dylan

for that matter, why give scholarships to any white kids from nebraska? after all, they all love us enough to pay their own way. we are wasting valuable scholarships on guys like o'hanlon, crick, henery, ty steinkuhler, todd peterson, etc.? someone forward this idea to TO immediately! either pelini is purposefully sabotaging this class or barney has something on him, because there's no way the 6'7 son of an NFL lineman (and brother of a promising young tight end) could have any where near the athletic ability of kids that put together video tapes and go to camps.

i do not think that word means what you think it means

this thread is filled with so much disgusting bile i don't even know where to start. i really don't understand the hate for barney that so many of you seem to have, but i'm way more baffled by some of the other assumptions, particularly that pelini would purposefully make his football team worse just to throw a co-worker a bone. would jake have walked on without a scholarship? who knows? even if he would have, scholarships should go to kids that deserve it based on merit, not based on their willingness or ability to pay their own way. this kid camped at NU this summer and obviously showed the coaches enough. just because the kid is under the radar (have recruiting services even seen video of him?) doesn't mean he sucks. putting aside any "legacy" factors in this offer, this is the giant son of an NFL lineman and the "little" brother of a very promising young player. based on bloodline alone, he's likely to be a decent athlete, and we certainly need a few more big eaters in this class. was there this much gnashing of teeth when we beat iowa state out for ben? our program is starting to regain its foundation and i'd appreciate it if star gazers and malcontents would at least pretend to be "the greatest fans in college football", rather than lighting torches. there's nothing wrong with discussing and questioning decisions, but some of you are just way, way out of line. this staff took a team full of bad attitudes with little apparent coaching and squeezed out a 9 win season in their first year with the strong possibility of a repeat this year. the early returns on their ability to identify talent look promising. i think they've earned a little faith that they might know what they're doing.

classy. please enlighten us.

we appear to have room for 16 at this point, assuming no attrition. however, it's almost guaranteed that there will be attrition of one kind or another. maybe burkes or someone else has to take a medical scholarship, maybe one of the redshirts gets homesick, maybe one of the quarterbacks decides they'd rather not sit behind green for the balance of their career, maybe the coaches suggest someone consider finding playing time with another program, maybe someone gets booted for rule breaking, maybe someone goes pro early. one way or the other, you can pretty well guarantee that between one and maybe as many as five kids that are now scheduled to be on scholarship next season will not be. and, while i certainly do not favor giving scholarships just because you have them to give, i would not expect that the coaches to hold back scholarships solely because they expect a bigger recruiting haul the following year. they will give them to people they think can contribute to a better team as soon as possible. (of course, it's also quite possible that they'll give one or two to walk-ons, such as may or thorrell).

Yeah it will be interesting to see how this shapes up. It's funny how some people were scared we would not get a full class. I'll admit I was one of those people until I found out they were only going to take around 16 kids. i'm guessing we take closer to 20

i'd rather have a tall receiver than a skinny TE.

i don't recall the exact situation, but i think someone accidentally included his name in the participation report for the first game. he actually has not played, and so the redshirt is still in effect, but he did apparently impress the coaches enough to consider playing him this year.

...and maybe WCO receivers are supposed to stop in pre-determined holes when they see a zone coverage and ours aren't making the correct reads, making it look like the passes are off.

Saw the headlines on the Rivals page, great news! Hopefully he will get a positive impression. agree, hopefully Bo won't be yelling his a$$ off at the refs. hopefully we won't have refs as bad as the last ones that top off their putrid performance by refusing bo the standard courtesy of explaining a questionable call.

...because we need defensive ends. we should have four defensive ends ready to play at all times, preferably after being in the system and weight training program for a couple of years first. young screwed us over pretty good last year with the late switch to kansas, yancy left, and rome is probably destined to be on the inside. that leaves us with only three defensive ends currently on roster that will be here after next season. meredith looks like a good one, ankrah has a good shot, and who knows about williams, but that leaves plenty of room for three defensive end recruits this year (not including rome). also, martin needs to stay at LB where his head-hunting ways belong. i wouldn't complain about trying him as a third down rushing specialist though (ala demorrio williams).

we have more than enough TEs. ...because we have two good prospects in cotton and reed that will be two classes ahead of him? i think we can find room. we need a good TE in this class. We are in on Chase Harper at TE .....who would also be two classes ahead of any freshman that comes in and redshirts (and i can't imagine many tight ends are physically ready to block as true freshmen). recruiting is not really about your roster the following year, or even the year after that, it's about 3-5 years down the road. I guess that makes Chase being a 3/3 guy that much better. Aren't we redshirting the hotshot from San Diego also? He was our top choice last year. i'm not convinced kerr's a "hotshot" and i guess i never heard that he was our top choice last year. obviously it's way, way too soon to write the kid off, but i'm not too enthused about him. in any case, we should be getting at least one TE type of athlete in every class so that we always have three ready to go.

we have more than enough TEs. ...because we have two good prospects in cotton and reed that will be two classes ahead of him? i think we can find room. we need a good TE in this class. We are in on Chase Harper at TE .....who would also be two classes ahead of any freshman that comes in and redshirts (and i can't imagine many tight ends are physically ready to block as true freshmen). recruiting is not really about your roster the following year, or even the year after that, it's about 3-5 years down the road.

we have more than enough TEs. ...because we have two good prospects in cotton and reed that will be two classes ahead of him? i think we can find room. we need a good TE in this class.

actually, it's pretty simple. the coaches just tell tyler (or any other "commit") that if they continue to flirt with other schools, they will no longer be considered a commit and our recruiting strategy will adjust accordingly. in other words, if he starts seeing other schools, we start seeing other quarterbacks. that doesn't necessarily mean we drop him, just that we consider our QB slot to still be open for the first guy that truly commits. would it hurt us if he decommitted? sure, but it's not like we don't have options too and it's better to get this sorted out earlier than later. one of the problems with the modern obsession with recruiting is the perception that the recruits are so gloriously important that they shake the foundations of these huge programs that are at their mercy. NU seems to be taking the right approach that we will win with or without you. if you want to join us and win with us, great, get on board, but we're not making any promises of playing time or any other snake oil sale jobs that will poison team morale down the road. if a kid doesn't like it, we'll find someone with the right kind of attitude who will come in, keep his head down and work his tail off.

we all know our recruiting is jacked up...pretending it isn't and making excuses is useless...this issue obviously has not been addressed by the coaches or they just don't know how to make it any better. we do? good thing our coaches are lucky enough to keep stumbling into good players then.

Yup. In the eyes of the media (and hence the nation) we have yet to establish that we are back as a program. Those of us that follow the team closely know that Bo has been something of a miracle worker in his short time here and looks to have us headed for great things. However, he's going to have to make some real statements on the national stage before we get back what was our greatest recruiting draw through the years: the perception that going to NU meant you'd be winning almost every game and competing for championships. Without that key selling point, tradition and fan support have a hard time overcoming location and weather.

translation: i have no idea what this kid's thinking, but i'm going to spew out some BS anyways.

that's a nice line, but considering no one claimed we would beat miami by four touchdowns (or would even beat them at all), i don't think it's applicable here.

"The only thing that has been proven is that we are more talented than the Sun Belt conference." well...that and the fact that miami got stomped by a team that NU lined up and out manned (a couple of big plays and questionable flags aside). yes, all that matters is the win, but you still have to admit your argument for a significant talent disparity between FSU/miami and NU took a pretty big kick in the nuts from the result of the last two games in blacksburg.

would you care to reassess your views regarding the "talent" that played in that game (and its relation to winning football games) in light of FSU's big win over jacksonville state today?

remind me, what trophy do they hand out for most verbal commitments in september? how many studs did we have signed up at this time last year? how'd that class turn out? other than the programs that we will never out recruit regularly (OU, texas and probably A&M), i'm not sure any of the others look all that great (if you're going by those all-seeing sages at rivals). OSU's looks pretty good, and the've certainly taken more recruits from us than i'd care to see, but they're also a top 10 team that has beaten the crap out of us on the field the last couple times we've played. we'll see how things look if they don't live up to the hype and we continue to show improvement. besides, for someone that seems to care so much about recruiting rankings, would you really be happy with an average star rating of 2.36? only four four stars out of 22 players? would you be happy with KU's class?

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. we had a good recruiting class last year. i'd be willing to bet we'll have another one this year. we're not going to get back to "great" recruiting classes until we earn back two of NU's biggest selling points: winning and coaching continuity. we're on our way, but this chicken little act by a vocal segment of our online fans isn't doing much to help our other main selling point: fan support. take a deep breath, the season's here and we can all quit over-analyzing every quote that comes out of a teenager's mouth.

particularly when the kid immediately made it clear that the word "commitment" meant little to him. the days of getting "stars" on campus at all costs are over.

talent is the single most important factor in football, but only if you are able to harness it within your system. that requires both coaching ability, as well as an eye for which talented players will actually fit your system (from a skills standpoint as well as from the player "buying in"). now, recruiting services rate the kids based upon pure "talent", largely discounting things like fit, attitude, etc. that's fine, and we can address their efforts at judging solely that "talent", but it does lessen their value in determining which teams were "successful" in recruiting. it's lessened even more when you consider their bias for top teams. while i don't agree that the free market for talented recruiters/assistants is as efficient as you seem to think it is, i do think that offers is one of the best ways to determine how good a recruit is. i certainly don't have any faith in the ability of these marketing/recruiting sites to break down film (other than for the adrian petersons and aaron greens of the world). it is a problem though to use the circular logic that a kid must be good if a top recruiting team recruits him. one of the reasons that this is generally effective though is that the top teams DO get a lot of their top choices. with those recruiting hauls, having just some of the kids live up to the hype will often allow them to stay near the top. as was pointed out above, you don't need a whole line up of difference makers to be a top team. you just can't afford glaring weaknesses. finally, i agree that it is in the services best interests to be accurate, but i strongly disagree that their sustainability is threatened by being inaccurate. first and foremost they are "news" services and people (to include myself to some extent) obviously clamor for that "news". credibility is way down the list of their business needs. i don't know if it's still the case, but it used to be that rivals folks would talk about openly lobbying for extra stars. most of their followers just aren't going to tune them out over weak evaluations, and those fans will be easily replaced if they do by all of the fans that grow up with EA sports games emphasizing recruiting ratings and updates as a primary part of the sport. besides, it isn't the rating services that are considered busts when a kid doesn't live up to the hype they assigned him.