, I will use mountain bikes. An expert frame builder can turn aluminum into a very good bike frame, but can really create something special with titanium. Someone who doesn't know what they are doing is going to end up with a shoddy finished product no matter what material they use. I do see your point though and am certainly intrigued by some of the implications. I think too often that we who follow recruiting like to lump recruits into specific star categories and treat one 2-star player just like the next. We will somewhat discount a specific recruit because they are a 2-star and speculate on their future based on what we know about the entire pool of 2-star recruits. Based on this study, http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Follow_up...l_All_Americans, 30% of a compiled list of 2007 All-Americans (excluding kickers and punters) were 2-stars. Sure, the percentage chance of any random 2-star attaining All-American status is much lower than that of a 5 star, but are there certain teams that have a knack for identifying these future impact players, thus increasing the percentages exponentially? Not every 2-star is created equally. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some say that Bill Callahan had a knack for recruiting the "wrong" 4-stars. If some of these same players had gone elsewhere, how would this have changed their fates? Florida State's 2004 recruiting class had 12 players with Florida offers. What if these players would have signed with Florida instead? Would Urban Meyer have been able to win 2 out of the last 3 national championships with these players? All of these are obviously impossible questions to answer, but it certainly makes for interesting discussion.

Apologies, but I didn't see anything like this currently posted. I'm not trying to argue for or against the recruiting services or take sides, just showing the results of a study over a period of time. No need to apologize. In fact, I sincerely thank you for the time, effort and energy you put into this analysis. It is an outstanding contribution and is very interesting in terms of implications. This seems to support what is obvious. To consistently be an elite program, a top 6% program as you say --- to be numbered along with USC, Florida --- the absolute top --- you have to recruit the absolute top athletes. All the coaching and all the effort and all the intangibles will not be sufficient to CONSISTENTLY compete with the biggest of the big dogs. To play with USC and Florida you must have comparable recruiting prowess. If you can not recruit like a big dog --- you will not be a big dog. period. At least not consistently. Also from your data, it is clear that after the top big dogs, the rest of the nation gets athletes of sufficiently similar quality that the effort, coaching, the intangibles and other criteria make the recruiting correlation essentially non-correlative. That is, if you cannot recruit with the big dogs you will not be a big dog --- but you can still be good because after the big dogs take the top athletes, what is left over for others (like NU) is distributed such that your coaching, intangibles, heart, effort, etc. can enable you to compete well with anyone other than the big dogs --- even if they have slightly higher rated recruits. It is really simple --- at the extremes of recruiting --- when you are at the absolute tops --- you'll be at the absolute top of the BCS title hunt. If you recruit at the other extreme --- really badly --- you can not compete no matter what the heart, coaching is. In between --- where most teams reside --- like NU --- recruiting ranking is numbered among an array of other contributors and anything can happen --- here coaching and heart, etc. is largely what dictates the pecking order. You're very welcome. Based on the sample and the numbers, I think that your deductions are spot on. Perhaps a larger sample size would provide different results, but unfortunately Rivals database only goes back to 2002.

Don't forget about Mike Moudy, Andrew Rodriguez, and Ryne Reeves on the line as well.

Who are the 2 possible 5 stars IYO? I suspect Aaron Green is one of them. You are correct on Green. Tyler Moore is the other. Offers from Florida, Florida State, Miami, and Ohio State (among others).

Apologies, but I didn't see anything like this currently posted. I'm not trying to argue for or against the recruiting services or take sides, just showing the results of a study over a period of time.

Comparing Rivals Rankings to Sagarin Rankings For this particular analysis, I decided to average the Rivals rankings for every division IA team from 2002-2008. I also averaged the 2006-2008 Sagarin rankings for each team. It was necessary to use the Sagarin poll because each team is ranked every year. Here are the top 25 recruiting teams and the the 7 year class average: 1. USC - 4.1 2. Georgia - 6.4 3. Florida - 7.1 4. Oklahoma - 7.3 5. LSU - 8.9 6. Miami - 8.9 7. Florida State - 9.0 8. Texas - 10.0 9. Michigan - 11.3 10. Auburn - 12.6 11. Tennessee - 13.7 12. Ohio State - 14.0 13. Notre Dame - 18.0 14. South Carolina - 18.4 15. Alabama - 19.1 16. Texas A&M - 20.0 17. UCLA - 25.0 18. Nebraska - 25.3 19. California - 26.4 20. Oregon - 27.7 21. Arkansas - 27.7 22. Arizona State - 28.1 23. Oklahoma State - 28.3 24. Maryland - 28.9 24. Clemson - 28.9 Here are the top 25 teams according to the Sagarin rankings and the 3 year average: 1. USC - 2.7 2. Florida - 4.0 3. Oklahoma - 8.0 4. LSU - 8.3 5. Ohio State - 9.7 6. Texas - 11.7 7. Georgia - 13.0 7. West Virginia - 13.0 9. Virginia Tech - 16.3 10. Oregon State - 16.3 11. Penn State - 17.3 12. California - 17.7 13. Oregon - 18.0 14. BYU - 20.7 15. Boise State - 22.0 16. Missouri - 22.3 17. Texas Tech - 23.0 18. Boston College - 25.3 19. Wake Forest - 26.7 20. Clemson - 27.0 21. TCU - 27.7 22. Auburn - 28.0 23. Utah - 28.3 24. Rutgers - 29.0 25. Tennessee - 29.3 25. Oklahoma State - 29.3 (38. Nebraska - 38.0) As you can see, for the top 7 teams in the Sagarin rankings (including Georgia but not West Virginia) there is a high correlation with the Rivals rankings In fact, the average absolute value of the differential between the Sagarin and Rivals ranking is 2.6 which means that each team's average Rivals ranking was within 2.6 places of the average Sagarin ranking. After that, things get quite a bit murkier. For the remainder of the top 25, the average absolute value differential is 24.4. The average differential is -22.5, which means that on average, teams 8 through 25 performed better in the Sagarin poll than the recruiting rankings by 22.5 places. This is quite a differential. Even removing the non-BCS teams from the top 25 results in an average differential of -13.8 for positions 8-25. Looking at all BCS teams only, the average absolute value differential is 20.4. This means that on average BCS teams average Sagarin finish was either 20.4 spots better or 20.4 spots worse than the average recruiting ranking. Keep in mind that these numbers are certainly skewed by non-BCS conference teams, even though the Sagarin computer rankings account for strength of schedule. Here are the big BCS winners (Sagarin rankings outperformed recruiting rankings) and the average differential: 1. Cincinnati - 57.1 2. Wake Forest - 47.0 3. Connecticut - 31.9 4. Oregon State - 29.1 5. South Florida - 28.0 6. Kentucky - 27.8 7. West Virginia - 26.7 8. Vanderbilt - 22.9 9. Rutgers - 19.6 10. Texas Tech - 17.6 11. Penn State - 15.0 12. Kansas - 14.0 13. Virginia Tech - 13.1 14. Boston College - 11.2 15. Missouri - 10.5 And the big losers: 1. Washington - 49.0 2. Iowa State - 47.1 3. Miami - 44.1 4. Syracuse - 43.8 5. Colorado - 43.1 6. Texas A&M - 36.7 6. Notre Dame - 36.7 8. Duke - 36.0 9. North Carolina - 34.4 10. Mississippi State - 33.9 11. Illinois - 33.7 12. Minnesota - 33.3 13. NC State - 33.1 14. Michigan - 29.7 15. Kansas State - 28.6 So as you can see, the evidence from this rather limited study does show that at the very top (approximately the top 6%), the recruiting rankings have been a very good indicator of future performance during the last 3 years. After that, even the most diehard recruiting junkie would have to admit that the correlation is very weak.