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For years I’ve been told “it is difficult to recruit to Corvallis.”

By
angry
-
38

Well, in 2011 it sure seems easy.

My overall argument has always been that the recruiters themselves are the limiting factor in success, not the weather, town, etc that apologists love to offer up as excuses for incompetence. Well, now that we've had early success with recruiting, let's revisit those old discussions.

1. My argument: Pat Casey consistently recruits top 25 classes to Corvallis.

Dissenter's counter-argument: Casey only had nationally ranked classes after winning big in 2005.

Conclusion: So is the town of Corvallis or "winning big" the limiting factor? The argument changed right off the bat. Make up your mind, apologists.

2. My argument: Craig Robinson has had top-ranked classes. Craig Robinson never "won big"…his success in recruiting appears related to his personality, charisma, and approach more than location or playing time.

Dissenter's counter-argument: "You can't compare football to basketball. 5 scholarships versus 20." or "Craig Robinson had playing time to offer."

Conclusion: Um, why can't you compare basketball to football? The 5 to 20 thing is a ratio and therefore ignorable. If my initial premise is that it's not difficult to recruit to Corvallis, both the football and basketball teams are located in Corvallis. Clearly I believe it's easy to recruit any athlete to Corvallis, not just football players. With regard to playing time…outside maybe five positions, Mike Riley has playing time to offer, too. Keep this in mind: Jay John wasn't bringing in national talent.

3. My argument: There are plenty of small college towns (Auburn, Stillwater, Clemson, Blacksburg, Fayetteville, etc) with "nothing to do" and less than ideal weather who recruit top 30 classes.

Dissenter's counter-argument: Corvallis is smaller, wetter, and lamer than all those locations. Some argued those towns all have bigger towns within driving distance.

Conclusion: The dissenter's are really grasping at straws on this one. Corvallis lamer than Clemson? Portland and Eugene are bigger cities and only a short drive away. My ultimate conclusion here is that people on the internet really hate to admit they're wrong or another guy is right. They'll say anything before doing that.

4. My argument: The football team has had bad recruiters and an antiquated coaching staff that hasn't embraced technology/kept up with the times.

Dissenter's counter-argument: The coaching staff has made improvements every year. You can't expect success overnight. We're slowly improving, etc.

Conclusion: First off, the staff didn't make improvements every year. The 2006 class was much better than the 2007 class (one of the worst in recent history). Since '07 there was a gradual improvement until the 2010 class, which was a significant improvement. That class, however, was still not Rose Bowl caliber. The apologist's have a slight case here. With the exception of 2007, recruiting has improved (at a snail's pace) each year. However, their argument that you can't change recruiting overnight has been proven flawed. This year, Riley fired Newhouse and hired Brennan. He not only hired a great recruiter, but sent a strong message to the rest of the staff. The result? One 4-star and four 3-stars, none rated below 5.6.

It seemed obvious to me all along that Oregon State's poor recruiting resulted from these factors:

  • Coaches who either didn't like recruiting or weren't very good at it.
  • Having a staff of technological Luddites.
  • Poor leadership at the top. Riley didn't make recruiting a clear priority.
  • The unspoken belief that OSU could compensate for poor recruiting with great coaching. I think last year's offensive line showed Riley, definitively, that this was not the case.
  • Riley's ego (via the media's praise and exaggeration of his ability for turning over rocks and finding football players instead of salamanders).
  • Slow to look at film, slow to get offers out, constantly playing catch up.

There are other reasons. I'm sure they'll come up in the comment section if the apologists start making up excuses again.

The bottom line is that Riley sent a clear message by firing Newhouse, hiring young, talented recruiters, and changing the energy within the program. After that happened, we saw positive results.

All along I've felt this could be done overnight. It's very frustrating to be able to see the path to success, yet have people who supposedly want the same thing as you dissenting and making excuses that hold the program back. Hopefully the dissenters read this and realize they were clearly wrong, and if their ego won't allow them to admit it to me, at least admit it to themselves.

Recruiting to Corvallis is only as difficult as each respective staff makes it.

Who is Michelle Csatari?

By
angry
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155

This is the question from which Duck fans should rightfully be…ducking.

Let me explain.

Microsoft Excel allows a user to right click and find out both the author of a document and when it was created. Both Excel spreadsheets provided to the Oregonian this morning were created by Michelle Csatari on February 18th, 2011. See screen capped image:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This begs the questions: who is Michelle Csatari, and why was she creating (laborious) spreadsheets for Oregon's compliance department?

Well, first off, according to her linkedin profile, Csatari worked for Willie Lyle's MLSsports from 2008-2009. Her job description reads:

Director of Scouting

MSL Sports

Marketing and Advertising industry

2008 – 2009 (1 year)

Communicated with coaches and players from across the country. Responsible for strategic placement and supervision of regional scouts nationally. Created and managed accounts, databases, invoices, contracts, payments, and product distribution for College Football Programs. Promoted and marketed scouting packages to new clients

So, what do we know? We know she knew Willie Lyles in 2008. We also know that she placed scouts and received payments for product distribution. Hm.

In 2010 she goes on to work as a disability claims examiner in New Jersey, before resurfacing in the football world as a recruiting coordinator for Dartmouth University in New Hampshire.

What do we know? Nothing too damning here, but it definitely raises questions. Why does Csatari leave for New Hampshire right around the time Lyles and Kelly are accused of exchanging money for players? Chip Kelly is from New Hampshire. Sure, this could be a coincidence. Or, placing Csatari could be a be part of the deal. After all, Csatari currently lists Lyles as a friend on her Facebook profile (alternate screen cap here). Isn't this what friends do? And we know Lyles thinks so highly of her that he asked her to create the two Excel documents found in the Oregonian this morning.

What's most vexing about the Excel documents is that Csatari was the recruiting coordinator at Dartmouth at the time they were created. You would think that being a full-time recruiting coordinator, one wouldn't have time to draft large, laborious Excel spreadsheets for former employers or other universities. Is Csatari just a very nice person? And why weren't these documents already created, since they were supposedly part of Lyle's 2011 "National Package"?

The final, and perhaps most fascinating, part of this puzzle is that Csatari is either fired or leaves her job at Dartmouth only a month after creating the Excel spreadsheet for Lyles. According to her Linkedin profile, she becomes the Director of Sales at CML in Boston. This occurs in April, 2011. So, between creating the documents on February 18th, 2011 and April, 2011…something happens, and she changes jobs.

If I am with the NCAA, I question Michelle Csatari. This may be a classical prisoner's dilemma, and she'd be liable to blink before Willie.

General Discussion June, 2011

By
angry
-
173

If there’s anything you all want to discuss let me know, and I’ll draft a post about it. Really slow period right now without much that interests me, so I might go into hibernation unless something piques my interest.

There are a couple nuggets on the recruiting front.

1. I’m hearing Isaac Seumalo will likely wind up a Beaver. He was high on Stanford for a while, but the Beavers are now apparently in the lead. Don't be surprised to see these schools jockey back and forth, as February is long away. UCLA is also getting in the mix–you realize how strange the world is when you see Inoke Breckterfield listed as his lead recruiter. Still, Beavs lead here, and for now the kid is entertaining all offers and enjoying his 15 minutes.

2. 4-star WR Kenny Lawler, a soft ASU commit, raves about the Beavs (specifically Brennan) as well.

It's encouraging and exciting to see improvement in recruiting. Now if we could get in on more 4-star DL instead of WRs…

Hate Mail from a Vanderbilt Fan

By
angry
-
30

I should start posting more hate mail. It's always good for a laugh. Anyway, apparently this particular Vandy fan didn't take to my, "Give 'em hell, Seabass" and toothless wonder jokes. All grammar and syntax is original:

I read with some amusement critiques of Vanderbilt fans on your website.  Pretty disparaging remarks coming from people apparently associated with Oregon State.

According to US News and World Reports, kinda the bible for the ratings of universities, Oregon State ranked behind 10 of the SEC schools, managing to best (barely), Ole Miss and Mississippi State.  Gotta tell you, ranking behind Arkansas and LSU is pretty pathetic.

By the way, Vanderbilt was ranked 17th. Oregon State…139 (Oregon was 111!).

And Vanderbilt also manages to do it without burdening the taxpayers of Tennessee, unlike Oregon State.

So, I suspect the hayseeds and toothless wonders are more likely to be wearing black and orange than black and gold.

The bottom line is that Vanderbilt fans embarrassed themselves by making sexual/beaver jokes in Deliverance drawls. Vanderbilt has a better academic reputation, but a lot of that is just rich people propping one another up. It's hard to find any objective measure of academics. Beaver fans have their own issues so I won't get high and mighty. I'll just say Vanderbilt fans did not impress me in the least and be done with it.

Two Points about the Baseball Season

By
angry
-
54

Today, many Beaver fans are reflecting on the season, saying things like, "It was a great ride, we exceeded expectations" and "we were picked 8th, so this is all icing on the cake."

While I do agree it was an enjoyable ride, these fans are missing two key points:

1. Expectations can change over the course of a season.

This is true of anything, not just sports. When a kid takes up guitar, do his parents proclaim, "He is the next Jimi Hendrix!"? Probably not. But maybe after hearing him play a bit, they realize the kid has talent. They may have had low expectations to begin with, but once talent was demonstrated their expectations were adjusted accordingly. This idea seems lost on many fans. They keep repeating the (flawed) idea that since expectations were low in February they should be equally low in June, and the baseball team was simply exceeding these static expectations. In reality, what happened is that collective expectations were raised as the team showed talent, won games, and earned reassessment. This is normal; trying to justify yesterday's elimination using arguments about pre-season expectations isn't.

2. Pundits are often wrong. They were wrong to pick us 8th. Beaver fans should laugh at how wrong the pundits were instead of using the pundits opinions as a gauge or justification of this season's success.

In closing, sure, it was a great year. Back in February, I thought the team would be good (somewhere around 4th in the Pac-10), but not good enough to host a regional or travel to a Super Regional. After the ASU sweep, I felt the chemistry was so good the team could win a National Championship. Once my expectations were that high, I began to nitpick every detail and saw flaws (like no #2 starter, slow/station to station offense, etc) and once again adjusted my opinion. It is okay to change opinions as you observe or receive more data. This is a point lost on many.

The Beavers season ended where I thought it would. I predicted a win in regional, and their being swept in the Super Regional. This wasn't rocket science. It was just a guy taking an objective, realistic view of the team and then determining the most probable outcome (i.e. sure, they could have won, but that scenario was less probable than losing).

Beaver fans need to understand that expectations change over time. Time can be a year, a decade, or in this case, a few months. If you look at it like this, the season ended exactly where it should have. In other words, the team met our adjusted expectations. It's probably the reason the realists (translation: people who read this blog) aren't heartbroken this morning. I just wish more fans were keen observers, as it would eliminate a lot of the excuses, blather, bickering, and vomit-inducing "feel good" reflections such as "it was a great ride, we exceeded expectations!"

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