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at the most important requirement of success in college football - recruiting. I just posted this in recruiting but i know many don't visit that forum, and I'm sure I'll get slammed for beating a dead horse but I had no idea the drop off was this significant. You can coach the kids up all you want but if you don't have the talent and depth, it's a losing battle.

2012 - twelve 3-stars, nine 2-stars (diamonds in the rough)
2013 - seven 3-stars, 15 diamonds in the rough
2014 - two 3-stars (both QBs), 13 diamonds in the rough

How can anyone justify this, and justify that nothing should be changed, today? If you think it's bad now, wait until 2015 & 2016.

LA, yes we ALMOST all agree that recruiting is deplorable. Maybe we just let that go, nothing said here will change JJ. We ALL know that. However, I do believe that Stallion, our resident recruiting guru, said 3* is harder to come by this year. Also isn't Harris a 4* (a Mumme recruit) on some sites.

AusTxPony wrote: Also isn't Harris a 4* (a Mumme recruit) on some sites.

Not some sites but one site. But he is a good player at a high 3.

We are pretty low in conference recruiting rankings (7th) and the lower ranked team have less recruits committed to them. So once they get to 15 we could drop lower.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/smu/football/re ... 14/AAC/all

AusTxPony wrote:LA, yes we ALMOST all agree that recruiting is deplorable. Maybe we just let that go, nothing said here will change JJ. We ALL know that. However, I do believe that Stallion, our resident recruiting guru, said 3* is harder to come by this year. Also isn't Harris a 4* (a Mumme recruit) on some sites.

I'm just very concerned by the lack of urgency. Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'm afraid the cupboard is going to be so bare when we change the staff that we're definitely going to be left out. btw, I thought 3-stars were easier to come by these days. I'm pretty sure for the past several years a 3-star is rated 5.5 to 5.8 and a 2-star is 5.4 and below on Rivals. As for Harris, I hope he is a stud but he's going to need playmakers around him and protection upfront. I don't see a sure fire playmaker on the roster or in the recruiting pipeline at this time.

I think there will be some star adjustments made as tapes are sent in on their current play. Not trying to justify our lack of recruiting but if you want to rely on stars you have to wait a while. That is why offers are a better indicator. And that is even worse.

I'd caution drawing too many conclusions over these last 3 years because:

a) last year Rivals dropped from about 265 or so 3+ stars in 2012 Class in Texas down to 200 in 2013 Class
b) this year the last i looked they only had -geez I'm forgetting if it was 140 or 160 3+ stars-so its likely they will add a bunch of upgrades in December time period

SMU tends to get the lower level 3 star types so this could understate SMU's eventual number of 3+ stars in comparison to prior years.

I'd stick to class rankings with average and total ponts comparisons

just checked-currently only 139 Texas High School recruits in the Class of 2014 are rated 3+ stars-so that's about half as many as in 2012 and 61 less than in 2013. They will upgrade probably back to 200

Another thing is low number lower lever BCS offers.

Following recruiting closer over the past few years I've listened to Stallion's message of giving more value to the offers over rating/stars, although as you would expect the two usually go hand and hand. Only three of our eighteen commits have a BCS offer:

Harris - Alabama, Kentucky & Miss St.
Walker - Mich. St., Utah
Wyatt - Iowa St.

It just hard to expect to compete with BCS schools when you're not recruit from the same pool of talent.

LA_Mustang wrote:Following recruiting closer over the past few years I've listened to Stallion's message of giving more value to the offers over rating/stars, although as you would expect the two usually go hand and hand. Only three of our eighteen commits have a BCS offer:

Harris - Alabama, Kentucky & Miss St.
Walker - Mich. St., Utah
Wyatt - Iowa St.

It just hard to expect to compete with BCS schools when you're not recruit from the same pool of talent.

Gaines lists a Utah offer on 247 and Ingram lists an Iowa State offer on Scout. Still a pretty lousy percentage though.

I would not say our recruiting is horrible based on Rivals...Remember Rivals is ran by Longhorns...just saying

oh geez. Rivals is owned by Yahoo Sports which is affiliated with NBC. It was started by a booster of the University of Washington and has never been owned by anyone from UT. Every school in the country has their own Rivals affiliated site

Stallion wrote:oh geez. Rivals is owned by Yahoo Sports which is affiliated with NBC. It was started by a booster of the University of Washington and has never been owned by anyone from UT. Every school in the country has their own Rivals affiliated site

I am not disagreeing with you, but he did not say anything about who owns it. He talked about who runs it. You could both be right, not that it matters who runs it in regards to their opinion about our recruiting.

Geez, I saw a well prepared team last Saturday that executed a winning game plan on both sides of the ball. Eliminate some stupid turnovers and it’s a blow out win. That indicated to me the staff was very much involved and desired to win. I guess actual coaching no longer is a job requirement for coaching. I guess the only requirement for coaching now is to be able to recruit.

I understand that if a coach recruits incredible talent, winning is much easier. I think back to the unlimited scholarship days of Bo Schembechler and how he went from a great always wining coach to mediocre once he was limited by scholarships who he could recruit. Less talent revealed a less successful coach.

And I get the desire to go after and land higher quality recruits. No doubt better talent increases one’s chance to win. And We have room to recruit better talent to be sure.

I just had this old fashion notion that coaching a sport involved, well, coaching that sport. I didn’t know in the modern era that coaching was no longer part of coaching.

When did that change?