This Week in College Football 11/21 - 11/25

[Hawk 34 0]

Personally, I think he made a mistake. He already made UC respectable and had a better track at getting through the Big East then he would at pushing OSU/Michigan/Wisconsin aside.

[teke184 0]

Which major program looking for a coach ends up in the worse position next year, Miami or Alabama?

 

 

 

I'd say that Alabama ends up worse off, as this is will be their fourth coach in five years because Francione bolted for A&M, Price got canned shortly into his tenure due to "morals issues" (strip-club visit), and Mike Shula got canned one year after a 10-2 effort with a Cotton Bowl win.

 

 

Miami, OTOH, has had numerous incidents that showed Coker had lost control of the program after last year's Peach Bowl.

 

It started with the LSU-Miami post-game brawl in the tunnel at the Georgia Dome due to some ribbing Miami native Dwayne Bowe of LSU gave some of his friends on the Miami team. Miami's players supposedly threw the first punches, but two of their own were knocked unconscious and sent to the hospital.

 

(LSU benched Dwayne Bowe for most of the first game of the 2006 season for his part in the brawl. No disclosures were made on any Miami player suspensions / benching that I could find.)

 

 

 

Coker's successor better be a disciplinarian who will work decisively to clean up Miami's "Thug U" reputation.

[Guest Princess Leena]

I don't think any coach could turn around that reputation. Especially when people like Michael Irvin remain on TV.

[teke184 0]

I don't think any coach could turn around that reputation. Especially when people like Michael Irvin remain on TV.

Well, I figure Tom Coughlin's looking for a new job right about now...

 

*I'D* pay to watch a reality show where Coughlin comes into Miami and tries to clean up the program the way he put his discipline in place in New York.

[Vern Gagne 0]

In the case of Alabama, I'm starting hear the "you can't win on consistent basis here" excuse. The same thing was said about USC and Texas in the past.

[Guest]

Alabama has two problems.

 

1. Auburn seems to have taken control of recruiting in the state. Hard to regain a foothold when you don't have the talent to get on top in the first place.

 

2. Where.They.Play. The conference is fuckin' stacked. LSU, Auburn and Arkansas in that division.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Find a good coach and those problems will go away.

 

X's and O's before recruiting. I think once you can re-establish a Top 10 level program then recruiting becomes easier.

[Spicy McHaggis 0]

To be honest, I think 90% of recruiting is effort. If you look at the programs that ebb and flow, it's because they're entirely at the mercy of their state's talent level and they hardly recruit nationally... Georgia is a perfect example. I can speak of my knowledge of Pete Carroll... that guy calls an enormous number of kids every year. Surprisingly, not many programs do that. I'm not ignorant enough to think that programs in California, Texas, and Florida don't have an advantage, but I think effort is a lot more important than people realize.

[Hawk 34 0]

Schools like USC, Texas, Ohio State and ND? Students go to them to get recruited. True talent at recruiting comes from the second tier schools who go out and get these talents that might have gotten overlooked by the top schools or themselves (the school) was overlooked by the students.

 

Recruiting isn't enough. How many schools are we able to point at and say "look at the talent on that team" and they usually go 8-3 every season.

 

However, for a program like "The U" that looks to rebuild it's legacy, they need a guy like Caroll or Weis who can sell that program to players. You can't win if you don't get the players who can play what you designed.

[Guest Princess Leena]

Miami is still going to get talented kids... and they'll bounce back soon enough.

 

This is really the only significantly bad year they've had since the 90s. Their powerhouse rep still exists.

[Guest]

Schools like USC, Texas, Ohio State and ND? Students go to them to get recruited.

That's a half truth. Carroll came to a practice and walked up to this guy, who thought he had no fucking chance to play at Southern Cal, and was looking at places like Colorado and UNLV. It's really hard to walk up to the coaches of those programs though, because most of the guys are mystified. It's like Carroll has this aura about him.

[teke184 0]

Schools like USC, Texas, Ohio State and ND? Students go to them to get recruited.

That's a half truth. Carroll came to a practice and walked up to this guy, who thought he had no fucking chance to play at Southern Cal, and was looking at places like Colorado and UNLV. It's really hard to walk up to the coaches of those programs though, because most of the guys are mystified. It's like Carroll has this aura about him.

 

Recruiting as a big-school coach cuts both ways... You can have the guys that approach you, or you have the guys that you approach.

 

The quality of the recruiter, IMHO, is better tested when they DON'T get the recruit they wanted, as you see what happens when the effort they've expended doesn't pay off.

 

 

 

In a positive case of this, Nick Saban had recruited Matt Mauck to play for him at Michigan State. Mauck decided against college football at that time, as he'd been drafted by an MLB team and decided to play in the minors.

 

Saban's recruiting of him stuck and, once his baseball career was over, he decided to go back to football under Saban, who was now at LSU.

 

Mauck became the QB of LSU during the 2001 SEC Title game and later led the Tigers to the 2003 National Championship.

 

 

(DT Chad Lavolais from that same LSU team was in a similar situation, as he was academically ineligible for several years and worked at local prisons as a guard, but pulled his life together to come play for the people who recruited him years before.)

 

 

 

In a negative case of this, one of my HS teammates who now plays in the pros was recruited heavily out of HS by many major programs at that time, such as Florida, Notre Dame, LSU, Northwestern (this was just after their Rose Bowl visit in the mid-90s under Gary Barnett), etc.

 

 

While he was recruited by all of those big-name programs, he chose to go to the patsy of the SEC, Vanderbilt, instead for several reasons.

 

At least three of them were that:

 

1. His family would be able to see him play on TV and in person (He's from Baton Rouge, which is LSU Tiger country), while Big Ten games were rarely, if ever, shown locally and don't play in the South except during bowl season

 

2. He'd be guaranteed an opportunity to play RB instead of DB, which is what most programs were recruiting him for. (He became an All SEC DB once he was moved over, but he wanted that opportunity at RB first)

 

3. He'd get a solid education out of it, no matter what.

 

 

 

Steve Spurrier had made drop-in visits to my HS to recruit him, along with Travis Minor, who was the other local standout that year at one of the bigger schools across town. When Spurrier found out that he was going to Vandy instead of Florida, he wasn't happy.

 

I found out much later that Spurrier had flipped out and started badmouthing the Vanderbilt program to him, then had approached his mother in a local store and tried to confront her over his choice to go to Vandy over Florida.

 

 

 

While I've made a number of derogatory comments about Spurrier in the past, mainly because of the rivalry between LSU and Florida that was pretty one-sided until recently, hearing these stories have made me lose a lot of respect for him.

 

He completely lost it over a guy that was talented and upstanding (high moral fiber and academics), but probably wasn't going to be a factor at Florida for more than one season given their depth on the roster.

 

 

 

 

 

I think that this should at least give people an idea of what kind of sense of entitlement some of the coaches have when it comes to recruiting.

[iggymcfly 0]

I've got new predictions for the rest of the season. USC beats Notre Dame 34-24 Saturday. Gets crowned the second best team in the country by everyone in the media, moves up to #2 in the BCS. Then, just as they're all sucking each other dicks......

 

BOOM, loss to UCLA to end the season. USC plays Notre Dame or West Virginia in the Rose Bowl, and Michigan goes to the BCS title game where they beat the Buckeyes to become national champions.

 

Bumped to brag.

 

And yes, Spicy, I bet $400 on the Bruins today at the ripe line of +13. Fuck USC!