Interesting Article on ND Recruiting
The article is called: "Recruiting ratings turn into coach’s crutch at Notre Dame"
http://www.dailycardinal.com/article/21668
There is a anti UM shot thrown in for good measure, but the article has merit, particularly:
"Getting your guys is one of the most overrated aspects of college coaching. Bob Stoops won with another coach’s players. So did Jim Tressel. Since then, neither has a single title despite ridiculous arrays of talent."
That goes for Urban Meyer at Florida as well.
Here is the Michigan content:
"Michigan fans, enduring their worst season ever, are similarly smug over recruiting rankings. We hear that their players simply do not fit Rich Rodriguez’s system and that when the best recruits get there, he’ll be running the Big Ten.
Well, his players were already from top-10 recruiting classes. All of them. Maybe someday fans will judge coaches by how their teams play rather than their ability to recruit 17-year-olds."
I don't think that we were as talented as any of those other teams FWIW. We had a great punter and DL and rest was an experiment.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:07 AM ^
Yeah, it fails to account for a lot of things. Such as Stoops and Tressel were both working with similar offenses to their predecessors. They also had veteran quarterbacks.
And Meyer took over from Ron Zook, who's now running a powerful version of the read option at Illinois. Meyer also had an incoming freshman named Tim Tebow, who was a big part of that championship offense and might win his second straight Heisman in a couple days.
This article is worthless.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:38 AM ^
I obviously wouldn't say the article is worthless, why the anti-Wies sentiment alone is worth a look. BTW, Zook was not running spread option at Florida, so Meyer brought in a new system but had great senior talent, a lot of it on Defense. Tebow was very effective for spot duty, Cris Leak? probably took at least 75% of the snaps.
December 13th, 2008 at 8:40 PM ^
Leak did take most of the snaps, but Tebow was 22/33 for 360 yards and 5 TD's. He also had almost 500 yards rushing and 8 TD's. Thirteen touchdowns from your backup, true freshman QB is pretty awesome.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:14 AM ^
when judging our current talent levels, most seem to simplistically look at the last few years of overall team recruiting rankings without realizing that MANY of our top recruits from those are not on the field (due to massive attrition, injuries, busts, etc). It's obvious that our talent level is nowhere near those other schools right now, in addition to the players being a poor fit for the system.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:31 AM ^
The thing that annoys me about assessments of Notre Dame this year is that EVERY ANALYST ON TV keeps saying Notre Dame just isn't getting very good talent.
I'm like, "Do you even follow recruiting?" They HAVE players. They've been getting reat players for the last several years. The problem is, the coaches there aren't doing anything with the talent.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:24 AM ^
>Maybe someday fans will judge coaches by how their teams play rather than their ability to recruit 17-year-old.
...isn't this the criteria ND is left with at the end of the day? That is why I find ND to be interesting...but pointless.
Totally irealvant withen the college football world.