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Recruiting presser tidbit
Tailgater
Member Posts: 1,389
Coach Petersen mentioned something in his presser on Wednesday that I think is truly amazing and has become almost legendary here in Boise. In reference to the Q&A on the business of star ratings for recruits and how some 2 or 3-star recruits would probably be higher rated if the recruiting process was different, Petersen mentioned a recruiting class he had years ago when he and his BSU staff signed only eight(8) recruits on LOI day....... and all eight of those players are in the NFL! It's not about Mountain West versus Pac-12 caliber football playing athletes, it's always been about the coaches as recruiters and mentors signing the athletes they know or believe can be developed into a team that wins at the level they compete in. Obviously, the higher the level of competition, the higher the recruits will be rated as defined by conference strength and from that comes most of the consideration for how many stars a recruit receives.
The recruiting experts know which athletes the coaches are most interested in by the time the kids are juniors in high school or before and assign the recruit rating stars accordingly. The more talented and athletic the recruit, the more they are sought by the big schools with the best coaching and the habit of always being in the Top-10 or Top-25. It's the mass of average recruits with 3-star or lower rating where the recruiting experts are mostly guessing and on which the best recruiters work the hardest to eliminate guess work. The coaches who most every year recruit the best classes cannot guess and typically rely on their own evaluations. If Petersen is the head football coach we think he is, Husky Football can only get better in the win column and I expect his recruiting classes will be higher rated starting next year. This will not just be the result of better athletes with greater potential wanting to be Huskies, but also because UW recruits will be more esteemed by the recruiting experts simply because they've been offered by Petersen. The rise in Husky Football will more directly lift the star-ratings for local in-state recruits as UW once again becomes what we should of always been...... a football power on the west coast and nationally.
For those who are hung up on star-ratings for recruits and the fact that the more stars a recruiting class accumulates the higher it must be rated by the recruiting experts,....... the reality is that any class can be better or worse than expected in terms of future contribution depending on how it's members develop as football playing athletes in the 3-5 years before graduation. The experts who assign a 5 thru 2-star or no-star rating to each recruit actually don't know enough about football or what makes a football player good, great, or otherwise to predict how well recruits might turn out as they develop from prep teenagers into collegiate men. But the good coaches do know because their livelyhood depends on it and that's the true relevance of OKGs.
The recruiting experts know which athletes the coaches are most interested in by the time the kids are juniors in high school or before and assign the recruit rating stars accordingly. The more talented and athletic the recruit, the more they are sought by the big schools with the best coaching and the habit of always being in the Top-10 or Top-25. It's the mass of average recruits with 3-star or lower rating where the recruiting experts are mostly guessing and on which the best recruiters work the hardest to eliminate guess work. The coaches who most every year recruit the best classes cannot guess and typically rely on their own evaluations. If Petersen is the head football coach we think he is, Husky Football can only get better in the win column and I expect his recruiting classes will be higher rated starting next year. This will not just be the result of better athletes with greater potential wanting to be Huskies, but also because UW recruits will be more esteemed by the recruiting experts simply because they've been offered by Petersen. The rise in Husky Football will more directly lift the star-ratings for local in-state recruits as UW once again becomes what we should of always been...... a football power on the west coast and nationally.
For those who are hung up on star-ratings for recruits and the fact that the more stars a recruiting class accumulates the higher it must be rated by the recruiting experts,....... the reality is that any class can be better or worse than expected in terms of future contribution depending on how it's members develop as football playing athletes in the 3-5 years before graduation. The experts who assign a 5 thru 2-star or no-star rating to each recruit actually don't know enough about football or what makes a football player good, great, or otherwise to predict how well recruits might turn out as they develop from prep teenagers into collegiate men. But the good coaches do know because their livelyhood depends on it and that's the true relevance of OKGs.
Comments
On the middle / low 3-star side, scout gets very lazy as it gets closer to signing day and increasingly mails it in on the evaluation side since they are too busy deep-throating 5 star guys to be the first to have the "scoop".
I vaguely remember someone doing some simple math. I think it was Yaledawg. 5* recruits panned out at about 20%. Too bad I can't remember how "panning out" was determined. I think it might have meant that they played in the NFL. 3* recruits were something like 2%-5%.
I could actually be pretty far off on those percentages, but the gap was that wide.
A great coach and highly rated recruits = abundance.
There are some guys who are better athletes that are two stars and unranked, but they don't want to drop the three star kids they have gotten to know even lower. Guys who get missed in earlier evaluations because they didn't go to all the camps get royally fucked by the ranking system. No matter how well they do in games, they aren't rising higher than three stars because the guys that know the other kids, don't want to drop them too far.
You can find the comparison between their work here on this board
The UW did better than USC on the field sometimes, by developing players better. But USC has always had better raw material in terms of recruiting players. It has nothing to do with Sark. Kiffin also outrecruited Sark when it was USC versus UW. The comparison between schools is almost meaningless.
Sark is a good recruiter though. That is also not the issue. The problem is that he does not develop players well. We will see the difference in 2-4 years. Petersen's lower ranked recruits will be beating Sark's top 10 recruiting class in 2-4 years.