Which Comes First - Success or Recruits?

dylan said:
It's worth noting that the one highly ranked class cally brought in had 31 players total, 12 of them jucos. Hardly a recipe for sustained recruiting success.

I think NU will always have a hard time doing better than 15-20th ranked classes due to location alone. Even under TO, when we were a national power, we often stayed in that range (though he also certainly had some very highly ranked classes). That's why coaching acumen is so important at a place like this. We have to scout better than other places, work harder in recruiting and then out coach them as well.
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OK....So, I can agree with this. But, this leads me to a question.

Let's say you grew up in another part of the country. Have no ties to Nebraska or the Huskers. The only thing you might have is a healthy respect for the program while you were growing up and Nebraska was winning championships. You went to a school not named Nebraska and played football and later became an assistant coach at a college. You quickly have risen up through the ranks to be THE hot coach that everyone believes is the next Nick Saben or Urban Meyer. You have the ability (if you are patient) of going to any of the top programs over the last 20 years (Florida, FSU, Alabama, Texas, USC....etc.)

Why would you come to Nebraska instead of taking a job at one of these other schools that can pay you just as much if not more, are sitting in the middle of recruiting hotbeds and also have big fan bases and history of winning like Nebraska?

At Nebraska, you know you are going to have to work harder at recruiting, work harder at coaching up the kids you get and have the same expectations from the fan base as these other programs.

PS.....especially when the NCAA regulations are stacked against you with the recruiting calendar the way it currently is.

 
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Yup. And that is how you end up with an NFL washout, a coordinator with no head coaching experience and a guy that was on the hot seat at a middling program. Unless we have a brilliant AD making the hire (ha!), we'll have to get lucky to get another great coach. Because, as much tradition as we have, there will almost always be an easier gig available for the hot coaching hire of the moment.

(Riley may very well be that home run hire, but we'll obviously have to wait and see if he truly was held back by his previous program or if he simply is what his record says he is.)

 
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Recruiting has a lot to do with being able to evaluate talent, bring in players that fit your system (no matter the star rating) & coaching them up. You need success to get the top players to come to Nebraska to play. But you cannot win & have success without recruiting a competitive team. Its about winning and being able to play at the next level.

 
I found this article interesting.

LINK

Particularly these two paragraphs.

When I last did a comprehensive look at Nebraska’s recruiting trends from 1987 on, there were some slight peaks and valleys — based on class rankings, Osborne was better than Solich who was worse than Callahan who was better than Pelini — but the overall trendline was inching steadily upward. For Riley to come out and, indirectly at least, say that trend needs to be reversed comes across as pretty darn honest even if its not a shocking revelation.

But putting a number on it — top 25 — at least tells you where the new head coach thinks Nebraska should be. I’ve written and said this before, but I think Riley’s biggest recruiting advantage at Nebraska is his history of recruiting to Oregon State. You still have to look for value and scour the country and get in with players earlier than some of the true recruiting powers do at Nebraska, but not to the extent Riley had to in Corvallis. That combination of what Riley used to do and what he can do now with the resources in Lincoln, looks pretty promising on metaphorical paper.
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Ever since Riley was hired, there has been a discussion/debate as to if he can do better here than he did at OSU. Personally, I think it's obvious he can do better here. But, this article made me think about it again.

So, I went back and looked at his 2014 recruiting class at OSU and compared it to what he has going here for the 2016 class. I just used 247 for this.

At OSU, his 2014 class was ranked 63rd even though it had 30 recruits. The average ranking was 81.37. (22 -3* recruits and 8 - 2*)

So far this year, he has 10 recruits and is ranked 25th with an average ranking of 87.5 (2 - 4* and 8 - 3*) And, we are still in on quite a few pretty highly rated players.

It is clear that (I know it's a very small sample size) he is going to be playing with a big upgrade in talent from what he was able to get at OSU.

Now, I don't expect anyone to come in here and be able to immediately get a top 5 recruiting class. But, if he can take these kids (and mostly the ones that are already here) and win a lot of games and be competitive every time they step on the field, that ranking can inch up over time.

 
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The Wilson update made me think about this. I usually don't just pay attention to one recruiting site simply because I think the system in a micro level is flawed. So, I usually look at the group of recruits to see how many of them are 4* or better on any site.

Of our 10 recruits, 6 recruits are a 4 star on at least one site. 3 of them on multiple sites with one being consensus 4 star. Interestingly, neither of those 3 are our QBs and I'm very excited about both of them.

 
Obviously the answer is both, but for better discussion, ignore the actual answer - think about which one is a more powerful trend, or which one you'd prefer?

I'm with Mav in thinking that good coaching/results leading to good recruiting is a much more effective and desirable model than good recruiting leading to good results. We have tons of examples of ace recruiter coaches that can sell a fridge to an eskimo, but it ends up failing them on the field. Mack Brown's later years, Lane Kiffen, Brady Hoke, Mike Sumlin last year, etc. No thanks.

On the other hand, we also have good examples of great coaches that did more with less, and were then able to gain more to do more with as a result. Bill Snyder, Art Briles, Mike Riley to an extent, Gary Patterson, Chris Petersen, Mark Dantonio and so on.

There's no question in my mind which one of these lists I would like our head coach to be in company with.

 
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
Obviously the answer is both, but for better discussion, ignore the actual answer - think about which one is a more powerful trend, or which one you'd prefer?

I'm with Mav in thinking that good coaching/results leading to good recruiting is a much more effective and desirable model than good recruiting leading to good results. We have tons of examples of ace recruiter coaches that can sell a fridge to an eskimo, but it ends up failing them on the field. Mack Brown's later years, Lane Kiffen, Brady Hoke, Mike Sumlin last year, etc. No thanks.

On the other hand, we also have good examples of great coaches that did more with less, and were then able to gain more to do more with as a result. Bill Snyder, Art Briles, Mike Riley to an extent, Gary Patterson, Chris Petersen, Mark Dantonio and so on.

There's no question in my mind which one of these lists I would like our head coach to be in company with.
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I agree with your wishes.

It would also be great to have some success on the field and at the same time be bringing in a higher level of talent. One is not necessarily exclusive of the other. Having both happen would be the best of both worlds.

Brian Christopherson ‏@HuskerExtraBC 16m

16 minutes ago
The #Huskers have four commits ranked in ESPN's Top 300. Two of them joined the class within the last week. http://bit.ly/1Lgtems
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Entire segment on The Bottom Line right now discussing this topic. Sam was running through the years and pointing out how the good recruiting classes followed on-field success.

Made the point a couple times that in the first year or so after a coaching change, it's easier to sell hope and playing time. The farther down the road you get, he thought winning was one of the most important things.

Noted Purdue and Minnesota having a lot of commits right now.

 
As another anecdotal example, Penn State has recruited similarly to us for the last few years. They are currently #3 in the 247 Composite after winning the B1G last year.

 
Here's Sam's article on the subject:

But the third full class, that’s a little more about Ws and Ls. You can’t sell hope quite as easily. You show hope in the product on the field.

Nebraska can look at its own recruiting history for proof.

Though it underachieved once it got here, Nebraska’s 2011 class was built on the success of the 2009 and 2010 seasons. That class ranked 16th nationally.

Nebraska’s 2007 class didn’t underachieve. It ranked 13th nationally and was built on the success of the 2006 season. Eric Hagg, Prince Amukamara, Marcel Jones, Larry Asante, Armando Murillo — all of them committed after the 2006 regular season had ended.

Outside of Nebraska, take Clemson. Its 2012 recruiting class — coach Dabo Swinney’s third full class — came after an ACC title in 2011. That class ranked 14th nationally and produced four NFL defensive linemen, including All-American Shaq Lawson. (Clemson’s 2011 recruiting class, it should be noted, was even better.)
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IDK, Sam. You're taking three big name, big-time CFB programs and pointing out years they had good recruiting classes. Maybe go a little deeper before offering up big theories about how things work.

I appreciate that sportswriters often have these models for the world, but they like to throw around the word "proof" a little lightly. Maybe Sam's not wrong and Year 3 Class Ranking is more strongly correlated to record than Year 2, for example. Maybe some more data before claiming anything different is an "outlier"?

 
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