Coaches, fans shouldn’t always "look to the stars" when evaluating recruits
by ksubailey
on Jan 25, 2008 2:05 PM CST
National Commitment List Rankings by Rivals.com
OU - 7th
TX - 10th
TX A&M - 15th
MU - 21st
OSU - 25th
CU - 26th
NU - 29th
KSU - 30th
KU - 35th
TTU - 40th
BU - 54th
ISU - 66th
Kansas State fans shouldn’t completely hang their heads in despair in regards to the Wildcat’s football future. According to Rivals.com, the unfinished 2008 recruiting class ranks 8th in the Big 12. Not really bad, but not really great either. However, as fans we need to remember that there is more to the evaluation of a player than merely looking at the number of stars they have received from Rivals.com. Link to article
Hopefully our coaching staff is selecting young men who they believe can work well in our system. Four and five star recruits may not always be the answer when it comes to saving a football program.
Look at some of K-State’s most successful and beloved players:
Jordy Nelson: Walk-on
Ian Campbell: Walk-on
Zach Diles: No star ranking
Terence Newman: **
Marcus Watts: **
Darren Sproles: **
Ryan Lilja: ***
These are just to name a few. Surprisingly, if you look at most of the four and five star recruits from the past they are far from household names. (Particularly those who signed in the Snyder Era.)
We’ve seen what highly-touted five star recruits do to a basketball program. But I think there’s a little more to putting together a football program. You can’t design your entire team’s strategy off of one or two players. K-Staters need to put their faith in the ability of our coaching staff for the 2008 season (it’s hard for me too). You never know who will be the next superstar two star.Link to article
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Good post
Thanks for the post, ksubailey. You make a great point about our coaching staff selecting and evaluating talent. Even from the halcyon days of Bill Snyder, we never were picking up the blue-chip recruits that LSU and Texas fight for, and there's no reason for us to try (unless they're from Wichita...oh, never mind). You can have a good, successful team with the players you recruit as long as you have good coaches and the players that are brought in are willing to learn and work hard to improve.
Since you brought this up, I've been meaning to post a link to this post by Sunday Morning Quarterback for a while now. If you've never read that blog, I highly recommend it. Very thorough, thoughtful and analytical. The post linked analyzes the performance of teams in relation to their Rivals recruiting rankings.
by TB on Jan 25, 2008 3:55 PM CST 0 recs
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