Game Planning VS Recruiting...Whats more important?

[RockyMountainOySker]

The results of the Huskerboard version reminds me why I love Husker fans.

 

[Enhance]

Two word Boise state. There is a reason that they sre 49-4 over the last 4 years and it sure as hell isn't the loads of talent they have comming in. As much as I hate to admit it look at the success kstate had in the late 90's. They didn't have a lot of talent comming in also look at the coaches who coached under snider and went on to have success themselves. I'm shocked that 61% of the nation believes that recruiting is more important.

That's because 61% of the nation is a Texas fan. <_<

 

[knapplc]

Two word Boise state. There is a reason that they sre 49-4 over the last 4 years and it sure as hell isn't the loads of talent they have comming in. As much as I hate to admit it look at the success kstate had in the late 90's. They didn't have a lot of talent comming in also look at the coaches who coached under snider and went on to have success themselves. I'm shocked that 61% of the nation believes that recruiting is more important.

Boise State and KSU circa the 1990s also have/had ridiculously poor SOS's. Boise's SOS over the last decade averaged 98th in the country. Sure, they win a ton of games, but they play 95% of their games against Middle Directional State U. Props to them for their BCS success, but their regular-season work leaves plenty to be desired.

 

[carlfense]

Two word Boise state. There is a reason that they sre 49-4 over the last 4 years and it sure as hell isn't the loads of talent they have comming in. As much as I hate to admit it look at the success kstate had in the late 90's. They didn't have a lot of talent comming in also look at the coaches who coached under snider and went on to have success themselves. I'm shocked that 61% of the nation believes that recruiting is more important.

Boise State and KSU circa the 1990s also have/had ridiculously poor SOS's. Boise's SOS over the last decade averaged 98th in the country. Sure, they win a ton of games, but they play 95% of their games against Middle Directional State U. Props to them for their BCS success, but their regular-season work leaves plenty to be desired.

Yeah. Also easier to get through the year without injuries to your starters when you play in the WAC.

 

[northtxhusker]

Gameplanning and coaching the players to give maximum effort while on the field, that is why App.State beats Michigan they played harder. Boise State shouldn't really count since they play maybe 1 or 2 meaningful games a year.

 

[mmmtodd]

in the spirit of the the question, boise st VS oklahoma definitely counts to me.

 

[JTrain]

Recruiting is probably more important than gameplanning. But you left out actual coaching (meaning all the things the coaches do outside of the actual game). That's extremely important. But if we're just looking at talent vs. gameplanning, talent seems quite obviously more important. Think of it this way: a team whose talent level is a 1 (out of 10) faces a team whose talent level is a 10. The 10-talent team is given a 1 gameplanner (let's say, myself) while the 1-talent team is given a 10 gameplanner (let's say, Chris Petersen for offense and Bo for defense). Who is going to win? Most likely the 10-talent team will win quite easily. But let's put actual 2009 teams in these spots to make the example more clear.

Alabama, a 14-0 team (with me as the offensive and defensive coordinator) faces Western Kentucky, a 0-12 team (with Petersen at OC and Bo at DC). I'm confident that I can lead Alabama to a 2-3 touchdown win. I'll have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll put together a few basic plays on each side of the ball and let Bama's far superior athletes physically dominate at every position.

Most important:

1. Basic coaching (practice philosophy, player progression, etc.)

2. Recruiting/talent

3. Gameplanning

 

[walksalone]

apparently the rest of the nation who determined that recruiting is more important got their information from these two men....

 

[Fuzzy]

Callahan and his top-notch recruits couldn't win a b!^@h-slap contest...even with his scripted play sheet each Saturday.

Classic example why Game planning is bigger than recruiting, what good is having 5 star recruits if your game plan looks like it was thrown together by a bunch of chimpanzees.

 

[JTrain]

I don't think people are actually considering the question that was asked. It isn't coaching vs. talent/recruiting (which seems to be what most people interpreted it as), it's specifically gameplanning (i.e. playcalling, sets and plays, game strategy, etc.) vs. talent/recruiting. Callahan may not have been a great gameplanner, but that was the least of what made him a poor head coach. It was the other 164.5 hours a week (specifically things like practice philosophy and player development) where he did himself in.

If you're merely comparing gameplanning to recruiting, I think you'll find having talent is considerably more important than being able to gameplan well. Put the greatest offensive and defensive minds in history in charge of a painfully untalented team like WKU or EMU for a game, and put Average Joe HS Coach in charge of a loaded team like Alabama or Texas. Who wins?

 

[jnkyrdoff6]

I've gotta say game planning here. I mean seriously, two years ago we'd go into a game and the combined score would be 120. Sure our offense hit some hard times this year, but we still managed to get more than a 5-7 record. Hey, it might be a while before we get back to winning every game, but at least we're not letting Tech put up 70 a game. That just tore me apart. Even with an offense that didn't shoot out the scoreboard every game we managed 9 regular season wins. I will say though that Bo's defense was mostly recruited by Cosgrove. He could recruit em', just couldn't coach em'. It'll be interesting to see where our teams at after 5 or so years.

 

[bshirt]

You can give a poor mechanic the best tools in the World, yet they'll still be a poor mechanic. You can give an excellent mechanic poor tools, and he'll still outperform a poor mechanic. I'd actually say player development has more to do with it than game planning. TO was great at this because he had a cohesive and consistent coaching staff. The reason Bob Stoops and Carroll have had recent problems stemmed from not being able to keep their coaching staff together.

Excellent post!

 

[huKSer]

Callahan and his top-notch recruits couldn't win a b!^@h-slap contest...even with his scripted play sheet each Saturday.

Classic example why Game planning is bigger than recruiting, what good is having 5 star recruits if your game plan looks like it was thrown together by a bunch of chimpanzees.

I wish you wouldn't insult the chimpanzees by comparing them to Callahan

 

[Enhance]

I don't think people are actually considering the question that was asked. It isn't coaching vs. talent/recruiting (which seems to be what most people interpreted it as), it's specifically gameplanning (i.e. playcalling, sets and plays, game strategy, etc.) vs. talent/recruiting. Callahan may not have been a great gameplanner, but that was the least of what made him a poor head coach. It was the other 164.5 hours a week (specifically things like practice philosophy and player development) where he did himself in.

If you're merely comparing gameplanning to recruiting, I think you'll find having talent is considerably more important than being able to gameplan well. Put the greatest offensive and defensive minds in history in charge of a painfully untalented team like WKU or EMU for a game, and put Average Joe HS Coach in charge of a loaded team like Alabama or Texas. Who wins?

Interesting take. However, I would put "coaching" in general into game-planning, because I really don't see how you can not involve coaching in game-planning. Practices, playcalling, strategy, coaching insight, etc. all go into game-planning imho.

If you go by my definition, then game-planning is far more important. Your definition makes recruiting seem more important.

Second of all, I don't think your scenario in an above post is overly fair. You're comparing a team like WKU to Alabama. There are so many things that differentiate those two programs. Alabama has more revenue, a huge T.V. market, the ability to get the best coaches in the world, larger student body, more fan support across the U.S., etc. etc. Sure, Alabama obviously has more talented recruits, but they also have far better coaches as well.

I would believe recruiting was better if this didn't exist: upsets. Appalachian St. had recruits that Michigan wouldn't have even taken a second look at in 2007, yet A St. beat Michigan in Michigan's house. Same with Boise State beating Oklahoma a few years ago. Even though OU had better recruits, Boise State beat them, trick plays or not.

All in all, both aspects are extremely important, and saying one is significantly more important than the other is naive. However, in a battle of matched teams (as far as talent level is concerned) the better gameplanner will be your victor.

 

[NUance]

I don't think people are actually considering the question that was asked. It isn't coaching vs. talent/recruiting (which seems to be what most people interpreted it as), it's specifically gameplanning (i.e. playcalling, sets and plays, game strategy, etc.) vs. talent/recruiting. Callahan may not have been a great gameplanner, but that was the least of what made him a poor head coach. It was the other 164.5 hours a week (specifically things like practice philosophy and player development) where he did himself in.

If you're merely comparing gameplanning to recruiting, I think you'll find having talent is considerably more important than being able to gameplan well. Put the greatest offensive and defensive minds in history in charge of a painfully untalented team like WKU or EMU for a game, and put Average Joe HS Coach in charge of a loaded team like Alabama or Texas. Who wins?

Interesting take. However, I would put "coaching" in general into game-planning, because I really don't see how you can not involve coaching in game-planning. Practices, playcalling, strategy, coaching insight, etc. all go into game-planning imho.

If you go by my definition, then game-planning is far more important. Your definition makes recruiting seem more important.

Second of all, I don't think your scenario in an above post is overly fair. You're comparing a team like WKU to Alabama. There are so many things that differentiate those two programs. Alabama has more revenue, a huge T.V. market, the ability to get the best coaches in the world, larger student body, more fan support across the U.S., etc. etc. Sure, Alabama obviously has more talented recruits, but they also have far better coaches as well.

I would believe recruiting was better if this didn't exist: upsets. Appalachian St. had recruits that Michigan wouldn't have even taken a second look at in 2007, yet A St. beat Michigan in Michigan's house. Same with Boise State beating Oklahoma a few years ago. Even though OU had better recruits, Boise State beat them, trick plays or not.

All in all, both aspects are extremely important, and saying one is significantly more important than the other is naive. However, in a battle of matched teams (as far as talent level is concerned) the better gameplanner will be your victor.

+1.

And in a battle of equally adept coaching staffs, the team with the most talent (read: recruiting) wins. Both are important, like Enhance said.

A staff that can pull in top recruits but can’t coach/gameplan won’t last long. Like Charlie Weis or Ron Zook, for example. On the other hand, good coaching begets success in recruiting. This is the direction the Pelini bros are heading, I think.