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We overvalue recruiting way too much

1. There were 158 5 star players between those years. A 5 star ranking gets you a 17% chance of being a first rounder. Without checking the others, have to believe those are easily the best odds of making it of any classification.

2. I don't expect a champ with our current level of recruiting. We're at minor bowl level talent right now. But if you hire the right coach who is an overachiever then you can take bigger steps in upping recruiting at a faster rate than the avg coach.
 
That 158 number was taken from 2008-12. The correct number would be draft eligible 5 stars, which would be from prior years. I didn't look those up, but Rivals awards +/-30 5 stars per year. The 17% would be roughly the same if that +/-30 count held up pre-2008.

I was actually surprised that many 5 stars are awarded per year. Probably because CU has had so few I thought they were even more rare.
 
Recruiting is all about upside. At the end of the day, you still want big, fast, strong football players. It is not rocket science. MacIntyre puts a huge emphasis on seeing players in camps for good reason. The less questions you can have about a player, the better.

Take Gillam and Reid in this past class. Both "looked the part" more than most/all of the LBs on the roster. It had to be in part due to thorough evaluations.
 
I am certainly not going to argue against recruiting better overall talent as I am totally on board with us getting some 4* and hopefully 5 in the next few years.

However, using the odds of becoming future 1st round draft picks as proof that stars matter I feel is kind of missing the point. There is a current debate now about Tad Boyle's roll in developing Dre better for the NBA vs. his responsibility in getting wins and team first.

I think this carries over. My point is, the goal for any college coach should not be to get as many players selected in the 1st round of the NFL as possible. I feel this way for many reasons but 1st and foremost, HCMM and the rest are not hired to do that, but rather to win games and graduate players.

Besides, if one looks at recent years for the Buffs we have had some surprisingly good NFL drafts for a team that has sucked dogsh*t for sometime. Thus, measuring a college coach by the # of NFL recruits he pulls off is off base in my opinion.

Way more important is the relationship between stars and victories which a few have discussed above. But I believe system and the quality of the coaching staff, etc. are exremely important. There are many, many teams that beat or compete well with teams with way better recruits on a regular basis. Think BSU, TCU, and even SJSU with HCMM at the helm.
 
I agree about the first round thing, which is why I like the last article a lot. It talked about chances of being all americans. That seems much more relevant since a great college career is what we want.
 
boydbuff said:
I am certainly not going to argue against recruiting better overall talent as I am totally on board with us getting some 4* and hopefully 5 in the next few years.

However, using the odds of becoming future 1st round draft picks as proof that stars matter I feel is kind of missing the point. There is a current debate now about Tad Boyle's roll in developing Dre better for the NBA vs. his responsibility in getting wins and team first.

I think this carries over. My point is, the goal for any college coach should not be to get as many players selected in the 1st round of the NFL as possible. I feel this way for many reasons but 1st and foremost, HCMM and the rest are not hired to do that, but rather to win games and graduate players.

Besides, if one looks at recent years for the Buffs we have had some surprisingly good NFL drafts for a team that has sucked dogsh*t for sometime. Thus, measuring a college coach by the # of NFL recruits he pulls off is off base in my opinion.

Way more important is the relationship between stars and victories which a few have discussed above. But I believe system and the quality of the coaching staff, etc. are exremely important. There are many, many teams that beat or compete well with teams with way better recruits on a regular basis. Think BSU, TCU, and even SJSU with HCMM at the helm.
Click to expand...

Want to guess how many losing teams sent 1st round draft picks to the NFL this past year?
 
Gold said:
Want to guess how many losing teams sent 1st round draft picks to the NFL this past year?
Click to expand...
Haven't studied that but I do not that #1 pick was from Central Michigan, top 10 also included BYU and UNC. Other 1st rounders also included Utah and Syracuse, etc.

I reiterate-the important thing to look at is the relationship between recruiting quality (which is arguably best measured by stars) and victories on the college field (not the relationship between recruiting quality and NFL draft picks).
 
Here's a hint: there's a significant correlation between college victories and 1st round NFL draft picks (at least this year).

And here's the answer: 88% of 1st round draft picks came from winning college teams.

That's not doesn't indicate an anomaly to me. If someone were to look at the correlation in prior years between college victories and 1st rounders, I'm sure the % wouldn't vary greatly over the span of several years.

All that said, I believe it's normal for fans of teams with recent losing seasons to dismiss the importance of (1) recruiting star system, and (2) NFL draft status.

Good teams send players into the higher rounds of the NFL with greater regularity than losing teams. Sending players to the NFL is a byproduct of winning, with winning a byproduct of recruiting higher classified players relative to conference peers.
 
Gold, the problem with your logic here is you are making a leap of faith and justifying the leap by using 1 season's worth of 1st round draft choices to justify the leap. Your assumption is: high quality recruits are correlated with high numbers of 1st round draft choices which is also (in your thinking) correlated with high numbers of victories.

I repeat I care more about the assumed correlation b/w high quality recruits and college victories. Why bother worrying about the link between draft picks and college victories? If your/our goal is to turn CU into a winning school again, the #of 1st round draft picks will hopefully increase as a byproduct of improved recruiting, and coaching and victories.

What I am saying is I don't give a sh*t about number of 1st rd draft picks-I care about CU restoring its tradition on the college football field. We had a few high picks a few years back during a losing season and it didn't help dull the pain much. Which reminds me of another critique I have of focusing on 1st round draft choices. What about 2nd round and beyond? Just like recruiting is part art and science so is the NFL draft.

Boiling it down to the simplest thing possible.

I want CU to start winning more games than it loses as soon as possible. If better recruiting will help that (it will) than I am all for it.
 
I think the whole point of a thread like this (if I may be so presumptuous) is to point out not the desirability of having highly ranked players, but to point out that teams can and do win with lower ranked players in certain situations. Get the right fits into certain offensive or defensive "systems" BOOM...sometimes that can take some 3 star types and turn them into winners. Coach them up and help them to develop from their initial quality (as it was when they were originally assessed and ranked) and BOOM (best John Madden impersonation) you have guys who are significantly better players than they were when they were being initially assessed.

In both those cases, obviously, what's being argued is the ability of a coaching staff to figure out compensatory measures for creating better outcomes with less (as assessed anyway) raw talent. We have all seen it time and again. We can all point to many examples. But, we also know that these stories stand out because they are "beating the odds" scenarios. What we have always hoped for is that our coaches can do that somehow. With Hawkins, I think we were hoping he could do for us what he did with Boise State (or Peterson did...) come up with a system to take non-elite talent and win with it via an innovative system (and then get better talent based on accrued win totals). That was the Hawkins path to RTD. The Embree path was that we were going to have a system that was implemented (in part) as a recruiting tool. NFL staff...NFL offense..."Come play for CU and we will prepare you for the NFL better than most teams will. You will learn the most common schemes the NFL runs and learn it from a staff that knows what it takes to play NFL style". Then you hopefully recruit the hell out of future NFL hopefuls and compensate for (perhaps) inefficient coaching (due to inexperience at the college level).

Now we have a guy at head coach that's actually done the Boise State thing in miniature at SJSU. The idea is to use schemes, systems and superior coaching/teaching development to get more out of our mediocre talent than we normally would have a right to expect (especially with our track record over the last decade). Then as the wins mount, hopefully recruit better players and build off the momentum.

I think everyone here knows all of this. The reason for this thread, in a nutshell, is to convince ourselves that we don't need the top-notch talent to win. This is true. But it's obviously a much tougher row to hoe without that talent. I like what I have seen so far from the current staff though. IMHO light years ahead of the last two staffs in understanding what it's going to take. But, having been burned like every other CU fan, let's see how the first few games go (heck...let's see how the FIRST game goes...).
 
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boydbuff said:
Gold, the problem with your logic here is you are making a leap of faith and justifying the leap by using 1 season's worth of 1st round draft choices to justify the leap. Your assumption is: high quality recruits are correlated with high numbers of 1st round draft choices which is also (in your thinking) correlated with high numbers of victories.

I repeat I care more about the assumed correlation b/w high quality recruits and college victories. Why bother worrying about the link between draft picks and college victories? If your/our goal is to turn CU into a winning school again, the #of 1st round draft picks will hopefully increase as a byproduct of improved recruiting, and coaching and victories.

What I am saying is I don't give a sh*t about number of 1st rd draft picks-I care about CU restoring its tradition on the college football field. We had a few high picks a few years back during a losing season and it didn't help dull the pain much. Which reminds me of another critique I have of focusing on 1st round draft choices. What about 2nd round and beyond? Just like recruiting is part art and science so is the NFL draft.

Boiling it down to the simplest thing possible.

I want CU to start winning more games than it loses as soon as possible. If better recruiting will help that (it will) than I am all for it.
Click to expand...


The year before, 94% of NFL 1st rounders came from winning teams. As mentioned earlier and maybe you missed it, this high % does not indicate an anomaly. While it likely fluctuates from year to year, it's a safe bet that NFL 1st rounders come from winning teams.

Your argument said it's not a coaches job to get players drafted into the NFL 1st round. As the stats show - if a coach is getting players drafted into the 1st round, there's a correlation that said coach is winning in college. Draft status is a byproduct of winning in college.

You also mentioned "high quality recruits", and referenced BSU, TCU and SJSU as examples. Let's look at those.

Boise St., against it's conference peers, continually finishes 1-2 among MWC teams in recruiting. Their version of high quality recruits, when normalized to the Pac 12, would be at the Oregon level. A top 10 national class.

TCU, against it's former MWC peers, would finish 1-2 in recruiting rankings. Again, when normalized to the Pac 12, it's also the equivalent to recruiting at the Oregon level. As TCU moved to the B12 this past year, they dropped from a 11-1 team to a 7-6 team. Anyone think that had nothing to do with playing against stronger B12 recruits? You bet it did. As they faced tougher recruits in conference, they didn't fare nearly as well as they did in the MWC.

SJSU continually rose up the recruiting rankings in the WAC, and finished first last year. So their ascent had as much to do with recruiting at the top of their conference. Was the improvement in recruiting a result of good coaching, yes it was.

So my question is this - what program do you want CU to emulate? If it's the programs listed above, they're all at the top of their conferences in recruiting. There is no elusive, blue-collar lunch pale recruiting BCS level school that wins at the highest levels. The mid-conference recruiting strategy does not translate to the P12 level.
 
Gold I think as Burrito stated we have enough wordy responses in this thread. I will only say that my reference to BSU, TCU, etc. is that they have won constantly not just against conference peers but have regularly upset higher rated teams in better conferences stacked with higher rated recruits. This goes back to what 1989 just reiterated.
 
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