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Recruiting in 2004-2006

buffaholic

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Club Member
This was a thread (not mine) on Rivals and I thought it's worth firing up some arguments over here:

Our recruiting in the trenches from 04-06 under GB is IMO the reason we sucked so bad the past two years. Out of all the 23 OL or DL commits in that 3 year period (24 if you count Chris Todd twice), we had only 4 guys that were worth a damn... Lucas, Sanders, Herrod and Wright. The rest were either terrible/washed out/never made it in (Borders, Boyer, Faatagi, Lawson, Simon, Brace, Hauck, Z. Jones, Kaynor, Zimmerer, Backowski, Todd, Hunt, Collins, Viekune, Vitale Jr.) or they were barely serviceable at best - MacMartin, Head.

....I think this crappy recruiting finally caught up to us after the 07-08 Independence Bowl season...

The future looks much better from this standpoint. The past three years (07-09) we've recruited a lot more than 5 guys who should be good in the trenches. Miller, Cunningham, Iltis, Givens, MTM, West, Bonsu, Kasa, Harris, Adkins, Bahr, Behrens, Tau, Goree, Obi, etc. Not every one of them is an all star (in fact none YET) but at least they are all still on the team and there is a good future on our lines.
Add to the issues with both lines illustrated above the below stellar recruiting at key offensive playmaker positions......

Hugh Charles - RB
Reggie Joseph - WR
Reggie Foster - ATH
Charlie Sherman - ATH
Patrick Williams - ATH
Alvin Barnett - WR
Mack Brown - QB
Patrick Devenney - QB (eventually moved to TE, but was recruited to play qB)
James Lewis - WR
Maurice Greer - RB
Kevin Moyd - RB
Jarrell Yates - WR
Cody Hawkins - QB
Sherman Lang - WR
Thomas Perez - RB
Demetrius Sumler - RB
Ino Vitale - ATH

That's a complete list. We did pick up some good defensive players such as Burney, Chapelle, etc. But both lines, QB, RB, and WR positions produced few guys who ever saw the field.

That's 3 years, and the best player we got was Hugh Charles?
 
I don't think there are many that debate the fact that the '04-'06 classes weren't very good (mostly due to the faux scandal, recruiting restrictions, and loss of key recruiting staff).

The argument is how long can Hawkins and his defenders use this as an excuse for their poor W-L record? Most people accepted the poor records in the first 2 years and saw some improvement in year 3, but year 4???? How can one justify losing to CSU and Toledo?

Apparently, the CU admin felt that Hawk deserved another year, so I guess we'll see in year 5 if he can turn things around.
 
The argument is how long can Hawkins and his defenders use this as an excuse for their poor W-L record? Most people accepted the poor records in the first 2 years and saw some improvement in year 3, but year 4???? How can one justify losing to CSU and Toledo?

Apparently, the CU admin felt that Hawk deserved another year, so I guess we'll see in year 5 if he can turn things around.

When it comes down to it I don't even think it was a matter of Hawk deserving another year. It was pure politics, nothing else. Benson didn't want to be explaining paying $3Mill+ to a fired coach who was hired after the school paid a similar amount to get rid of Barnett when the state is looking at slashing budgets in every direction. The fact that the money would come from donors and or athletic department revenues would not have changed the perception in Benson's mind and he didn't want to deal with it as he fights a slash and burn of state funding for higher education impacting the CU system.

I have no problem with Hawk's recruiting for the past 3 years, in my opinion he has brought in players who are good enough to compete and win at the Big XII level. My problem with him is that he has failed miserably to develop that talent and to develop and coach a plan that is capable of competing at this level.

The consequence of the continued losing without any clear signs of future improvement plus the reality that once the next election cycle is passed Hawk will likely be gone and a new staff will be in place is making this years class a washout. I have hopes that potentially 4-6 of this years class can become Big XII quality starters, the rest unfortunately look like warm bodies who at best will be special teams and practice players. If some of them develop into at least decent back-ups we will have done well this year.
 
I have no doubt at all that the situation was dire, but losing to Montana State, Toledo, CSU, almost losing to Eastern Washington? That can't be explained with subpar recruiting and can really only be explained with subpar coaching.

I think this line of reasoning works just fine up until this year. The 6 linemen around for Spring practices Hawk's first year, that's really bad. So lets say we give him a pass for years 1-3. Year 4 we had a lot of returning players at most positions, especially on offense which has been a real problem the entire time Hawk has been here. Our OL had been redshirted and had been on the team for a couple of years now, granted senior leadership wise they were still lacking. I mean I just can't justify losing to Toledo and CSU the way we did with the great young talent Hawk has apparently brought in.

I just can't agree that talent was really the problem last year and why we lost to such inferior teams.
 
This was a thread (not mine) on Rivals and I thought it's worth firing up some arguments over here:

Add to the issues with both lines illustrated above the below stellar recruiting at key offensive playmaker positions......

Hugh Charles - RB
Reggie Joseph - WR
Reggie Foster - ATH
Charlie Sherman - ATH
Patrick Williams - ATH
Alvin Barnett - WR
Mack Brown - QB
Patrick Devenney - QB (eventually moved to TE, but was recruited to play qB)
James Lewis - WR
Maurice Greer - RB
Kevin Moyd - RB
Jarrell Yates - WR
Cody Hawkins - QB
Sherman Lang - WR
Thomas Perez - RB
Demetrius Sumler - RB
Ino Vitale - ATH

That's a complete list. We did pick up some good defensive players such as Burney, Chapelle, etc. But both lines, QB, RB, and WR positions produced few guys who ever saw the field.

That's 3 years, and the best player we got was Hugh Charles?

Is it really complete???? Seems like you are missing some 2004 players like Dizon, Brad Jones, Danial Sanders, Abe Wright, Ryan Walters - all the 2004 recruits would of completed their eligibility in 2008 and not had any impact on 2009. How can he leave George Hypolite off the list, Ria Geer off your list...Marcus Burton...And note all 2005 recruits have used up their eligibility in 2009 so going forward none of that should be an issue.

Yes recruiting was not what we wanted in those years but there were a loat of reasons (as pointed out by Creebuzz). What is Hawkins excuse - he got an extension in 2008 just to help with recruiting. I think recruiting is about as bad as it has ever been.
 
The recruiting from 2004-2006 was not acceptable and neither are the 2009 or 2010 classes.
 
Is it really complete???? Seems like you are missing some 2004 players like Dizon, Brad Jones, Danial Sanders, Abe Wright, Ryan Walters - all the 2004 recruits would of completed their eligibility in 2008 and not had any impact on 2009. How can he leave George Hypolite off the list, Ria Geer off your list...Marcus Burton...And note all 2005 recruits have used up their eligibility in 2009 so going forward none of that should be an issue.

The list was for linemen and then I added WR/RB/QB to the list (along with Athletes that were meant for those positions). Sanders, Hypolite, and Wright were the short list of guys that came here and were decent players. That was pointed out on the Rivals post and I should have included those. The point being a whole bunch of guys washed out from those 3 classes or flat out weren't very good.
 
Those classes weren't very good, and neither is any of hawk's classes with the exception of 2008. Hawk is being out-recruited by csu....enough said.
 
The recruiting from 2004-2006 was not acceptable and neither are the 2009 or 2010 classes.
On paper it looks that way. However, enough guys played as true freshmen to believe that 2009 won't be as bad as any of those classes and depending on how some of the guys like Olatoye, Orms, Handler, etc develop, it could be a decent class. Unlike 2004-2006, most of these guys showed up at CU and appear to have a chance to compete going forward. The numbers of guys from 204-2006 that either never played college football or played at places like Hawaii and Utah are frightening.
 
On paper it looks that way. However, enough guys played as true freshmen to believe that 2009 won't be as bad as any of those classes and depending on how some of the guys like Olatoye, Orms, Handler, etc develop, it could be a decent class. Unlike 2004-2006, most of these guys showed up at CU and appear to have a chance to compete going forward. The numbers of guys from 204-2006 that either never played college football or played at places like Hawaii and Utah are frightening.

Okay, the 2009 class is better than 2004-2006. I will not disagree there. But you cannot tell me four or five classes in a row like the 2009 class are going to make the Buffs competitive in this conference. If the standard for quality is going to be "anything better than 2004-2006," we are in big trouble.
 
according to scout, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Wake Forest, and Duke have better classes than CU. these are all top 30 US News schools.
 
Okay, the 2009 class is better than 2004-2006. I will not disagree there. But you cannot tell me four or five classes in a row like the 2009 class are going to make the Buffs competitive in this conference. If the standard for quality is going to be "anything better than 2004-2006," we are in big trouble.

Totally agree. 2009 turned out better on the field (it appears) than on paper. Hope 2010 does as well... But we will need a big turn in our on-field fortunes to reverse the trend for 2011 (or a hot new coach). Four or Five classes in a row like 2009 is too generous. If we want to get back to competing for titles, it's got to go the other way.
 
Totally agree. 2009 turned out better on the field (it appears) than on paper. Hope 2010 does as well... But we will need a big turn in our on-field fortunes to reverse the trend for 2011 (or a hot new coach). Four or Five classes in a row like 2009 is too generous. If we want to get back to competing for titles, it's got to go the other way.

Can talent overcome coaching? It will have to for your scenario to play out.
 
Our only hope at this point is that a number of these players turn out to be true sleepers, guys who turn out better than the consensus opinion at recruiting time. Unfortunately last years class and this years class will be the core of the first couple of teams for our new coach when Hawk is finally given his walking papers.

We sure wouldn't want a new coach to come into a program that is burned to the ground in terms of talent would we?
 
I pointed this out months ago and I'll point it out again. Of all the classes that Hawkins has recruited, he has 3 seniors and 9 juniors (last season, that is.) That means that from his first class through the '09 season, all but eleven recruits were freshmen and sophomores. Now, I think that is a big deal. Most of you think it is an excuse. 2010 will tell the tale on that because in 2010, Hawkins will have much more experience on both sides of the ball.
 
I pointed this out months ago and I'll point it out again. Of all the classes that Hawkins has recruited, he has 3 seniors and 9 juniors (last season, that is.) That means that from his first class through the '09 season, all but eleven recruits were freshmen and sophomores. Now, I think that is a big deal. Most of you think it is an excuse. 2010 will tell the tale on that because in 2010, Hawkins will have much more experience on both sides of the ball.

very good point, but it wont matter with Hawkins trolling the side lines.
 
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