Beavs to Alamo Bowl

BION,

You might have a point if you weren’t focused on dismissing the duality angry speaks of. The point isn’t that he recruits bad players. It’s that he recruits them to such a degree that he’s compelled to play them. That means his inefficiencies in recruiting are greater than his staff’s ability to “coach them up.”

It’s been discussed ad nauseum, but the consensus here is that recruiting has become more efficient and getting better over the last couple years. And credit is due Riley for recognizing the increased talent and putting it on the field ahead of the “experienced” players who came from flawed recruiting classes. That also was a stick in the craw years ago. But it appears to be diminishing.

The general hope for me is that this season is not an anomaly in Riley’s career. Things we’ve seen as habit (and have also harped on for years) went away for one season. All the voices who called Riley a great coach feel justified because of this. But the bar for a great coach is not doing somewhat well with lesser talent. It’s getting talent and putting it in a position to do what the Beavs have done this year.

OSU is not at a disadvantage in recruiting except for the mindset that some within our own fandom think it is. Yes, they are at a disadvantage in a case by case analysis with some recruits. But so is everyone. The culture sets the tone. When your fans tell recruits that everywhere is better than OSU, what are recruits supposed to take away for consideration?

If you’re a highly talented recruit who happens to want a good education at a bucolic setting while playing big time football for a great coach and with a great group of like-minded kids, then OSU should certainly be in the conversation. But please ignore those within our own fan base who think you coming here makes you one of the “less” with which our coach seems to do “more.” That kind of pervasive negativity is unforgivable to many here. We happen to love our school and want this kind of nonsense to stop.

In other words, you’re only great if you think you’re great. If you think you’re lucky to be good sometimes, you’re not great and have little chance to be so. When you want to accomplish something, you make a list and set goals in writing. It seems many in our fandom think “don’t be as bad as the 28 years” is a goal. It’s not. It’s running scared from your past.

The danger, of course, is that those who dwell in the past will take sustained success and become entitled. I look forward to the days when I can lambaste those individuals for being the same insufferable people they are now. But at least I won’t be able to pick on them for being pouty downers about my school.

BION,

Remember that some of those older, more “experienced” players were also given time as frosh and sophs. There might be a LB who started for three+ years and has yet to put up numbers which total one good year for his position.

Oh… and last year’s O-line equals negation of your argument that coaching is not holistic.

So this is what I understand from your post:
It is silly to think…
(a) Fans are talking to recruits and telling them “everywhere is better than OSU”
*agreed… fans, like a team, take on the mentality of their coaching staff and AD… fans are not the only ones repeating “more with less” on an annual/monthly/weekly/daily basis.
(b) OSU is NOT “on the whole” as good as most other places.

Lest we forget, it was Erickson who demanded we step into the conversation as a big boy football program. Riley left after two seasons.

@kroger,

Only? No. But it’s sure hard to concentrate on and correct all the others when this one is ingrained in OSU fandom group-think. It’s less a disadvantage than it is an excuse. But it also overwhelms the disadvantages, making that conversation “negative” apparently. I’m sick of those who sub-consciously think OSU sucks, therefore anything other than abject failure must be celebrated and glorified. That’s what we did when we were experiencing abject failure. It was fine then because it was all too true.

The point isn’t that there aren’t recruiting disadvantages. The point is that their existence is used as an excuse to not overcome them.

Everyone has disadvantages. Do you think Fink goes to every USC prospect and says, “I know I suck as a head coach, but….”

?

Of course not. He concentrates on the strengths and laughs off the disadvantages… all the way to the bank in his case.

Good salesmen don’t get paid for disadvantages. They get paid despite them. College coaches have to be good salesmen. That’s just a part of their job description.

We know how this works. Every kid eligible for NCAA D1 schools is a lead. We send out questionnaires to those we like, and we wait for them to respond. We then cull those who do not respond from our list of leads and evaluate/call the ones who did respond. And then we move on from there.

So why did we cull the unresponsive?

The bromide is that it’s just a waste of resources.

The truth is that the first “no” is just the start of a good salesman’s work. Why bow to the excuse that our product must suck more than our competitors’ products do because we just got a no?

Look in my eyes, say it three times and click your heels kid. Then I’ll know you mean it.

I guarantee we’re missing out on two or three “elite” recruits (of say 150 or so per year?) because we don’t cast the wide net for just two or three kids. The easier job is to set bait with a trolling rig and just sit on the boat drinking beer until the bell rings… because nets are heav

We’re going to get the kids in our traditional pipelines regardless. But that’s because we play in our comfort zone too much. What I’m saying is that minimal effort expanding the net yields more quality players.

We did it with Texas and Okie after we lucked into James. Suddenly we had another pipeline. We lucked into Yve and Sabby, but we never really followed up on Florida because of the perceived disadvantages of recruiting in that region. Yet we’ll turn over rocks in Montana for one player every five or ten years or so.

What’s the value of a pipeline that produces one mid-level recruit every now and then versus taking a chance in a region where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a prospect? Are there simply because the two star prospects in that region have heard of us, and we don’t have to work to at least explain our product? It’s a pretty big assumption that there aren’t a couple overlooked prospects in the Southeast who wouldn’t jump at the chance to be Beavs.

Some coaches understand that it’s easier to develop players with talent and competitive experience than it is to take your chances with a roster full of hopeful late bloomers. They’re just more willing to put in the work on the front end despite all the disadvantages many of them also have.

Those coaches do not have fans who think their disadvantages rise to the level of importance that we believe they are. I’ve read forums where mid-major fans from podunk boon-dock state directional school on the tundra wonder why the hell one of their prospects would even consider OSU. And i don’t get much of a different vibe from a large segment of our fans either. As a result, we lose some of those same elite prospects (or borderline elite in many cases) that we actually spend resources recruiting to those same schools with absolutely every disadvantage (and more) that OSU has.

And we ho-hum about recruiting disadvantages when we lose those prospects too.

Go ahead and look at the arbitrary rankings of our recruiting classes on some of the pay sites. I think we end up with a mean of about the 50th ranked class. Do we really think there are 50 schools who offer more than OSU? Yes, there are disadvantages compared to some schools when talking tradition, population, campus culture, weather, yadda yadda yadda. I would put that number at about 25-30. So that’s where we should be if all the kids are looking at are our disadvantages.

Now throw in coaching.

Wow… back to 50 with us eh?

Is that because Riley’s not a good coach? I don’t think so.

I also think we’re getting better with pitch men like Brennan and Brasfield on the road for us. So the rant is probably more against the fans at this point since it seems to finally have been recognized by the program itself. But it’s hard to change the culture when the culture fights back at every turn.