I am not a doomsdayer and I believe in what CCM is doing. But, I just saw a report that has us only ahead of Vandy in recruiting and 43rd in the nation for the coming year. I thought they were having a pretty good recruiting season? I also admit I am a headline reader and don’t read the details in sports or news. This just really caught me off-guard. I know the first question will be where did I get the information and shame on me for not saving it. It just seemed like a non-biased view of the state of the SEC recruiting. It was not focused on Arkansas in any way.
I’m not apologizing for, nor defending our recruiting. But, I do want to make one VERY important thing clear to those who may not understand it.
Most times, recruiting rankings are based on the total points accumulated by the commitments a team has. For example, if Team A has 3 kids committed (with ratings of 5.8, 5.8, 5.9) and Team B has 5 kids committed (rated 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.7,5.9), then Team B would be “rated” higher in the Recruiting rankings, since their total (27.5) is greater than the total for Team A (17.5), even though the AVERAGE per recruit would be 5.83 for Team A, to 5.5 for Team B. There can be more to it, depending on the recruiting service and how they do their rankings, specifically. Some may cap it as the top 15 or top 20 kids, etc.
During this time of the year (summer before signing date), it is very difficult to compare recruiting classes (commitments) on an oranges to oranges basis, since each of the various teams will usually have different numbers of kids committed at any given time.
Again - not apologizing for our class or trying to rationalize it. Just making sure this fact is understood (in my experience, many do NOT know this). Obviously, the hard-core star-gazers are generally aware of this.
Yes
No need to worry yet, plenty of time.
Now, if the BBQ doesn’t go well, then, yeah worry.
I don’t expect this class to be as good as last year either way.
No need to worry.
We still have 3 or 4 years of hearing how he’s the best recruiter we’ve ever had before we fire him and start over.
At this point in the 2020 recruiting year, I wouldn’t worry too much about how we compare. We are targeting the positions we will need. Just looking at the small number of commitments we have, I think we are doing okay. Also, the date that score was assessed would tell us whether it included the most recent commitments, such as Morris and Toll.
and are coming off a 2-10 season, after 5 years of misery under CBB, who went out of his way to piss of texas hs coaches.
considering all of that, I find our recruiting to be remarkably good. striking, holy smokes, I can’t believe it’s this good.
Now, if we want to recruit like LSU and the big boys, we obviously need to win 6 this year, go to a bowl game, then next year start winning bigger.
It’s a process, unless you are Ole Mrs or Auburn or LSU, then you just buy them
GHG
Stars and ranking have only one purpose. To sell their product. There are probably more three star players now in the NFL than five star and many young men develop while in college and some get no better than when they were in high school.
Obviously we all want the best talent we can get but Joe Smith’s list of who is best does not hold up a whole lot. Lou Holtz seldom got five star guys but he did pretty well. I feel we are at the bottom right now and there is only one way to go, up,
So I will just observe things for a while and maybe three years from now we will know how good our coach is.
Obviously most recognize it is early in the process, so it is even more a beauty contest at this time in the process and maybe even a little of what I call the halo effect of recruiting. I think there are numerous pundits/so called recruiting writers who I think rely on limited and anecdotal information or evidence in assigning recruit and recruiting rankings. That is, if certain schools are interested, the writers automatically make assumptions either positive or negative. Both Richard and Dudley seem to try and formulate their evaluations more on observations, whenever possible, leading to an informed assessment rather than being based solely on assumptions and the bandwagon.
The comment/dig on “best recruiting staff” fails to recognize that this staff can be a very good recruiting staff yet still not be ranked highly, because many factors determine the eventual outcome. Obviously, the recent lack of success is a big factor and there are likely more, depending on how one views the recruiting landscape. I might make the assertion that Alabama and certain other schools could have mediocre recruiting staffs and still have attractive recruiting rankings, at least for a while, so those making the statement about this staff may be accurate.
Uh bob…
Of course there are more 3 stars in the NFL considering there are 30 5 stars per year and 1500-2000 3 stars per year.
The percentage of 5 stars that make it to the NFL compared to the 3 stars is what you should look at, much much much much higher likelihood of a 5 star making it to the nfl than a 3 star.
Stars matter. If they didn’t, well maybe a team would win the national championship that doesn’t have more blue chips than non blue chips, that hasn’t happened in over 15-20 years
Lou holtz recruited far before there were rankings of players
I agree in general, that X coach’s evaluation is better than Joe Smith. But the evidence is overwhelming, and undeniable that you need more 4 stars than 3 on your roster to win championships ships. Especially in the SEC.
Pretty sure we have more commits on this July 1st over last year’s. If by Oct we only have 12-14, then we might have something to start to ponder…
Need to borrow your crystal ball.
All Hog fans worry constantly regardless of coaches/sport or time of year…
No crystal ball needed. We heard how CBB was the best recruiter we’ve seen, never saw the results so we fired him and now we hear the best recruiter left the least talented team we ever seen.
Why should we expect anything to be different with CCM? We are hearing the same things. Best recruiter etc.
We will see in a few years. I hope I’m wrong, but I have my doubts.
I think recruiting is off to a good start and got a boost when Toll turned around from OU and Tennessee and pledged to Arkansas.
They are also doing better privately than it appears publicly.
I agree that the picnic will be a big thing again this year for 2020 and beyond.
A lot of the guys on the current commit list were there last summer.
Ole Miss is currently in the top 10 recruiting on Rivals. However their average recruit ranking is 2.4 stars. Our average is 3.1 stars. They currently have 21 or commits, where we have only 10 thus our lower ranking. Our rankings will go up as we gain more commits . Its going to take time for us to dig out of this mess folks, at least 4 strong classes similar to last year.
Why would anybody want to have 21 commitments on July 2?
Last year was an amazing recruiting year, especially considering the sorry state of the program lately, which now has won 6 of its last 26 games.
As for improvement this year, it’s too early to judge for me.
On July 1st of last season, Arkansas had six commits and then got three in the next week.
They have 10 public ones as of today.
It then got nuts in late July and early August as pledges came in fast.
My prediction: The hogs will have 6 to 8 more commits by Labor Day. Pick up another 5 before early signing day. That means they will sign 21-23 on the early day. Leaving 4 to 6 spots for the late day depending on whether or not we use the two spots left from this year.
I’m going to say 8 to 10 four star recruits.
Finishing with a class ranked somewhere from 17 to 25.
Think we win more than expected by the betting lines - probably 6 or 7.
Then things take off from there recruiting wise for 2021 and beyond.
Things are on the way up because we have a head coach that can recruit and will put an exciting product on the field.
No we don’t.
Some of us realize that this is the toy section of life and there is nothing about the Razorbacks worth getting worried about. Not recruiting, not games, not popflies falling to earth in Omaha. I immerse myself in things Razorback to FORGET about the things that are worth worrying about.