November 30th, 2009 at 11:34 AM ^
What does this thread have to do with Dillon Baxter? Silly people and their mislabeling of thread titles.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:47 AM ^
I guess it comes down to how you define a better class. Even though the 2002-2009 classes had 20.75 recruits per class, that has left us a) short on players and b) with a mediocre winning percentage. So perhaps it's better that we might get 25 recruits because, even though some these guys might be ranked lower than a couple guys from the 2003 class, there will be 25-28 chances to find a contributor, rather than just 20.75 chances.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:51 AM ^
Warm bodies
November 30th, 2009 at 11:57 AM ^
To be clear, my point was never that this is the worst class, it was that it's the worst ranked class. And to your point about there being more chances to find a good player, you're right, but we also have to account for the fact that scholarships are limited at 85 and having a big class one year means another class will have to be smaller. So if we look at it in terms of having 85 chances to find good players there really is no benefit to this approach.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:07 PM ^
But what do you mean by worst ranked class? Because I used team rankings and you said that was useless, but you're using star ratings, which I could also argue is useless.
Also, we currently have 14 players scheduled to graduate after 2010. That doesn't include the possible departures of people like Patterson, Banks, Ferrara, Wright, and Sheridan, which could inflate that number to 19 during the offseason. If you add in the possibility that some of next year's redshirt juniors might not come back for a fifth year (such as Steve Watson, Brandon Herron, Kelvin Grady, etc.), that potentially adds another couple spots. Let's assume that one of those guys doesn't return, so put the 2011 class at 20. There will probably be some normal attrition for guys who want to transfer or who get injured, so that puts the class at 21 or 22.
Obviously, there are A LOT of assumptions in that previous paragraph, but I'm okay with taking 25 (perhaps slightly subpar) players in 2010 if that means we have 85 scholarship players. The effects on future classes are so minuscule and/or fluid that I don't know if it's even something to consider heavily.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:44 PM ^
I have no problem with us taking as full a class as we can this year. My only point is since there is a limited number of scholarships there's opportunity cost involved when you have a bigger than normal recruiting class. If we have to take a smaller class in the next few years than we are this year then we basically took from that year's scholarship numbers to add to this years. There's nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying that your response of "well this class' bigger numbers mean a better chance of landing a player" is true of this class in the narrow view of this class, but it's at the expense of opportunities in future classes. In other words, there's no net benefit as far as recruiting.
As to your first question
From 2002-2009 on average we had 12.25 4 star recruits commit. At this point this year we have 5. Unless we get two more that will be our lowest total recorded. Between 2004-2009 we had averaged 6 commits rated below 5.7. Currently we have 12 which is a historical high.
The bottom part of the class doesn't have much room to change. The top part might, but if we're limited to 25 scholarships and we're getting Murphy, Grimes and Furman that adds one to the under 5.7 column, adds nothing to the 4+ star column and leaves one spot open in this class.
Note: as far as data it's not OK to take the current ranking and compare it to 2007s when UCLA has 15 commits and Ohio State has 13, but it is valid to suppose what a class could potentially look like when completed and use that as a point of comparison.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:52 PM ^
But when you have attrition such as we've been having over the past few years, you can take 20-25 recruits every year. So the effect of taking a big class this year is somewhat negligible. Like I said, even if we take a full class of 25 this year, we'll probably still be able to take 21 or 22 next year, which isn't a small class by any means.
There IS a net benefit of filling up your class. Taking 25 players this year ensures that our roster will have 85 scholarship players (assuming there's no attrition), as opposed to 70 or 75 or 80.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:16 PM ^
It's not "negligible" if we take 26 this year and then can only take 23 in a couple years that will be giving us better rankings this year at the expense of future rankings. Yes, this is assuming that attrition doesn't decimate our roster to the point where every year we have to take the fullest class possible.
There IS a net benefit of filling up your class. Taking 25 players this year ensures that our roster will have 85 scholarship players (assuming there's no attrition), as opposed to 70 or 75 or 80.This is completely peripheral, I've been talking about how there is no net benefit with regard to recruiting class rankings.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:08 PM ^
I was talking about a net benefit in regards to how it affects the team, not the net benefit on recruiting rankings. A net benefit on recruiting rankings two years from now is kind of silly thing to even waste time considering for me.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:16 PM ^
The relevance is that it inflates the current ranking.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:44 PM ^
But you have no idea how other classes are going to fill out. So while we might have a lot of recruits right now compared to other schools, other schools might not fill out their classes, either. That's why I'm saying there's too much conjecture mixed in with all of these projections.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:57 PM ^
That is a totally separate issue. It's getting inflated in that if we take 27 players this class that means down the road we might be restricted to taking 22. So that will mean higher rankings this year, but lower ones the years we are restricted. The ultimate point of this being that you can't just say hey look we've got more chances to get a good player than in the past without taking into account that these spots are coming at the expense of smaller classes down the line.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:03 PM ^
But they're not necessarily precluding us from taking big classes in the future. The rate of attrition has been astronomical. It might slow down now that more and more of these guys were actually recruited by this staff in the first place, but when you're losing 10 guys a year, you can take a full class or a near-full class every time.
We are at exactly 60 scholarship players for 2010, meaning we should be able to take 85 (or more) scholarships in this upcoming class. If any further athletes decide to quit football, transfer, etc., that gives us extra spots for 2011 and beyond.
In summary:
a) average star rating is down significantly
b) team ranking is down only slightly
c) there's a long way to go before signing day