Thoughts from the CFB Award show last night.

[White Helmet]

I noticed an interesting thing about 2 winners, the Biletnekof award winner, Hass from Ore. St., was a walk-on with no D-1 offers after high school. And the Outland winner was the C from Minnesota, with only Minnesota as a D-1 offer. So I guess offers sometimes aren't everything.

[SMU Football Blog]

No. They aren't everything. Nothing is everything. But the fact is that the people best able to judge talent are the coaches themselves and if fifty schools offer a kid a scholarship that says something and if another kid doesn't get any that says something too. Odds are the kid with fifty offers is going to turn out to be a better player than the kid with no offers or just one. Period. In fact, I would say the odds are pretty damn good.

This isn't to say that a coach isn't going to find a diamond in the rough or be a better talent evaluator than the others, but by the time kids are in their senior season, at least in top levels, they have pretty much been scouted out.

Yes, some highly rated kids will turn out to be busts. Yes, some kids will come out of nowhere and be worldbeaters. That being said, the players taking in next year's draft probably had a combined 500 scholarship offers between them.

Bennett's 2003 signing class was fairly highly rated and most people here were very proud of that and excited. Don't look at the rankings and offers of the kids when they are good and simply dismiss them when they are bad. It is OK to be legitimately concerned.

Just because Stallion is an A-hole doesn't make him wrong.

[White Helmet]

I understand all that, and of the other award winners last night I'm sure most of them had their pick of many offers. I was just trying to poke stallion a little. True the 2003 class looked good on paper, some of them are here and some arent its that way with every recruiting class. Am I happy with our class thus far? No, not by a long shot. I personally have not seen any of our recruits this year play, Im trusting the people who know much more about it than me to make a decision. Now also it is not all talent evaluation, you have to convince someone to come to SMU, a perennial loser. The facilities have gotten better which is a huge plus, restrictions have eased, somewhat, and the end of this season "should" be a help in recruting. I've seen polenty of good players in HS; Benson, Stafford, Chase Daniel, Jamal Charles. Yes its easy to say those guys will be good college players but you have to get them here which is a sell job. So sometimes in our situation you have to take a guess at projections of a few years down the road. It seemed to work out with Justin Rogers he didnt have a whole lot of choices coming out of HS, but he turned into a good player for us. Do I want all our recruits to chose us over offers from Texas and USC sure I fo, but also you have to take what you have and put a little faith in the people who watch a lot more football than you or I.

[Dement-ed]

I came away from watching that show with two thoughts:

1. Only players should chest-bump other players. A coach can get away with it .... barely .... and even then, it should be done on a very rare occasion. I don't know who that 60-ish moron was who kept chest-bumping players, but it was really sad. Vince Young was maybe the best sport about it .... he just smiled, but he did look like he felt sorry for the man. That linebacker from Penn State with the unspellable name looked stunned. I couldn't tell whether he was going to offer to help the guy (maybe thought he'd lost his balance?) or whether he was going to tear the guy's head off. Either way, he did not look amused. If that guy did it on his own, he shouldn't be allowed to work at that show again. If some network producer or sponsor told him to do it, whoever issued that mandate should be fired. I felt embarrassed for that old guy.

2. Watching Lee Corso interview Joe Paterno with his hand onPaterno's thigh was one of the most uncomfortable things I've seen on TV. I'm not making any insinuations about either Corso or JoePa. It just looked like Paterno was up there because he and Corso are close friends, rather than the fact that he oversaw one of the greatest turnarounds in college football history with his 10-1 team this year. Fortunately, Paterno was as clueless on stage as he has been on the sideline for the last few years, and he didn't notice, or an already-uncomfortable scene might have gotten even more awkward.

[Diamond Girl]

Also, the player who won the award for kicking was a walk on, speaking of walk ons. I forgot his name, but his family seemed very proud of him.

[Dement-ed]

McMurtray's better.

[RGV Pony]

I'd like to know who arranged the travel for the players to get to the awards ceremony. And from whence did their meals come from? Who gave them rides? What about the activities at Disney World?

I guess it's selective enforcement. Majerus can't buy a kid burger, but all this stuff is okay.

And don't even get me going about the crap we can't do. The fact that CU was accused of having a 'slush fund' and nothing will come of it isn't lost on me either.

[Stallion]

I noticed an interesting thing too. As a high school senior Haas caught 79 catches for an unbelievable 1,739 yards and 21 TDs. Next time you find a WALK-ON with those stats then I'll think you might have a point. In fact I wouldn't be a bit surprised that he only walked-on because he wanted to go to a BCS school instead of accepting other offers. Its happening more and more especially at in-state school where tuition is not that expensive. SMU has lost 2 BB recruits like this over the last 3 years.