Photo Credit: Matt Natali/Bucknuts
Forget Super Tuesday, yesterday was Wacky Wednesday, the day that the top tier college football program have their recruits for the incoming year sign letters of intent to play football in exchange for a free university education. At least that’s the theory.
The pundits are widely hailing Alabama, Notre Dame, and Miami of Florida are considered to be the top-3 classes this year with the schools accepting letters of intent from 33, 23, and 33 recruits respectively. The thing to know about this is: no school can have over 85 players on scholarship at anytime and no school can place more than 25 players in a single year. Another significant thing to understand is that these ratings are projections on how the athletes will perform, about half of the highly ranked recruits don’t reach their projected potential. Finally, these are 17 and 18 year old kids, most of them don’t have their heads screwed on straight and will do wacky things as a result.
The net of all this information? These rankings and all the hoopla about rankings don’t mean squat. It’s a publicity stunt to garner attention and traffic to the media outlets that cover the game plain and simple. Don’t believe me? How does a team like Wisconsin pull in top-30 ranked classes each year and routinely win 10 games a year? The answer is simple, they recruit athletes that fit into their system and culture, and they do a great job of developing the players. I’m continually puzzled by the fascination with recruiting, more important is player development and the “fit” into the philosophy and system.
That being said, there are two unusual recruiting stories this year. A player in Nevada was allegedly offered scholarships to several DI schools and had a selection “ceremony” at his high school. After the publicity that came from it, the schools said “now, who are you?” I’ve heard multiple accounts about this, either the student staged the whole bizarre event or was scammed by someone posing as officials from a school or schools, either way, it’s out of the ordinary.
The other involves top quarterback recruit Terrelle Pryor – highly coveted as a Vince Young-like player. He was all set to announce complete with ESPN coverage and decided not to decide at the last minute. This has caused huge consternation in the fan bases of schools he was considering. My belief is he’s trying to find the right fit, he wants to be sure, and he’s taking advice from sources of information he trusts. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he did something like committed to a non-named school to play basketball (he’s also a star basketball player.) Let’s give the kid some space people! Let him have some peace to make his choice. Can you imagine being 17 years old and having reporters call and text you incessantly wanting to know if you made your mind up yet?
Finally, welcome to the Buckeye Class of 2008. There are 19 members and you can get all the details at Bucknuts. It’s a great class that fills many needs, particularly on the defensive and offensive lines. I look forward to seeing you play on Saturdays over the next few years.
