What is the toughest school to get an offer from?
An interesting topic I think considering the release of the Rivals rankings and talk about "this kid's offer list warrants a top 100 ranking." Of course, sometimes getting offers from schools can depend on geography and the familiarity with a program, as well as position/style preferences of a program. Another factor is how national your recruiting goes. Teams like Alabama are extremely selective, but since they try to go hard nationally, they'll throw out a few more offers than other powerhouse programs like Texas who can generally select many of their players from instate.
So generally what is the hardest offer to get? I would go Texas and FSU. Maybe USC but that might also relate to scholarship limits for the time being. Do people generally agree?
A top tier recruit will have offers from everybody in the country except Texas. They will only offer some guys late because they think they have a chance will anyone. I don't blame them for it, but it certainly is the hardest offer to come by.
I have heard that Hawaii is very tough to get a real offer. In order to get a committable offer you have to practically commit to them and have thme believe you. They will not spent the money on recruiting or visists on those that are not SERIOUSLY ready to commit.
That's because saying "wanna come live in Hawaii for 4 years for free?" is itself a recruiting violation.
Realistically, a lot of kids are attracted to Hawaii until they actually spent a little time thinking about it. A recruit from Pennsylvania may want to leave the cold until it takes them 8 hours to fly there. Hawaii has to know that 50% of the top 150 will be interested in exchange for a 4-5 five day official visit.
Slippery Rock. Everyone aspires to wear that name.
Slippery Rock never seems to offer ANYONE. Check the top recruit pages, not an offer in the bunch.
If I had to guess, the "toughest five" right now are:
(1) Texas (they probably hit on over 50% of offered kids
(2) Alabama
(3) Ohio State
(4) Notre Dame
(5) BYU
BYU...because of non-football related characterstics?
That would be my guess. The same likely goes for NU, Stanford, Navy, Army and Air Force. Obviously all for different reasons.
Stanford was closer to top 5 most sent out offers the past few years
I'd always guessed that stanford probably offered any good football player with a good SAT score. its got to be hard to get football players to commit to a school with such high standard especially when theyve been so bad historically.
if they didnt have the national brand...then I guess they'd be vanderbilt
Well damn, then, wrong on that account. Although I will contend that those offers were still very hard to come by.
I know it's not comparable to a football offer, but I went to high school with an Olympic caliber runner who didn't have a committable offer to Stanford without a 28 ACT.
I was just talking about football offers, you might be right when it comes athletics in general.
the academies don't offer scholarships. You go to school for free based on the four year commitment you are obligated to after you graduate.
You do, but there's still the recruiting element. The coaches do go out and "offer" a kid; it's not all walk-on tryouts when they get there for plebe summer (or first summer that's not at the USNA).
Not sure that ND belongs on the list, certainly under Weis but Kelly has opened up the flood gates in that regard. Weis would go the whole year on 80 offers, Kelly has 80 offers out to about 4 states alone, and they have offered over 26 states.
As an additional point, according to Scout Texas has 31 offers out, and 16 commits. That is extraordinary.
I think they've actually scaled back their early offers even more this year. There was some concern that their struggles were due to their "offer every top 100 kid in Texas at Junior Day, watch him commit" strategy, as opposed to, say, employing Greg Davis as an offensive coordinator.
Texas OWNS Texas. A year or 2 ago, something like 93% of their recruits were from the state of Texas. Makes recruiting easy when your state develops some great talent and you have a monopoly on them.
UT recruits not from TX.
2011- 1 QB AZ out of 22 commits
2010- 1 K LA, 1 LB OH (he grew up in TX) out of 25
2009- 1 DT AR out of 20
2008 0 out of 20
2007- 1 TE CA out of 25
2006- 1 DT CO out of 25
Must be nice not having to travel much.
Thanks for looking that up!
I'd normally say Alabama, but they're using the offer cannon this year (though it's not clear how many of those are commitable offers).
At least 35 of those offers are commitable.
Used to be that UT wouldn't offer out of state kids unless they make a visit on their own dime. With the new staff out of state offers are a little easier to come by, but still pretty rare.
Do you think those bags with the dollar signs are light?
Any division 3 school considering they can not give out scholarships.
it depends on the year. in years where schools like Texas, Alabama and Florida need big classes, it won't be as hard to get an offer from them.
But it seems like OSU tends to be pretty narrowly focused in its recruiting. I don't think they offer a lot of guys most years.
Edit: This Tom VH post from a few months ago offers some information on the issue.
http://mgoblog.com/diaries/tomvh-how-michigans-recruiting-compares
That's a very interesting post, but I would like to see the numbers on the 10 years after a team wins a championship, not just UM vs tSIO head to head. Winning championships creates a huge boost in recruiting for years to come, no shocker there, and we're 14 years removed from ours as well as 3 years of darkness.
In terms of Texas, were David McWilliams and John Mackovic hitting these numbers, probably not, which in turn gave you a good Colorado run amongst other teams in that region and outside. FSU trotted out Burt Reynolds in the 60's and then Derrick Brooks twenty years later. In the 40's through 60's Army and Navy were pulling great talent with enormous reach I'm not sure what played a bigger role in the decline, the Viet Nam War or academic acceptance. All in all, I agree with the majority of lists where the locality of hot beds and blue chip football powers rotate in cycles.
I would guess that national programs go after the same kids, with the schools with a stronger natural recruiting base offering less. Texas obviously offers the least because they have a virtual stranglehold on their base. Then I'd guess Ohio St., Florida, and U.S.C. with strong bases but serious competition to protect the base. Then I'd say Michigan, Penn St. and most of the S.E.C. I feel like Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, and LSU all offer the same kids accross that whole deep south arear, with each school obviously doing better within its home state. Similarly, Michigan and Penn State both seem to to get kids out of the rest of the midwest and eastern states.
I think the list would be quite different if you subtracted schools whose offers come with either a) money or b) sexual favors. No SEC schools, no USC, no OSU.
The campus is not in the best of areas. Picture lots of bars on windows of buildings in the very near vicinity. Personally, I would never send my kid there.
Harvard!
Seriously though I'd Say Texas, OSU and USC (Alabama throws a lot, although to very good players)
I had sort of hoped that "Princeton" might have gotten the "hardest offer" nod before Harvard, because, you know...
Definitely Texas, looking at their recruiting class, 15/16 of their commits are from Texas. Connor Brewer the QB is from AZ. So unless you're a 5 star or live in Texas, you're basically in shit's creek trying to get an offer from them.
I agree but this is one of the things I have never understood about the way Texas recruits. As great as the players are in Texas and as solid as their classes always are, I would think they would offer more "blue chips" and honestly I think they would land a few of them.
There's something to be said for playing within your niche. Mack Brown goes around the state telling the top players that Texas boys will have first dibs at roster spots on "Texas's team." It's no more valuable than Dantonio's supposed "focuses on Michigan players" in a direct sense, but as a marketing tool, over a long period of repetition, it's effective.
Obviously it only works for that state, and other than maybe Ohio State they're the only school who can really do that, since the Florida schools control specific regions of Florida and the big California schools are either national brands who can sell on the SoCal lifestyle (USC, UCLA) or too academic to simply stay home (Cal, Stanford). I don't know Cal recruiting very well but I would imagine at least one of the "University of California - [Place name]"s out there has tried this as a thing. But then again who's really that excited about being from Florida or California? Texas has that whole Texas thing that helps it sell itself.
Anyway, it's brilliant marketing. If they become a national program, they're just another national program like Miami (YTM) or USC or Penn State or Notre Dame. If they're "A bunch of Texans showing the world that Texans are better at football" that's a smart marketing strategy, which they use to close in on most of the best players in one of the best recruiting states in the country.
My guess would be Texas as well, but that might change if elite Texas talent can get pulled out (like how Oklahoma did in years past). Beyond that, though, i think it is more position specific. So like USC pro-style QB, LSU DB, PSU LB, OSU tattoo artist. you know, specific positions where those schools excel.
Texas has one of the most talented rosters in America....EVERY year. Which was why it was so crazy when Bob Stoops kept beating them as a new coach.
Seriously, they ooze NFL talent. When Mack Brown retires, they need to go with a coach that can maximize that talent.
To be frank, teams like Alabama and such use the lack of an offer as bait in many cases.
WHen you have the luxury of being sought after by the kids themselves, the holding off of an offer is like a girl playing hard to get. Very few kids get turned off by this (in both cases, lol) and they make it appear in such a way that when they finally do offer the kid, it is this super special ordeal and kids go nuts over it.
Many staffs do this and it tends to be that the higher recognition you have the better it works for you. However, Kelly at ND is also doing this and its been working. UM fandom aside, ND is a great school in the sense of tradition and academics so I wont say its too much of a shock but I find it amazing that veen in their down years they pull classes like that one last year and those under Weis. Both staffs held off on offers to many top level kids and it helped them.
Point being, a "tough offer to get" has as much to do with reeling kids in as it does taking your picks of the litter.
Don't forget Sparty, i mean come on....you have to really work hard to sink to levels low enought for them to seriously consider you....right?
Burnt Orange Nation, while not as amazing as mgoblog, is a pretty dang good blog. As a well-respected university with a huge student body, this isn't too surprising. The past two years they dissected their incoming class by the numbers, and the results are pretty interesting. I encourage everyone to follow the links below to glance at the statistics, but I pulled the ones most relavant to this discussion:
2010 Commit Rate: 25 commits / 34 offers = 73.5%
(http://www.burntorangenation.com/2010/2/3/1290921/by-the-numbers-2010-texas)
2011 Commit Rate: 22 commits / 31 offers = 71.0%
(http://www.burntorangenation.com/2011/2/2/1965475/texas-recruiting-2011-by-the-numbers)
Pretty sure Texas wins this discussion.
and many great opinions, most of which make perfect sense. I am impressed : ) Schools like BYU did not occur to me until I read your opinions, and (don't say nothin' bad about) Texas is obviously at or near the top of tough offers.