All of this excitement and feel good talk about Coach Morris and his recruiting ability has taken a severe beating after this past weekend. It’s inexcusbale to lose long time committed in-state recruits AFTER they make an official visit. Let’s get excited about the SMU commits who are coming to AR - yippee! And let’s trash the top player in the state because Chad Morris can’t close a recruit. Not to mention Bohannon - what about all of this “look what I did with D Watson” talk that Morris was going to use to seal the deal. Oh right, Bohannon is no good either. And Luke Jones? Obviously overrated. I’m stunned to see how bad this week has been in recruiting. Bielema lite is what this is…
Oh, and if y’all really think Ferrell had a commitable offer from Bama, well you should also know that Gus is still coming to AR as a coordinator for his best buddy. This staff has dropped the ball already.
If you expected him to be able to flip some of these guys with only ten days on the job, you have unrealistic expectations. That would be a very tall task for even the best of recruiters walking into that situation. The ones leaving are leaving because they have longer standing relationships with other schools. Give the coach more than a couple of weeks before judging him. This is the first early signing period, that just happened to be at a horrible time due to the coaching change.
It appears better days are ahead. I think we will end up with a good, not great haul this year. Limited scholarships because of good retention rates will mean this class will not rank high no matter how well we close on recruiting this year. Unfortunately some patience will be needed. You will probably get the recruiting results you want next year. There just isn’t much time to form the needed relationships this year.
Wow. Over reacting just a little.
This is the problem in all sports the first time something doesn’t go out way folk want to complain. It’s easy to miserable I guess. I think there’s a lot of positives.
I will focus on those things.
The early signing period is hurting with Flanigan. I think with another month of both relationship building and instate pressure to build he’d be a Hog. I think Jones will be a Hog given he’s delaying signing until February - again more time to build a relationship.
We do need to replace McCalister and Sean - let’s see what CMM and the new DC can come up with after the dead period.
I have to admit that I have been judgmental at times (as most on here have) but this post is out of bounds. From your username it appears that you may be from somewhere in South La. as I am? Don’t give us a badname - Lighten up a little and give Coach Morris a chance - with the season we just finished did you think that keeping BB was an option? If not then who? Any new Coach (maybe with the exception of Malzahn, and he was never a true option) thrown into this recruiting ‘timeline’ predicament was going to be challenged, Coach Morris and his skeleton staff has done a great job considering.
Most of us are giving them time to get their staff completed and to get established as a program before we start judging them. Some of us have gotten excited about signs that they may be much better recruiters than the previous staff, but they can only do so much in ten days. They didn’t go hard after some of our previous commitments. We assume they think they can do better, you like to assume they are just idiots and all of these are great recruits they threw away. They tried hard to get some of the commitments they wanted to sign early with us, their success rate there is not 100% so, obviously, you think they need to be fired. They got some recruits, committed to teams playing in the playoffs, to come for an official visit. That sounds like a good idea no matter how many of them flip, but, so far, none have so they are obviously failures and we need to replace them. Morris appears to be trying to hire a DC that is coaching in a bowl or the playoffs and they can’t or won’t agree to come until after it won’t be a distraction for their present team and players. Sounds like the kind of high quality and high integrity folks we all would like to have on the Hog staff, but he should have had a defensive staff in place recruiting NOW and is obviously “way in over his head” since he did not chose to do that. Sounds to me like you just need to go take over since it is obvious you know much better how this all should be done than the new guy does. Ever hear of the concept of being “a legend in your own mind?” Look it up in Websters. It probably has your photograph next to the definition.
I figured they would lose some, maybe several. I also figured they would gain some. Billy Ferrell was definitely a gain. So was LaDarrius Bishop. But the negative in folks don’t want any balance. Balance would reduce the impact of the “woe is me” in their posts. Please, don’t add any balance in your life, because you won’t be as much fun for the rest of us to talk about. And, we are talking about you.
Many players commit to coaches more than they recruit to programs. Flanagan committed to Bielema over his relationship with Gundy. When Bielema left, so did several commitments to Arkansas.
Really?? Obviously, I was not a 4-5 star high school athlete but I would have chosen the school first and then the coach. I’m surprised the opposite of that is apparently the normal.
I was never recruited either, I’ve talked to a lot of kids who have been. There are as many reasons for choosing a school as their are recruits. To call one approach normal and another something else is simplifies things far too much.
There are kids who want to be a Razorback (or a Sooner or a Tiger or a …) no matter who the coach is. There are those (Alex Collins comes to mind) who put a premium on who the coaches are and the relationship they’ve built. In the dark ages when I was a sports writer, I know of a hot shot recruit who signed with a school because he preferred its colors (that may be a bad example, because that kid got in trouble and never played a down). The fact is, what you or I would do doesn’t matter. No one approach is THE right one. Every recruit has different priorities and expectations.
It’s absurd to blame a coach who has had no more time than he’s had to recruit. The problem is simple. The early signing date kills schools who change coaches. The only ones we’ll keep are those who either always wanted to be Hogs or those who fell in love with the school. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. We might pick up one or two who like Morris’s style better than CBB’s, but it won’t be more than that. People who want to change coaches just have to count this as one of the downsides.