by David Parker
With Early Signing Day unfurling before our eyes today, I thought I’d share some thoughts on recruiting. No scoops or back-stories on the recruiting sagas, just some perspectives on some of the recruiting dynamics this year and some that crop up every year. And remember, these are just one man’s opinions. Recruiting – and especially player and team ratings and rankings – can be a very tender subject for many of us, so just consider it all food for thought.
And again, they’re just one man’s opinions. In the lyrics of Don Henley, I could be wrong.
But I’m not. No, I’m not. ;)
Losing Revisited
I really just want to clear up some terminology about recruiting, if I may. At least from my perspective. One of the terms that is tossed around a lot in recruiting season is “losing”. As in, losing a recruit to another program.
We know how the term is used. Any non-committed player showing interest in UF but signing with someone else, is termed as a “loss” by Florida. Point blank, when the Lakeland trio were heavily rumored to be headed to a school not located in Alachua County, it was widely lamented that we “lost” those fairly local boys to the enemy. But to my mind, this use of the word is anywhere from an honest misnomer to semantic warfare from folks looking for a reason to diminish the efforts of the Florida coaches.
To me, the only way to conceive of a recruiting “loss” is if you have a player solidly committed and then they de-commit and then sign somewhere else. You had them, then you lost them. That works. With as little as a commitment is worth these days, even that may be a stretch, but it is the only way to tag the coaches with an “L”.
You just can’t lose something you never had. You can “lose” a recruiting battle to another school for a player, but unless they were committed to you, you didn’t “lose” the player. But even then, some people seem to weaponize the concept of losing head-to-head recruiting battles, claiming that those we missed were “lost” to another coach/school. The fact of the matter is, though, that if every recruit to whom you make a commitable offer to and signs elsewhere is a loss, then every school loses far more battles than they win – even Alabama – because you can only average 25 signees a year, and you make committable offers to far more than that. Multiple players for every spot in the class.
I think it is important also to consider that no matter how you define it, “losing” a recruit is rarely detrimental to a program. And when it is, it is usually just marginal.
I’ve been following recruiting since the 1980s, and it’s been very rare that a player lost in a head-to-head battle to a rival school has come back to hurt us on the field or be a significant season-maker for them or season-breaker for us not having him (let alone a program-maker/breaker). Peyton Manning is the perfect example, as he is clearly the biggest, best, most transcendental player UF has ever “lost” to a rival school after making the player’s final 2 choices. Some people think he’s the greatest quarterback, even greatest *player* to ever play college OR pro football. And we “lost” him to the program that was at the time our biggest, most important rival: the one team we had to beat every year to achieve all our season goals (the SEC East, the SEC title, the national title…we won all 3 of those in multiple years when losing to FSU in that era, but never when we lost to Tennessee).
And what did Manning do? He went 0-4 against Florida, or as I like to phrase it 0-for-his-career against the Gators, and only won 1 SEC title, as a senior, only because after whipping Tennessee in The Swamp Florida disintegrated later in the year against LSU and Georgia due to a quarterback who went on a season-changing bender.
It’s tough to calculate how many UF championships have been thwarted over the years because of one or two players’ indulgence in a drug spiral, from Doug Johnson’s drinking to Rex Grossman’s nose candy to the entire team’s booze fest in 2009 to Will Grier’s nose candy and GNC masking agents.
Anyway, for Manning’s career, UF 4 wins, UT 0; UF 3 SEC titles, UT 1; UF 1 national title, UT 0.
Anquon Boldin, Nick Maddux, Byron Cowart, Nelson Agholor, Josh Harvey-Clemons …and how about the guys who flipped on their UF commitments that we thought were so devastating at the time? Shavar Manuel, Elijah Blades, Adonis Thomas, Da’Vonte Phillips, Ermon Lane, all the way back to Marcus Stroud. None of them ever did anything against us, and most of them didn’t even do much for the teams with which they signed.
Yeah, Peter Warrick caught a pass against us, DeMarcus Van Dyke got an interception against us, and Dalvin Cook ran all over us in garbage time a couple times after our terrible offense had already given the game away. But take those guys out of those games and we still lose on those Saturdays. The only guys who ever really hurt us that we “lost” (either hurt us by beating us badly or by us missing out on their talents) were guys we either didn’t even recruit (Tommie Frazier) or were so idiotic as to try to recruit them to wrong positions on the wrong side of the ball (Derrick Henry).
There is a coaching axiom that I have heard a few very respected coaches use about missing or “losing” recruits: “It isn’t the recruits that you miss that hurt you; it’s the ones that you sign but misevaluated and don’t fulfill expectations.” Through my lens, that rings true every year for every program that doesn’t win it all. So maybe we keep that in mind when and if we “lose” some guys today.
Stars Don’t Matter: Explained
One of the most repeated, most redundant and certainly most heatedly exchanged debates every year is the value of the ratings and rankings put out by the recruiting services. One of the catch phrases of the topic is, “Stars don’t matter.” And I think it is the most misunderstood term in the entire discussion, and that misunderstanding or miscommunication creates much if not most of the increased blood pressure this part of the year. So let me try to set the record straight as to what the phrase means that “Stars don’t matter.”
Let’s start at the top. I am a huge proponent of the idea that stars don’t matter. And let me state right up front that stars are a good directional guide for how good a player probably will be. And yes, that statement lives in harmony with the theory that stars don’t matter. Lemme splain…
Stars are good directional guides because they are based on how many (and which) top programs are pursuing the recruits, and how hard they are after them. If you’re a 5*, that means every top school has you near or at the top of their wish list. And if every top school has you near or at the top of their wish list, and the perennial elite programs have all offered you a scholarship, you’re probably pretty darn good.
Stars are a good, I’d even concede a very good directional guide on the aggregate (those last three words are crucial to that comment). So in theory, you absolutely want as many 4* and 5* players to increase your odds, but in reality, even on the aggregate that’s not always going to be an accurate predictor of any individual team’s success.
So far, I would wager that almost everyone reading this (and not reading it) can agree in large part on what I just wrote. The trouble starts when star proponents treat the star ratings as empirical science. Because that they absolutely are not.
When we get a commitment from a 3* player, and a bunch of people groan, I say “stars don’t matter”, but I mean it – and this is the essential fork in the road where the philosophical harmony breaks down – on the case-by-case level. Thus, there is no reason to assume that any single 3* player won’t be a starter or star just because of his star count. Now if all we get is 3* players, then groaning may very well be in order. But we never get only 3* players, or even a majority of them. Ever. Except for the rare exception of a terrible coaching transition when an complete unknown figurehead with light recruiting chops takes over a dumpster fire. In Jim McElwain’s small transitional class of 2015, only 33% of Florida’s class was 4* or 5* players. That is the only time since the star system was invented that Florida has ever failed to sign a majority of its class in the 4* and 5* combined category. As bad as McElwain was as a coach and a recruiter, his next two classes were 60% and 79% 4*-5* players. That’s the low water mark for the Florida program. So there’s no reason to groan over an individual player’s star rating at Florida. EVER. Especially when your coach has a history of making superstars out of 3* players in the SEC, as we have right now.
So. Discrepancy cleared up. Feud ended. Peace and harmony will forever flourish in the recruiting discussion fields of Gator Nation forever more.
Now, class rankings are a completely different animal altogether (in unison: “class rankings are a completely different animal“). The annual whining about not being a top 5 or 10 class is pure absurdity. Anything after Alabama (or UGA, the way they’ve been cheating the last 2 years), is as good as blind guessing. This is empirical, I have published those studies here before and I will do a refresh this year again.
And I don’t mean in terms of whether a team will be good or not, I mean in terms of how they will perform relative to the other teams in the country (or even near them in the recruiting rankings). To wit, saying that LSU is going to be better than us for one year or four years because they signed a #6 class and we signed a #12 class is simply not supported in any historical trends. As cited above, I’ve run the numbers over a couple decades and class rankings (especially after the #1 or top 2 spots) have no predictive value at all.
They are fun, they are a great driver of online revenue, and they create wonderful suspense and a made-for-TV signing day soap opera for ESPN every year, but they are not going to predict how well your program will perform. And if you think they will, that’s okay. We can disagree amicably. Recruiting debate should not be the face that launched a thousand warships.
Justiny Fields Forever
Guess who’s back? Back again. Justin’s back. Tell a friend. Guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back….
Well I did not win the “When does Justin Fields transfer from Georgia” sweepstakes. I had “After fall camp, 2019,” and I believe you are disqualified from the showcase if you over-bid.
So the 7-on-7 wunderkind is back on the open market again, and Gator fans are lining up to praise his second coming and beg every star in the sky that he relocates to Hogtown. But be forewarned. If you thought his first recruitment was a side show, just wait until his second tour of moody gets started. Suitors will flood in from Norman to the Plains to StarkVegas to Talla-hassle, and so many points in between. The drama should be twice as thick and twice as loud, given he will be sharing the transfer quarterback spotlight with only one or two others, instead of a whole nation of recruits.
If he calls Florida, Dan Mullen will no doubt welcome the chance to pull him into the Gator fold. And he should. I guess…only Dan will know for sure. I personally don’t expect Florida to pursue him, though I would not be the least surprised if we did. Especially if Fields has to sit out a year (the with-cause argument Fields may make concerning a racist, dishonest and otherwise hostile environment at UGA may not earn him a waiver, but it is likely something UGA will do anything they can to prevent being made), I don’t know how he would fit into the plans. Dan already has his succession plan in place between Franks and the two Joneses. Does he see enough out of them to pass on Fields, or does he see a definite need to go after Justin again? And if it is not clear cut, does that make the decision for him, in terms of not rocking the boat?
After all, if he didn’t like sitting behind Fromm at Georgia, how will he enjoy sitting behind Franks or even Jones and waiting his turn? Of course we all know that playing time is not why he transferred. He was made certain promises. He was told he’d have an easy time beating out Fromm. He was told that packages would be created for him to get meaningful series work this year and the offense would be evolved to fit his skill set. While none of these things were true, perhaps even more upsetting were the promises that were NOT made but were nonetheless paid off…like being the up-back personal protector on the worst and most telegraphed fake punt call in college football history. He was sold a Hollywood life of stardom, but instead given a script where he is the disgraced villain who lost the SEC title game by failing on a doomed trick play.
So, conventional wisdom aside, whatever effort we put into getting Fields, I think he is the recruiting unicorn of this generation, much as CJ Spiller was of the Tebow era. Always seeming in our grasp, always just out of reach. So where does he go? I would bet he becomes an Oregon Duck. Unless family considerations anchor him to the southeast, the kid needs a big change of scenery. And I believe outside of Mullen’s offense, he would be the most lethal in the Quack Attack.
Of course he may want to stay in the SEC, maybe even in the East so he can take every opportunity to take out revenge against the coaching staff that lied to him and wasted a year of his life (and possibly two) for no other reason than to prevent Florida from signing him.
And while on the subject of the Ducks, watch for Oregon to make a huge push on the field the next couple of years. They are about the ambush the PAC. They’ve got an excellent staff of coaches and they are recruiting like Oregon has never seen before. Meanwhile the PAC lies flaccid and ripe for a dictator. Most importantly, they’re going to be better than the Chip Kelly era because they’re committed to playing defense, too.
Who would have thought it, but turns out the best thing that’s ever happened to Oregon was Jimbo Fisher leaving FSU.
Chomps from the GC Staff & Columnists —
ANDREW SPIVEY
Florida has been up and down for the Lakeland trio. Good news for the Gators is that the up is back at the right time. I expect Florida to land to land all three.
Florida has been battling for months for Trey Sanders but it looks like the Gators will fall short here. UGA and Alabama are the teams to watch on Wednesday.
Florida is still in great shape to land Chris Steele’s signature on Wednesday but he still isn’t expected to announce until January at the all star game. Oregon and South Carolina battled but came up short.
ERIC FAWCETT
Florida’s struggles to score this season and last have made for some Mike White doubters but from conversations I’ve had with some people close to next year’s recruiting class, there is lots of optimism from them about where the program is going. Florida’s struggles this year haven’t at all shaken the trust of next year’s star studded recruits and the father of one key recruit said if mike white isn’t there, his son won’t be either. So keep the faith in Mike White!
That’s all, folks!
All the best,
Your friends at Gator Country…where it’s GREAT to be a FLORIDA GATOR!