Game Planning VS Recruiting...Whats more important?

[mmmtodd]

Whats more important for a college coach? I voted gameplanning, and the results map was very interesting to me;for a number of reasons. Im sure you can extrapolate why, being a knowledgeable Nebraska college football fan like myself.

SportsNation Poll

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[killer cacti]

Game planning. Game planning. Game planning.

Who says you have to have the best players to win? Sure it helps, but a middle school football coach can take a team of all-stars and would get pounded by the Huskers...

Why? Because they can't game plan better than Bo.

If you game plan correctly, you will win games. You win games, you get recruits.

If you recruit well, you still better gameplan with those blue chippers or App State would beat Michigan.

 

[WVhuskerXX]

Look at Nick Saban for example. Guy can flat out coach. Like him or not, that isn't the point. He is at Michigan St. and I don't recall him have the success he has at LSU and Bama. And it isn't like he learned how to coach overnight. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, without good players you won't win. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**...Not even Bo Pelini.

 

[mmmtodd]

we had prime example of a great recruiter here in our own yard recently. That went well. The offensive coordinator from that regime still cant seem to gameplan his way down from the pressbox with regularity.

I guess I think one isnt flat out more important than another, that obviously you have to be good at both, but I'll take the better gameplanner every day of the week. Proof is in the pudding for me (Bo's defensive turnaround, for example), especially for a program of Nebraska's nature.

 

[bshirt]

Look at Nick Saban for example. Guy can flat out coach. Like him or not, that isn't the point. He is at Michigan St. and I don't recall him have the success he has at LSU and Bama. And it isn't like he learned how to coach overnight. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, without good players you won't win. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**...Not even Bo Pelini.

uuuhhhhhh....did you happen to notice what happened to the blackshirts when Bo replaced Coz?

 

[HuskerTrucker]

Game planning is really big, you can have others doing your recruiting for you, or facilities, location, educational opportunities, OR your play on the field can do the recruiting for you...if you have success on the field, recruiting comes easily with it. If you can't win on the field, or have piss poor game planning, it is hard to get the best players to want to be a part of it. When you can win with mediocre players, a talented kid will look at that and think that he has the opportunity to come in and do some great things in that program.

That map with responses from around the country was really interesting though. Maybe there just aren't that many fans that "get it" in all those other states.

 

[illnino]

Wow, there's good points on both sides. I will pick C, all of the above.

 

[RedDenver]

I think Bill Snyder proved at KSU that they both matter. However, based on his success at KSU, I'd give an edge to game planning. He started winning BEFORE he recruited better players. But he didn't move into the top 15 in the nation until AFTER he got much better players. In my view a bad game plan is worse than bad players, but great players are better than a great game plan.

 

[ESPY]

Football is a game of matchups. That doesn't necessarily mean the matchup between players is the most important matchup. That statement is more based one gameplan vs another gameplan - that's the big matchup. How do we utilize our players in a way that gives us the advantage over the opponent's gameplan?

Let's take a look at the 2009 Big 12 title game as an example (painful, I know, but proof is in the puddin). Texas is a big-time favorite coming in. They have great recruiting and a solid coach. This coach produces a gameplan for these players. On the other side is Nebraska, the underdog, which doesn't have the blue-chippers that TU does, but does have a solid coach in its own respect. This underdog coach produces an impeccable game plan that owns the Texas blue-chippers & the gameplan they're following. We all remember how that game ended, but Texas had no business winning that game because of gameplanning.

 

[WVhuskerXX]

Look at Nick Saban for example. Guy can flat out coach. Like him or not, that isn't the point. He is at Michigan St. and I don't recall him have the success he has at LSU and Bama. And it isn't like he learned how to coach overnight. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, without good players you won't win. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**...Not even Bo Pelini.

uuuhhhhhh....did you happen to notice what happened to the blackshirts when Bo replaced Coz?

Yea, and we also had four losses. I thought we all wanted to win championships??? We need better O players.

 

[Enhance]

I'm honestly surprised that 61% of the nation believes that recruiting is more important.

Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams are the perfect exception to the rule. When Nebraska played Miami, Florida, and Tennessee in the 90's, all three opposing schools had athletes who were "better" and who were rated higher than Nebraska players. I mean for crying out loud we had multiple walk-ons starting in the 1995 National Championship game.

If recruiting was more important, than Texas would go undefeated every single year. Or, whoever had the #1 recruiting class would be undefeated once those players began to start.

The fact of the matter is this: recruiting is important, but it is nowhere near as important as game-planning and coaching your players. Suh was a four star player who became arguably the best defensive tackle to ever play the game of college football. Wouldn't recruiting tell us that it would be only the five stars who could reach such success?

 

[Enhance]

Look at Nick Saban for example. Guy can flat out coach. Like him or not, that isn't the point. He is at Michigan St. and I don't recall him have the success he has at LSU and Bama. And it isn't like he learned how to coach overnight. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, without good players you won't win. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**...Not even Bo Pelini.

In my honest opinion, saying something like this goes against everything it means to be a Cornhusker. So, respectfully, I must disagree with your logic.

Your example can be flipped right back around. There are plenty of coaches who had success at smaller schools who go on to coach the "big boys", and they end up falling flat on their face. Dan Hawkins had a lot of success at Boise State, but when he got to a school that without question had better athletes (according to star and recruiting rankings), he failed. Hawkins has yet to have a season of better than .500 at Colorado. Going 53-11 at a place like Boise State (that had not even gone to a BCS bowl game at this point) and then going 13-24 in his first three seasons at CU says a lot.

I'm not saying recruiting isn't important, but coaching is much more important. Like I said in my other post, Nebraska had multiple walk-ons starting during the 1995 National Championship game. Florida had way better athletes according to those beloved star rankings, yet Nebraska ripped them apart like they were a High school team.

 

[mmmtodd]

I wonder if being in the hottest part of recruiting season skews those results much?

I still cant get over the results map though. I mean, look at the teams that are in the states that consider gameplanning more important;

Nebraska- Duh

Iowa/Iowa St- Sure

Boise St- Perfect Sense

Utah- Quite Logical

then

Oregon- ??? WTH? This one floored me. With all the hype-Nike-flash-and-dash type stuff Ive always just pigeonholed them as showboating recruit whores. Its almost foreboding and scares the bejesus out of me because they obviously can flat out recruit, and have a damn fine coach as well. Here's your next Pac-10 National Champion if there is going to be one.

 

[Enhance]

I wonder if being in the hottest part of recruiting season skews those results much?

I still cant get over the results map though. I mean, look at the teams that are in the states that consider gameplanning more important;

Nebraska- Duh

Iowa/Iowa St- Sure

Boise St- Perfect Sense

Utah- Quite Logical

then

Oregon- ??? WTH? This one floored me. With all the hype-Nike-flash-and-dash type stuff Ive always just pigeonholed them as showboating recruit whores. Its almost foreboding and scares the bejesus out of me because they obviously can flat out recruit, and have a damn fine coach as well. Here's your next Pac-10 National Champion if there is going to be one.

Oregon has pretty knowledgeable fans. But I was surprised to see that there weren't more states that believed coaching was better. But the ones that did show up as saying coaching is better come as really no surprise.

 

[WVhuskerXX]

Look at Nick Saban for example. Guy can flat out coach. Like him or not, that isn't the point. He is at Michigan St. and I don't recall him have the success he has at LSU and Bama. And it isn't like he learned how to coach overnight. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, without good players you won't win. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh**...Not even Bo Pelini.

In my honest opinion, saying something like this goes against everything it means to be a Cornhusker. So, respectfully, I must disagree with your logic.

Your example can be flipped right back around. There are plenty of coaches who had success at smaller schools who go on to coach the "big boys", and they end up falling flat on their face. Dan Hawkins had a lot of success at Boise State, but when he got to a school that without question had better athletes (according to star and recruiting rankings), he failed. Hawkins has yet to have a season of better than .500 at Colorado. Going 53-11 at a place like Boise State (that had not even gone to a BCS bowl game at this point) and then going 13-24 in his first three seasons at CU says a lot.

I'm not saying recruiting isn't important, but coaching is much more important. Like I said in my other post, Nebraska had multiple walk-ons starting during the 1995 National Championship game. Florida had way better athletes according to those beloved star rankings, yet Nebraska ripped them apart like they were a High school team.

That was also 15 years ago and there wasnt the same scholarship limit. In 1992 Nebraska had one of the best recruiting classes ever. So those guys were juniors and seniors correct?? So they must have been some pretty good players before they got here.