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Story time: How UW fucked up the 2021 class (Long)
insinceredawg
Member Posts: 5,117
First weekend of indoor dining reopening and I immediately ditched the wife and kids at home to get shitfaced at the closest watering hole. Ran into an old acquaintance who is dialed into the local HS football scene and also has some contacts within the UW football department. He had some interesting insight into what he's heard was the main driver behind the underwhelming 2021 recruiting class.
To my surprise it wasn't the lazy coach hires, the disappointing 2019 season, or even the uncertainty of Lake as a first time head coach. He pinpointed the biggest reason was the removal of Cooper Petagna and promotion of Justin Glenn as the director of recruiting. Cooper came from a strong pedigree with experience at Alabama, LSU, and Michigan before joining UW in 2018. Extremely detail oriented, organized, and a key contributor in building up the UW recruiting machine (yes, the type of guy I want to fuck my daughter, ISANFRC). His role was behind the scenes (social media engagement and marketing strategy, targeted communication with recruits, getting administrative items sorted out, managing communication with high schools and coaches, etc) and he wasn't allowed to have direct communication with recruits except on OVs.
Why the change? Lake wanted to distance himself from the CP "OKG" brand and thought it would be a good move to install a former player with more passion and energy as the face of the recruiting team. Glenn is popular within the program but he absolutely did not have the experience or skillset to run the entire recruiting operation. Lake was semi aware of this but assumed the recruiting assistants would help hold his hand as he grew into the position. That backfired when Cooper poached his top assistant who joined him at Oregon.
So even before COVID hit, the recruiting department was going into the critical 2021 cycle in a state of flux without an experienced leader in charge. When COVID shut everything down UW was caught with their pants down and had no idea how to pivot. Meanwhile Cooper took his methodical approach to Eugene and paired with the Oregon marketing machine they signed the best class in school history despite a 4-3 season. It's not a coincidence that for the first time in a while Oregon beat UW in head to head recruiting battles (Franklin, Moliki, Walden, etc).
Overall he's heard that in a normal year Glenn's inexperience probably wouldn't have had such an impact but it was a tough spot for someone brand new to the job to be in. It was unfair to Glenn because Lake put him in a position where he wasn't qualified for and was setup to fail. Things should improve going forward but it was still an incredibly risky and boneheaded decision. I have no reason to think my source made any of this shit up and it was obvious someone within the program fed him this info.
TL:DR Lake's questionable personnel decisions extended to off the field positions too. Firing Cooper and promoting Glenn helped torpedo the 2021 class. Lake's poor judgement should be a major concern to fans until proven otherwise.
To my surprise it wasn't the lazy coach hires, the disappointing 2019 season, or even the uncertainty of Lake as a first time head coach. He pinpointed the biggest reason was the removal of Cooper Petagna and promotion of Justin Glenn as the director of recruiting. Cooper came from a strong pedigree with experience at Alabama, LSU, and Michigan before joining UW in 2018. Extremely detail oriented, organized, and a key contributor in building up the UW recruiting machine (yes, the type of guy I want to fuck my daughter, ISANFRC). His role was behind the scenes (social media engagement and marketing strategy, targeted communication with recruits, getting administrative items sorted out, managing communication with high schools and coaches, etc) and he wasn't allowed to have direct communication with recruits except on OVs.
Why the change? Lake wanted to distance himself from the CP "OKG" brand and thought it would be a good move to install a former player with more passion and energy as the face of the recruiting team. Glenn is popular within the program but he absolutely did not have the experience or skillset to run the entire recruiting operation. Lake was semi aware of this but assumed the recruiting assistants would help hold his hand as he grew into the position. That backfired when Cooper poached his top assistant who joined him at Oregon.
So even before COVID hit, the recruiting department was going into the critical 2021 cycle in a state of flux without an experienced leader in charge. When COVID shut everything down UW was caught with their pants down and had no idea how to pivot. Meanwhile Cooper took his methodical approach to Eugene and paired with the Oregon marketing machine they signed the best class in school history despite a 4-3 season. It's not a coincidence that for the first time in a while Oregon beat UW in head to head recruiting battles (Franklin, Moliki, Walden, etc).
Overall he's heard that in a normal year Glenn's inexperience probably wouldn't have had such an impact but it was a tough spot for someone brand new to the job to be in. It was unfair to Glenn because Lake put him in a position where he wasn't qualified for and was setup to fail. Things should improve going forward but it was still an incredibly risky and boneheaded decision. I have no reason to think my source made any of this shit up and it was obvious someone within the program fed him this info.
TL:DR Lake's questionable personnel decisions extended to off the field positions too. Firing Cooper and promoting Glenn helped torpedo the 2021 class. Lake's poor judgement should be a major concern to fans until proven otherwise.
Comments
As for Petagna, I suppose we should be thankful that he recently left Oregon.
What a fucking idiot.
Lake, you’re dumb as fuck as well.
They could’ve plucked a single half intelligent student intern who would’ve easily had a sound, and easy to execute, strategy. Christ I would’ve done it for free and it would’ve been damn good and I’m half retarded.
Had no idea he climbed up to being the director of recruiting at Boise, good for him.
It's all fallen flat in recent months. It feels like the level of excitement just isn't the same. I don't get the impression that prospects are actually all that interested in coming to play for Jimmy. You'd think his reputation for pumping out NFL-caliber DBs would at least sell that position to high-level recruits, but even there it feels like we got a base hit or two, when we should be hitting home runs.
Hopefully the on-field product improves. That's the only thing I can think of that will improve our recruiting at this point, since nothing else seems to be heading that way programmatically.