The Weekly Burn #2
Welcome to what I’m calling the first real installment of The Weekly Burn! This week we will be going over some interesting recruiting stories from the last cycle and take a deeper look at a couple of coaches. Before I get started, I want to say to the coaches I’m talking about please do not get offended. I’m using numbers and facts to tell a story and I’m not out to get anyone or say anyone is a bad coach. I think this information is extremely interesting and I’m trying to highlight things in GD that very often get over looked. I think some of what I will be going over may even help you. Last but not least, I will be using a mix of Guess Reports and the Media Guides. I will make sure and point out when a specific source is used.
Our first specimen on our magical journey of numbers and science (read this in Morgan Freeman’s voice) is DIAA Northern Iowa and coach gympy_88. I’m going to start by saying gympy_88 is a great recruiter. All you have to do is look at his last 15 seasons and you can see why (GUESS rankings).
8 top 5 recruiting classes
Only 3 have been outside of the top 10
Worst ranked class was 16
To put these stats into perspective OP, babcick and pete_61 only have 7 top 5 recruiting classes combined in the last 15 seasons. OP comes the closest with 4 (all #1… holy cow), babcick has 3 and the god of GD himself pete_61 has zero… that’s right I said zero.
So what does this information tell us? Is gympy_88 a god at recruiting and someone should pay him to write recruiting for dummies? Are OP, babcick and pete_61 overrated and should cj worship someone else? Well let’s look at a set of data so we can get another piece of the puzzle. Here are his team’s results over those same 15 seasons.
4- CC’s
7- 1st round loses in the playoffs
1- playoff miss
0- Final Four Appearances
But wait! You just told me about all the great classes he has recruited and now you are showing me he hasn’t really won much. How can you have such great talent and not be more dominant?!?!?!?!?
Calm down young Padawan, calm down and let me explain. Well first, let’s look at one more fact (yes, more data!!!). According to the Media Guide Northern Iowa does not have one player who is in the top 25 at their position (in fairness Guess has them with 5, but all barely making it, minus one stud P). What this information tells me about gympy_88 and his players is that he recruits players with very solid core attributes as freshman but they don’t get better over time (kinda like the jocks from high school who still work at the pizza place in your hometown). Now this might mean these recruits have low potential, or maybe gympy_88 has a poorly set up practice plan. I think with some minor tweaks to his practice plan or just focusing on higher potential players during recruiting gympy_88 could become a very dominant coach whose team is always stacked with stud upperclassman.
In conclusion OP, babcick and pete_61 are still amazing coaches (some have reached god level I will let you decide who… cough pete cough) who focus on potential over the highest ranked recruit. They understand that at D1AA it’s more important to have stud upperclassman over a highly ranked freshman prospect. Remember folks, rankings are awesome! But they don’t tell us the whole story.
Do you love numbers and information yet?!?! No… Well too bad because we have a couple more dissections to do before you can leave. You will sit there and you will like it!
Alright, on to the next poor soul in the spot light. D1AA Northern Arizona University (Go Lumber Jacks!! My alma mater) and coach lgftw (he must have just slapped his face on his keyboard when typing his username and these letters are what he hit). NAU ended up with the #2 ranked class at D1AA. This caught my attention because I’m not used to seeing them with that highly of a ranked class. In the last 10 seasons they had just one other class in the top 20. It also jumped out at me because I know how difficult it can be to recruit from there. Everyone hop aboard the magic school bus and let’s take a dive into some numbers and facts to see how lgftw got it done.
To start off let’s talk about why it’s so difficult to recruit from NAU. The numero uno reason is how many D1A schools are nearby competing for recruits. You may say to yourself, “Truedevil why would D1A schools impact a D1AA school? Shouldn’t those schools be going after better recruits?” Well dummy, I’ll tell you why. There are 9 Schools with coaches at D1A located within what I would call NAU’s pipeline. To me a pipeline is an area that should be easier for you to recruit in and places that you can get the best value when recruiting (save the most money and still get solid recruits). Those schools are listed below.
ASU and U of A (same damn state!)
UNLV in NV
Utah University
University of Colorado
New Mexico State
3 Southern California Schools – USC, UCLA, San Diego St.
All these schools have to compete for recruits from within NAU’s pipeline. They start by competing for D1A talent. Naturally USC goes and gets the best players, then the BSC Schools try to compete for the left over top talent then the other schools try to find anything and everything they can to fill their scholarships. Just to give you a little background I have coached at ASU in Stagg for 11 seasons and I know for a certain there are not enough quality recruits in the four corners region (AZ, CO, NM, UT and NV) to support that many teams. That area can maybe sustain one coach in AZ and one coach at a smaller school in CO, NV or UT. So what are these coaches to do when all the D1A talent is being grabbed up and there isn’t much left? Well they are going to go after the D1AA recruits of course. They are going to go after that RB that has no business being on a D1A team. They are going to jump on your green OL that is going to get absolutely murdered playing against Notre Dame or Texas. This is why NAU is so hard to recruit from. Ultimately it’s too many coaches and not enough recruits, but we all love Wilkinson because it has so many coaches. It’s a blessing and a curse, but I digress.
So how, against all odds, did lgftw (we better get the story behind this name and it better be a good one!) find himself with the #2 ranked class? Well he did what we all do when the sand box is getting crowded. He took a piss in the corner just to spite the other kids then went and played on the jungle gym. Let’s see where his recruits came from.
Wait, what? Lgftw had to go far for only two recruits out his seven scholarships? You just spent a good amount of my time telling me how hard it is to recruit at NAU because of all the D1A schools nearby and the facts don’t back up your argument!
I would be mad too, but let’s really take a look at this. He only needed 7 guys and he was extremely fortunate to find five recruits in the four corners region. These recruits are what I call solid recruits for D1AA, but terrible, terrible, terrible D1A recruits. In my experience D1A schools are only going to jump on a player that is as the top of a D1AA coach’s vision (this is true most of the time but you have that bad D1A coach who will jump on a decent D1AA recruit). Lgftw was also lucky that no D1AA teams near IL needed a TE or those teams had already found a better one. Eastern Illinois has 3 TE already on its roster, same with Northern Iowa, Drake signed the #8 and Southeast Missouri signed the #9. Once again his fortunes were good. I take nothing away from lgftw’s class; he signed a good one. I do believe that it is only going to get harder from here on out. For any season he has to sign 12 or more recruits, it will be extremely difficult to find enough quality recruits nearby that save you enough money to allow you to go recruit far away to fill the rest. I think he will start feeling the squeeze more and more from the D1A schools nearby and it’s always risky to try to spend the money recruiting far from home to fill a majority of your scholarships. I wish you the best sir. You have a challenge in front of you but that is what makes this game fun. Oh, to make it even harder next year there are only 3 top 200 recruits in the four corners region and ZERO in AZ. I expect those D1A schools to dip down a lot more next season. God Speed, coach.
I’m going to wrap this section up with looking at how the D1A Four Corner Schools did in recruiting, I’ll give you a hint - it wasn’t good.
Other than Colorado the classes are not very impressive. Honestly they are bad, but you can’t put all the blame on the coaches (I do put some of the blame on them it’s like 60%/40% with 40% being their fault). This region just can’t support that many human coached teams. I said I wouldn’t make predications in this blog, but whatever, it’s my blog. I predict we will see at least two maybe three of these teams go SIM in the next two seasons. If one of them is an AZ team and other two are random the teams that stay in this region will get a lot better. Right now these teams are feeling the burden of playing in such a fun amazing world.
Alright, that segment had as many twist as an M. Night Shyamalan movie (hopefully it wasn’t as bad as his latest ones, yikes!). This next one is pretty straight forward and fun, I promise.
To wrap this blog up I’m going to take a crack at my first D1A team. That team is the Louisville Cardinals coached by Hookemhorns7. This is going to be daring tale of a recruiting ninja who quietly travels into states with multiple BCS teams and top Elites and leaves with great talent. Let’s start our adventure by looking at where Hookemhorns7’s #8 ranked (Guess) class came from. First, take a look at his recruits by state and how many recruits came from each state.
KY- 1
OH- 3
IN- 1
TN- 1
IL- 4
He recruited in five different states, to some this doesn’t seem like a big deal, especially considering how close the 4 states are to him. You’re right. No big deal. The end goodnight… Ha! I’m about to make this a big deal. Time to add another piece to the puzzle and look at how many teams are in each state and how many Elites (KY has 1 team and its Louisville so we will skip that state).
OH- 3 teams, 1 Elite Ohio St.
IN- 3 teams, 1 Elite Notre Dame
TN- 3 teams, 1 Elite Tennessee
IL- 1 team
Impressed yet. No? Ok well let’s finish the puzzle and look at what each Elite’s recruit class was ranked.
Have you figured out why I’m impressed with what Hookemhorns7 did yet? Ok, I’ll just tell you. The Louisville class has one 4 star recruit, but the rest of his class is filled with solid D1A talent and if any of them have even a little bit of potential they will be extremely good upperclassmen. Hookem just sat there and watched the Elites beat each other up over the best talent and didn’t waste money trying to join in. He just casually strolled in while the big dogs were distracted and grabbed solid recruits and then went home. Pretty impressive if you ask me.
If you are a BCS school out there and you are discouraged because Elites get all the best recruits take a look at what Hookem has been doing and take some notes. This is how you recruit at a non-elite in Wilkinson and this how you set yourself up for success. So, stop bitching! It can be done! Well done Hookemhorns7, well done!
Alright it’s over (thank god). Hopefully you enjoyed this enough to read the next one. Any feedback is much appreciated it will only make this blog better and more entertaining. Next week we will be in the middle of OOC games so I will keeping my eye out for an interesting story.
Forever Yours,
Truedevil33
