With UH hiring a coach, can we...

[RGV Pony]

list the vacancies that have been filled? Off the top of my head,

Wash St
Colo St
Houston
Southern Miss
Arkansas
Ga Tech
Ole Miss

Who else? And what vacancies are left? UCLA, Michigan, Duke, oh yeah SMU, who else?

[smupony94]

Navy was filled

[SMU Football Blog]

Easier to list the ones that are still open:

Michigan
Duke
UCLA
SMU
Northern Illinois

Still less than 18 changes total, which is less than average for the past several years. Which, BTW, I predicted.

[MustangLaxer]

Toot Toot...you know, your horn.

[SMU Football Blog]

Jobs filled:
Arkansas
Baylor
Colorado State
Georgia Tech
Houston
Navy
Nebraska
Ole Miss
Southern Miss
Texas A&M
Washington State

[smupony94]

Jobs filled:
Arkansas
Baylor
Colorado State
Georgia Tech
Houston
Navy
Nebraska
Ole Miss
Southern Miss
Texas A&M
Washington State

Now make a list of jobs unchanged

[Hoop Fan]

geez. what are we doing. even baylor filled their job weeks ago. Houston and Navy have back filled theirs in much less time. Once again, good thing recruiting is no problem for us.

[Stallion]

Ted over at mustangmaniacs seems to think that a delay in recruiting is overated as far as getting a new Coach. Despite the fact that using the Area Top 100 only about a 1/4th of the players remain on the board. 90% of the Texas Top 100 have signed. No problem take your time. We don't have any holes to fill with Jucos. A conservative estimate is that at least 6 definite SMU targets have committed or will soon(like this weekend) to other schools. Again I'm warning-just like I was one of the first in basketall-that if SMU has a bottom out recruiting class then the football program may be bottoming out too.

[davidsmu94]

Ted over at mustangmaniacs seems to think that a delay in recruiting is overated as far as getting a new Coach. Despite the fact that using the Area Top 100 only about a 1/4th of the players remain on the board. 90% of the Texas Top 100 have signed. No problem take your time. We don't have any holes to fill with Jucos. A conservative estimate is that at least 6 definite SMU targets have signed or will soon(like this weekend) to other schools.

Mustangmaniacs is just Ted's blog. He's speaking to an empty room

[huskerpony]

Ted over at mustangmaniacs seems to think that a delay in recruiting is overated as far as getting a new Coach. Despite the fact that using the Area Top 100 only about a 1/4th of the players remain on the board. 90% of the Texas Top 100 have signed. No problem take your time. We don't have any holes to fill with Jucos. A conservative estimate is that at least 6 definite SMU targets have signed or will soon(like this weekend) to other schools.

Can't sign until February.

Not saying we're in a good situation for recruiting. It's obviously abyssmal. But lots of kids back out of there commitments--including right up until signing day. If the right coach comes along, we'll at least pick up a few, but blowing this dead period was HUGE.

[SMU Football Blog]

Ted over at mustangmaniacs seems to think that a delay in recruiting is overated as far as getting a new Coach. Despite the fact that using the Area Top 100 only about a 1/4th of the players remain on the board. 90% of the Texas Top 100 have signed. No problem take your time. We don't have any holes to fill with Jucos. A conservative estimate is that at least 6 definite SMU targets have committed or will soon(like this weekend) to other schools. Again I'm warning-just like I was one of the first in basketall-that if SMU has a bottom out recruiting class then the football program may be bottoming out too.

You would know better than me; what percentage of the area top 100 and state top 100 go unsigned every year anyway? Aren't there always a few that end up I-AA or Juco or nowhere at all?The delay has created a problem, particularly when it comes to JuCo's. But is a continued delay going to create a bigger problem at this point?

Wasn't/isn't it just as likely that a new coach was/is going to come in and write off 2008 signing day to a large extent and start working on next year? Isn't that what a lot of new coaches do anyway? That is one reason I always rolled my eyes when Bennett said one of his biggest mistakes was honoring the scholarship offers to Cavan's recruits; maybe Cavan's recruits sucked but his that year weren't that much better.

[Stallion]

I would say 4-5 aren't really Division 1A prospects(list is actually a preseason list). About 8-10 have academic issues-although they may sign anyway-they will be wait-and-see for actual admission and passing the clearinghouse. The BIG problem with starting on January 8th is that good kids have already lined up visits and won't have a weekend to visit-or we get last call which often means they never visit because they commit somewhere else before their scheduled visit. Other schools could go after second semester JUCO graduates who generally were non-qualifiers out of high school or have academic issues even in JUCO or go after Division 1A Transfers. Not sure if that's a real possibility at SMU. For get about the Top players they are gone or soon will be.

[huskerpony]

Blog, I don't think they would "write off" recruiting this year. Any new coach will make their best effort to get the best recruits they can scrape up in January. They are usually given a grace period of a couple of years until their recruits are the starters, and the incoming class is attributed to the old coach. However, putting together the best class possible--even if it is all just from the leftovers--affects their success on the field the next couple of years and affects recruiting in the future.

So, to make my rambling more coherent--the coach won't write it off. Fans, media, admin perception will attribute any lack of success to it being the previous coaches recruits, but it affects the team and future recruiting into the future, so it's still a big deal to make the best effort possible in January.

[SMU Football Blog]

Write off is a poor choice of words. New coaches start looking at juniors long before signing date, I will put it that way. There is a Stuart Mandell article on this subject, but I can't find it.

[huskerpony]

Figured that was probably what you meant. Just wanted to fend off a long discussion about how we could wait until after signing day to bring in a coach if someone in here ran with it!