Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The recruiting Game

Check out this article about the football recruiting services on the web. Interesting read for sure. I guess we are somewhat naive to think that these recruiting services are totally unbiased. They have bills to pay and they're a business. Tom Lemming, who is quoted in the article, has a checkered history of being a complete Notre Dame homer, even though he presents himself as an unbiased talent evaluator. He's not. As always, insert large grains of salt into mouth before putting all your stock into where our recruits ranked. Coaching is still the #1 factor.......... bbbbuuuutttttt, let's not kid ourselves - you have to get the talent. I kind of see the raw talent level of a recruit as the base, and the ability to "coach up" a player, to develop him physically, add strength, teach technique, fit a system, etc, all contributes to on the field success. But if the base is low, then it your theoretical max top end is lower. The fact that Chan Gailey's classes can't seem to crack the top 30 is no indication that Tech will fail on the field. Quite the contrary. It just means Coach Gailey and staff have a lot more work to do to achieve that success.