Recruitment Apathy ?

[originaloverthehilltop1]

i can't believe you guys. we aren't out there offering scholarships early enough. then, we offer first to somebody who accepts, and we are offering kids who have no other offers. if you offer them first how are they supposed to have other offers? the coaches are too old. but larry brown apparently isn't. give us a break.

[SMU 86]

i can't believe you guys. we aren't out there offering scholarships early enough. then, we offer first to somebody who accepts, and we are offering kids who have no other offers. if you offer them first how are they supposed to have other offers? the coaches are too old. but larry brown apparently isn't. give us a break.

Larry Brown had sense enough to hire a young assertive diverse staff with a record of high level recruiting success. His staff does not have one person 60 and older on it (other than him). Plus Brown has won at the highest levels while June has not. Brown's coaches are going after highly regarded players and the players are interested. I think our coaching staff isn't lazy but that they just don't have the experience at landing high level players like the basketball staff does.

[Mitch McConnell]

I just don't have the energy anymore to get interested in SMU football recruiting. It is what it is and will continue to be this way until June leaves.

It's pointless to get upset about his methodology or what kind of a staff he has around him because he warned everybody that he did things differently. This is proof.

Plus, with the rumors out there that this is probably his last year on the Hilltop and couple that with the ASU fallout, these results kind of go together.

He's made the position better than when he found it. And that's all I ever asked of any coach coming here.

[78pony]

Mitch, your response says it all...in content and tone. We are what we are, and after analizing the collective body of work (recruiting) since day one, and the no better than status quo turnover yield with the staff, to conclude anything other than same-old same-old would be difficult to rationalize.

[gostangs]

June and staff have taken us from ridiculously bad to pretty good. that is good enough to get us in the BE when added to whatever part of the Dallas market we deliver. we are grateful but not satisfied.

Most of us in our lives and other things we are passionate about, want to be associated with things that are excellent. Our football team is not on a trajectory to be excellent - just pretty good. To be excellent we need to what is happening in basketball transfer over to football - three young stud recruiters who dont take no for an answer selling our school and the opportunity to play here the way it deserves to be sold. I think we have enough evidence that this is true to not have to argue about that. We arent seeing huge effort out of Junes staff on the recruiting trail - so it is frustrating to see "status quo" vs lets become excellent.

Hope Orsini has the short list handy. What we know about june from this spring is he likes to golf.

[StangEsq]

I think the reason so many of us are p!ssed about recruiting is that we understand WHY it's taken a turn for the worse. Lame duck coach, best recruiter left (who was struggling in his own right to get anything above a 3-star), only one decent recruiter on the entire current staff, 6-7 players coming in with zero quality offers so far. If that makes you happy, you're an extreme sunshiner. All of us remember how football life was just 4 short years ago. If this class continues on its current pace and we follow it up with one more, we'll end up right back where we started, regardless of who's coaching.

We're not out of the woods yet. Just because we got into the Big East doesn't mean we're safe. This is a fragile conference... we need to be in a position to jump elsewhere if it's picked apart.

This type of class scares the crap out of me.

[ClassOf81]

We do not have a lame duck coach, and the fact that they have found players they like might be an indication that they are, in fact, working very hard. We have seen the past couple of seasons that some of the guys who are relative unknowns early on end up getting more of the oh-so-meaningful "stars" from the pay sites after they have good senior seasons, meaning our coaches actually beat other schools on some talented guys. No, I'm not saying these guys are future All-America players, but I'm not saying they're not, either. Just because the computer geeks at the pay sites haven't made it out to these schools yet doesn't mean a thing. It doesn't matter one iota that these coaches don't go running to the pay sites to promote themselves every time one of their recruits sneezes or does his dishes after dinner.

And as for what we know about June from this spring: all we know is that he doesn't post his daily itinerary on the internet for us to digest and critique. Nor should he.

I remember 20-plus years without a bowl game, and I'm enjoying the hell out of a team that has gone to three straight, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

[StangEsq]

The players we've brought in over the past 3 years at least had quality offers. Lots of 3-stars and some near 4-stars. I don't see any in that category so far. You can build a good class with 4 or 5 diamonds in the rough, but not 25 of them.

Schools are going to be using the JJ fiasco against us in recruiting until he's gone; that's just a plain fact.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the lame-duck coach.

[ponyscott]

Rutgers had one 5 star and four 4 Star Rivals recruits committed this past year to be ranked 24th Nationally. They ain't shy about going after quality recruits up thar in New jersey. Why can't we? Its always better to be over achievers than under achievers....

[Rebel10]

Obviously there are going to be some that defend JJ to the death. Possibly because they want this site to look good to JJ and to coaching staff to get more interviews. If anyone goes against that then the political agenda is compromised. This year JJ will have all his recruits and none of the Bennett recruits. We will see how he does in years to come. We need to land more top 100 players in the state IMO. I think we do well at getting players with no offers or with 1 or 2 non BCS offers but when we go up against the BCS schools that seems to be where we might try hard but don't come up with good results. I agree with Stallion, I do think this coaching staff does work hard but they don't have a background at landing recruits that are being sought after by multiple BCS schools and it shows. Sure we can get a under the radar player and a diamond in the rough here and there but that is not a solid way to recruit if they are the majority of your players. JJ can't do at SMU what he did at Hawaii (ie getting ex convicts and low GPA students). It will be fun looking at the defend JJ to the death crew over the next few years. We'll see.

[SoCal_Pony]

Our football team is not on a trajectory to be excellent - just pretty good.

gostangs, last years' recruiting class + this years' to date is not a trajectory to be 'pretty good', it is on a trajectory to be humiliated against OOC opponents such as Tech, TCU and the Aggies. I have seen enough of those games over the past 20 years to last a lifetime.

I am fed up with all these diamond-in-the-rough commits. Given all the uncertainties in the BCS world, we can't afford to take a step backwards or even sideways.

[whitwiki]

The players we've brought in over the past 3 years at least had quality offers. Lots of 3-stars and some near 4-stars. I don't see any in that category so far. You can build a good class with 4 or 5 diamonds in the rough, but not 25 of them.

Schools are going to be using the JJ fiasco against us in recruiting until he's gone; that's just a plain fact.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the lame-duck coach.

Boise St disagrees.

It'd way too early to think about this. Senior year can say a lot. Some of the stars may not have even played varsity yet...

[SoCal_Pony]

i can't believe you guys. we aren't out there offering scholarships early enough. then, we offer first to somebody who accepts, and we are offering kids who have no other offers. if you offer them first how are they supposed to have other offers? the coaches are too old. but larry brown apparently isn't. give us a break.

Larry Brown had sense enough to hire a young assertive diverse staff with a record of high level recruiting success. His staff does not have one person 60 and older on it (other than him). Plus Brown has won at the highest levels while June has not. Brown's coaches are going after highly regarded players and the players are interested. I think our coaching staff isn't lazy but that they just don't have the experience at landing high level players like the basketball staff does.

Good response 86, don't understand what is so difficult to understand here.

I for one am glad LB is showing us what SMU can be.

[sbsmith]

The players we've brought in over the past 3 years at least had quality offers. Lots of 3-stars and some near 4-stars. I don't see any in that category so far. You can build a good class with 4 or 5 diamonds in the rough, but not 25 of them.

Schools are going to be using the JJ fiasco against us in recruiting until he's gone; that's just a plain fact.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the lame-duck coach.

Boise St disagrees.

It'd way too early to think about this. Senior year can say a lot. Some of the stars may not have even played varsity yet...

When we get a coaching staff like Boise State's maybe we'll be able to perform at a high level with scores of unheralded recruits.

[StangEsq]

Boise State doesn't recruit 25 2-stars every year. They've been pretty close to us the past few years. They have 3 recruits so far and two are 3-star players.

More than 1/3 3-star players and above for 2013 are already off the board... it's not like nobody is offering those players. They have offers and many of them are making decisions already.

The players we've brought in over the past 3 years at least had quality offers. Lots of 3-stars and some near 4-stars. I don't see any in that category so far. You can build a good class with 4 or 5 diamonds in the rough, but not 25 of them.

Schools are going to be using the JJ fiasco against us in recruiting until he's gone; that's just a plain fact.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the lame-duck coach.

Boise St disagrees.

It'd way too early to think about this. Senior year can say a lot. Some of the stars may not have even played varsity yet...