Recruiting - Football

From monitoring the recruiting process so far for the 2005 class and Tech fan's opinion of the progress, here are the general conclusions.

- Every one of Chan Gailey's recruiting classes has gotten progressively better (on paper obviously - the jury is out until they are all seniors).
- Last year he showed a true ability to beat the top schools for some top talent, including Miami, FSU, Ohio State, LSU, Auburn, UGAg to name a few.
- Coach also showed the ability to win some big last day recruiting battles, garnering some top talent on signing day.
- Coach and staff showed an incredible ability to close in on a target recruit during a visit. If he could get a recruit to campus, our chances of getting a commitment increase exponentially. In our last recruiting class, GT had official weekend visits from 34 players, and 23 of them signed with GT. That's a closing rate of 68%. Get them campus Coach!!
- At this point in the 2005 class, many hardcore GT fans feel like we are in better position early with more top talent than we have in Gailey's entire tenure. Of course it is early and we only have one verbal. However, we are on the short list for some of the nation's best. Guys like RB Maurice Wells has us in his top 3, Texas QB/ATH Todd Walker just got back from an unofficial visit last weekend and appeared to have a great time. Suffice it to say we are in a good position with him. Linebacker talent Marvin Sapp has us on his short list, and there are many others.

Coach Gailey has said he feels like we finally overcame our challenges and difficulties of injuries and "flunk-gate" - and now we are building depth. In Phil Steele's pre-season magazine he says something I have not heard before. He says there's an old coaching adage that goes like this - add one loss for every true freshman a college team has to start in the line-up. Makes sense. If you are relying on true freshman to start, then lack of depth is a major understatement. Even the most talented high school players are rarely physically mature enough to play the game. A seasoned senior will almost always be more effective than a top 100 high school senior.