caveman99
All-American
It seems we have posters going to 2 different extremes in this thread, and others. It is either MR is SOOO much better than Bo at recruiting or MR is only the same as Bo, I think the answer is more in the middle. Those on the MR train point to things that are hard to quantify with stats, like CA momentum, yes it seems like MR's staff has something a bit more positive going, but is that just because they are much more savvy with PR than Bo and Co were? I also keep seeing a lot of people using Bo's entire history to compare against MR's 3 classes as well as a lot of charts only starting at 2010 and leaving off Bo's first 2 classes, which is highly misleading. The reality is that the best comparison is to only look at Bo's years of '08-'10 compared to MR's first 3 years, '15-'17. I have cut them out from Mav's great chart above and re-pasted these classes below. Bo started at an average recruit rank of 0.8449 and by the end of year 3 had increased that up to 0.8643. MR started with an average recruit ranking of 0.8642 and in 3 years has increased that to 0.8758 so the reality is yes that MR is doing better than Bo did to the same point in his tenure at the level of talent being brought into DONU.First, I'm a big fan of Mike Riley and I think he is a better recruiter than Bo. But the numbers you post here don't seem to support that. In fact, I'd always thought Callahan was a better recruiter than Bo. But really there's not much of a difference between the three. I don't know what to make of that.:
One thing about Bo, he was better at filling gaps with JUCOs. He pulled in quite a few highly ranked JUCOs who became key players on his teams. That strategy worked especially well for Bo since he seemed very reluctant to let freshmen or even sophomores on the field. Riley and staff aren't going after JUCOs the way Bo did. But Riley seems more willing to let underclassmen see more action earlier. So there's that.
However to Mav's and others point, the gap isn't as large as it seems Matty and others are advocating; the flip is that the gap is also substantial enough to clearly say IMO that MR has been a fair bit better than Bo so far. Even if you want to throw out the transitional years and just look at years 2 & 3 after each Coach had time to organize, make changes, and recruit for a solid year plus, Bo's Y2 and Y3 classes came in at 0.8580 and 0.8642 respectively while MR's Y2 and Y3 classes came in at 0.8707 and 0.8758 respectively. This comparison serves to show MR's staff have been a fair bit better with 2 classes in a row with an average recruit ranking above 0.87 while Bo's staff didn't exceed 0.87 until year 4.
The one portion of this comparison that I think makes MR seem a bit closer to Bo in terms of recruiting prowess was the lower jump from Y2 to Y3 for MR's classes compared to Bo. Bo's staff consistently increased the level of talent in each class from Y1 to Y3 going from 0.8449 to 0.8642 and then also had another large jump in Y4 up to 0.8832 so at the time it seemed Bo had learned what would work and was successfully making changes to continue his staff's recruiting performance. The issue for Bo was that he peaked in Y4 and never seemed to be able to continue to grow, but rather started to decline in recruiting results. MR's Y3 average recruit rank, while much better than Bo's, didn't increase nearly as much from Y2 as Bo's did and I think a lot of fans were a bit disappointed based on how much everyone touted a potentially huge year last year as far back as 2016. I think MR also was disappointed in the lower level of improvement, which is why he made a lot of the recent changes. This is a big year for him and his staff, smaller numbers but the expectations are again really high based on the level of recruits seemingly showing interest. We shall see if MR and Co can match or exceed the level of improvement Bo and Co made from Y3 to Y4.
Class Average Recruits (# 4*+)
08 .8449 29 (3)
09 .8580 19 (2)
10* .8642 20 (5)
15 .8617 21 (4)
16 .8707 21 (5)
17 .8758 20 (5)
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