Signing Day Surprise

[PonyKai]

Yeah, I miscounted, off by two- owned up to it. Mitchell wasn't and should be counted; he never even made it into school here in the first place, and what I'm saying is that both of those schools competed for all four of those recruits, and Wazzu obtained all of their LOI's. We lost. They won. It's that simple. The fact that Marks de-commited because of ASU, or Lewis was arguably using us as a placeholder, is irrelevant. It's recruiting. We wanted everyone of those players to come here. They didn't. Regardless of their personal reasons, it's a recruiting loss. We didn't do a good enough job of selling us as the best place for them to go. They did.

[PonyKai]

You know what, my argument isn't nearly as strong as I thought it was. Two of the guys are defensive recruits. Marks & Lewis are both marquee prospects for the type of offensive system that both Leach & June run, but two guys does not make a conspiracy. I'll still maintain that we did lose those four guys, and that's on us regardless of their personal reasons, but no, I'm pretty much standing on a straw man argument, in hindsight.

[PonyKai]

Yeah, I'm standing on top of a tower of twigs with lit matches underneath. You can make the argument that June should not be outworked by Leach for guys like Lewis & Marks because of the offensive systems that both coaches run, but not much further. You could probably argue that with recent success and future BE conference, we ought not to lose commitments to a place like Wazzu, but other factors come into play at that point.

[Mustangs_Maroons]

Personally, I think the argument you're trying to make is great, you're just using bad examples. Base your argument on guys like Adam Butler. That was inexcusable (IMO) and gives a rock-sold recruiting failure. Local stud in a high need area who wanted to attend a great academic school. FAIL.

Where did Butler end up going?

[SMUer]

I think our posts crossed.

Are you two crossing streams?...of thought

[Mustangs_Maroons]

Vandy. Good school, but a battle SMU could have won.

Agreed. I think we could have played the "location" card. Other schools do, why can't we? (rhetorical question). But I do think we would have had a chance with a local prospect. I do have a lot of respect for Vandy; it's a great school.

[Mexmustang]

Fire and Passion? Lack of commitment? What are these comments based on? I believe the school has come a long way in the last 3-4 years. It will progress even more assuming the Big East money continues to come in and stay in the athletic department.

June is a highly competitive person, almost to a fault. He weaknesses are organization and management. He had two assistants that had to be let go (yes, let go) because the were not diciplined and wouldn't stay in the corral. Just ask yourself what would be the worst thing to happen to SMU athletics? This year was a real eye opener and I want to believe that recruiting effort of the staff and the Big East will bear fruit this year. We hired a top coach (yes an experienced coach, not a green assistant with a total of two years of experience or a tat-man with social problems) and recruiter from Houston--their players over the last two years were terribly successful, just look at their wins over Big 12 and Pac 12 teams over the last 3 years.

Will June ever have a class made up of 4-5 stars, problably not. Will they ever match up with Stallions expectations? Of course not, but then again Stallion would have never offered a scholarship to Sterling Moore. Part of it is that is not how he recruits, he relies on his and Mason's evaluations not those of recruiting services. The other is that he is fighting over 24 years of complete irrelevance with fans, students and high school coaches. Even UCLA has't had to fight this: no money; empty promises (Remember the 'Commitment"); high entrance barriers; no athletic friendly majors; no first class coaching, no athletic director, no facilities and no conference.

June put in a lot more effort than suggested by one that only reads recruiting sites concludes. It seems like we only started two weeks ago, not true at all. All of these recruits, save one, had been scouted months ago; most personally contacted. They were evaluated and debated withing the coaching ranks. June personally saw many of them at their high school games and went to many playoff games.

I know it is cute to claim all his does it play golf, or that he is lazy. But, that is simply not true. Try to get on his social agenda, try to schedule a golf game at the best club in Texas with major boosters and former board members, you will find that it is almost impossible to do with 3-6 months.

I would remind June's critics, that without June there wouldn't even be a list of candidates to replace him one day--

SMU football would still be only an old memory locked away in a yearbook in someone's attic and a joke in the minds of top coaches and athletes.

[dallascowboy]

Maybe I'm missing something but besides being a coach for us I don't see why everyone is so high on Klemm. You guys sound like his friends. I never heard of him before he became a coach. I never thought our O-line was all that great when he coached them. But I want to know how one wins recruiter of the year awards when I can't even think of one guy that he has recruited who have played. I would think you win those after guys you recruited become big-time players in college. Sounds like self promotion to me.

[ClickClack]

I did miscount completely though, that's my bad. Four, 5 if you included Mitchell which would be wrong as he never even got in to school here.

You can count Lewis, Marks and Palacio- but Pettway never de committed-not on his terms- he was told to look at other opportunities.