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Recruiting really was bad under Hawkins...

How many years of 10+ wins did they have before they sucked wind? A lot. Never really MNC contenders most of those years, but 10+ wins is definitely nothing to sneeze at.

I'd love to have one of those a decade given how much we suck right now.

LOL! I hear ya.
 
1. Ok. Now of those, how many are still performing?
2. Explain UT's struggles last year and this year. Under your argument UT is one of the strongest, consistent recruiters of top talent. Shouldn't this formula keep them consistently producing?

Or why hasn't Notre Dame won any national championships lately, they have a boatload of 4* and 5* talent. How about U$C, they have won a lot of games but you would think they would have some national championships as well with their recruiting rankings. By some sources Miami had the best class in 2008 and top classes surrounding it. I see them on top of the rankings this year as well.

Bottom line, recruiting is an art, not a science. Yes higher ranked players usually perform substantially better than lower ranked players. At he same time the NFL is full of guys who didn't get a sniff from the "name" programs and the list of highly rated players who bust is long as well.

Nobody is going to make a living off recruiting 2* and low 3* players but the idea that rivals and scout know more than quality coaches do about evaluating players is joke.
 
So then this is what I'm hearing:

QBs can't be ranked because of the complexity of their position so they get a pass.

Linemen that are productive are rare, which means that they should also get a pass.

Skilled positions are interchangeabley a dime a dozen and really are the only positions that can be ranked. So if you are gonna get some then they need to have high rankings or a large offer list to be worth anything.

If this is so then why have large recruiting budgets for travel. Wouldn't you be able to get everything you need online?
 
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Or why hasn't Notre Dame won any national championships lately, they have a boatload of 4* and 5* talent. How about U$C, they have won a lot of games but you would think they would have some national championships as well with their recruiting rankings. By some sources Miami had the best class in 2008 and top classes surrounding it. I see them on top of the rankings this year as well.

Bottom line, recruiting is an art, not a science. Yes higher ranked players usually perform substantially better than lower ranked players. At he same time the NFL is full of guys who didn't get a sniff from the "name" programs and the list of highly rated players who bust is long as well.

Nobody is going to make a living off recruiting 2* and low 3* players but the idea that rivals and scout know more than quality coaches do about evaluating players is joke.

+1. Sorry I'm outta reps.
 
There's only two who have no other BCS offers that are committed; Kough and Crowder I thought. Clay Norgard says he has other offers but out of respect for CU he's not saying who.


I'm rich bitch!
 
To bring this discussion full-circle-jerk, per Rivals, of the early commits only 6 have been offered by other BCS schools. Doesn't that put us on the same pace as the previous regime (45%)?

Technically, 9 of our commits have at least one offer from another BCS school, but recruiting has to get better. No other way around it.
 
Technically, 9 of our commits have at least one offer from another BCS school, but recruiting has to get better. No other way around it.

Norgard doesn't show offers because he is not accepting or reporting offers, if he did he would have multiple.

The only other two who do not have a reported offer are Crowder and Kough.

The Irwins only have reported offers from Wake Forest and Louiseville from AQ conferences, don't know the situation but if they were shopping would probably have more, especially individually. Manaea only shows an offer from Washington State. Everyone else shows at least two AQ offers on their profiles. Dillons are most impressive but Payne, Solis, and Gerald Thomas all have multiples from major conference schools.

Compared to the last 3-4 years of Hawk this class is already way more impressive. Still I agree that we have to complete this class with PAC quality players. As thin as our roster is we don't have room for many guys who just occupy a scholly and don't contribute. We also have to keep it going for multiple years. I have been impressed by the contribution this early by last years class which was thrown together in a few weeks.

I am expecting us to add a number more quality guys who should be able to play at this level. I also expect at least a couple of guys who make other schools take notice, like McNamara and/or Wes Brown plus a couple of defensive guys.

One area that we need to step it up is the OL and we could use some quality LBs,CBs and you never have enough D-linemen.
 
I "think" this staff is recruiting better but looking at some of the offers and non bcs offers from some of these recruits, it sure looks like a sprinkling of the last 5-6 years of recruiting.

Plenty of time left, but those who keep saying"wait til embree gets his type of recruits here", somewhere along the line, cu has to WIN and show improvement. The mountains and early playing time are losing their luster.
 
Norgard doesn't show offers because he is not accepting or reporting offers, if he did he would have multiple.

The only other two who do not have a reported offer are Crowder and Kough.

The Irwins only have reported offers from Wake Forest and Louiseville from AQ conferences, don't know the situation but if they were shopping would probably have more, especially individually. Manaea only shows an offer from Washington State. Everyone else shows at least two AQ offers on their profiles. Dillons are most impressive but Payne, Solis, and Gerald Thomas all have multiples from major conference schools.

Compared to the last 3-4 years of Hawk this class is already way more impressive. Still I agree that we have to complete this class with PAC quality players. As thin as our roster is we don't have room for many guys who just occupy a scholly and don't contribute. We also have to keep it going for multiple years. I have been impressed by the contribution this early by last years class which was thrown together in a few weeks.

I am expecting us to add a number more quality guys who should be able to play at this level. I also expect at least a couple of guys who make other schools take notice, like McNamara and/or Wes Brown plus a couple of defensive guys.

One area that we need to step it up is the OL and we could use some quality LBs,CBs and you never have enough D-linemen.

The Hawkins recruiting classes cannot be the standard we judge success by for this staff. We need to be winning more battles against Pac-12 opponents.

I am not panicking (yet), but it seems to me people are tempering their recruiting expectations as more time passes. The expectations when the staff took over were much higher.
 
The Hawkins recruiting classes cannot be the standard we judge success by for this staff. We need to be winning more battles against Pac-12 opponents.

I am not panicking (yet), but it seems to me people are tempering their recruiting expectations as more time passes. The expectations when the staff took over were much higher.

Hawkins recruiting classes are what we unfortunately have to recover from, hence our current situation.

I went back and looked at the profiles for each of our committed recruits. Not going back now but almost all of the recruits had offers from other PAC teams, the most common being Arizona and Arizona State with UCLA and the Washington Schools showing up frequently. Also seen were offers from Minnesota, Iowa, Pitt, and Cincinatti in addition to some other schools. We are winning a number of battles against other PAC schools.

Can't disagree though that we need to finish this class strongly with players who should contribute to a PAC level program, no more MAC, WAC, MWC level guys (or even less in some cases in the recent past.)

I am actually reasonably happy with where we are at this point. For a team that has won one game all year with a staff that doesn't have the relationships established in the recruiting area we are doing better than I expected. Now they have to finish strong. Unfortunately this team doesn't have a margin of error with the lack of quality talent currently on the roster.
 
Crowder - none
Dillon - Arizona, Ohio State, Vandy, FSU I believe, but I'm going off of rivals.
Henington - Syracuse (not awful I guess..) UCLA (good, but they have been reaching this cycle)
J. Irwin - Louisville and Wake Forest (He did seem to have a lot more interest but since he demanded he go to school with his brother, some schools backed off)
S. Irwin - see above
Kough - none
Manaea - WSU sort of..
Norgard - none that we know of, but lets assume he has some decent BCS offers.
Payne - ASU, UCLA, UW, WSU, more on scout I believe. Pretty solid list.
Solis - Arizona, Georgia Tech, Iowa State, UCLA, Utah, UW. Really solid list.
G. Thomas - Arizona, ASU, Iowa, ISU, Kansas, Minnesota. Pretty decent list, not exactly the cream of the crop, but beating out Zona, ASU, and Iowa is always good.
J. Thomas - Iowa State. Moett has spoke at length about other offers that would have came if he remained uncommitted.
P. Williams - Minnesota and Pittsburgh. Not overly amazing.


So there we go. We have a few guys that have BCS offers, but most of them aren't exactly impressive. Not sure I'd call this a massive improvement over a lot of Hawk's players. I'll assume the responses will be things like their football attitude is excellent or something to that extent, so lets save it. We need to do better.
 
It is an improvement over most of the Hawkins classes, but who gives a **** about using that as a metric? The staff has every opportunity to shut a lot of people up come February, but I hope the goalposts do not keep getting moved further back.
 
Comparing these offers to the kids we were getting under Hawk I think it is a major step forward. I was getting really sick of beating New Mexico State and Utah State and calling it a victory recruiting.

I would be a lot more enthusiastic if we were seeing Oregon, USC, Oklahoma and other top 10 recruiting programs on that list but we are making steps forward.

I also may be drinking the Kool-aid but i have been impressed so far with the current staffs evaluation of players.

None of this matters until there are names on the fax machine on LOI day. Based on last year I expect a solid rush to the end, I think Embree and EB will win some kids over with their personalities, enthusiasm, and pro background.
 
I sure as hell would. Embree also seems to be taking the same approach to recruiting as Harbaugh did his first few years at Stanford.

Uh, what approach is that?

And what massive improvement do you see? I see a "massive" improvement at QB and DT, maybe RB based solely on Payne; then again Ray Polk and Darrell Scott were somewhat highly recruited. Going by the 2007 class, it's not like we only signed a bunch of kids with no BCS offers. I see a lot of kids with pretty decent offers. I just don't see a massive improvement so far.
 
Uh, what approach is that?

And what massive improvement do you see? I see a "massive" improvement at QB and DT, maybe RB based solely on Payne; then again Ray Polk and Darrell Scott were somewhat highly recruited. Going by the 2007 class, it's not like we only signed a bunch of kids with no BCS offers. I see a lot of kids with pretty decent offers. I just don't see a massive improvement so far.
Exactly what you said in the last line of your original post. Kids who have size and fit the system and attitude to help change the culture. Toby Gerhart is often credited by Harbaugh and a lot of analysts in being the person who turned around Stanford, he was a 3* with a couple of Pac 12 offers but none of which were powerhouses. Stanford didn't have any highly rated classes the first few years. Get players that fit your system and that can compete with the mid tier conference teams.
 
Hawk did that exact same thing btw. Recruiting to your system isn't exactly ground breaking stuff. Hopefully Embree can find his Gerhart..

Still not sure how that's a massive improvement. I'm talking about offers here. Obviously Embree's plan involving a certain type of player sounds a lot better than kids having the right handshake and a certain twinkle in their eye, but going back to what BB said, that's not exactly a great way to measure our progress. We need to beat out P12 programs for recruits because every game I watch, I see kids we missed out on who are now killing us. We can talk about how much more awesome Embree is than Hawk, but at the end of the day it's how does Embree and Embree's players compare to P12 players.
 
Exactly what you said in the last line of your original post. Kids who have size and fit the system and attitude to help change the culture. Toby Gerhart is often credited by Harbaugh and a lot of analysts in being the person who turned around Stanford, he was a 3* with a couple of Pac 12 offers but none of which were powerhouses. Stanford didn't have any highly rated classes the first few years. Get players that fit your system and that can compete with the mid tier conference teams.
Dude. I don't really know where you are going, but Gerhart won the Doak Walker and was the runner up for the Heisman. But you conveniently label Gerhart as a system guy...WTF?? He almost won the god damn Heisman. Who is the Gerhart in our class? Or better yet, who is the Andrew Luck in our class? Will Dillion be the best quarterback in college football his freshman, sophomore and junior seasons? BTW - Harbaugh's second class (dismissing 2007 - he was hired December 2006) was rated #20, jackwad.
 
Forgot to mention that Gerhart wasn't a Harbaugh recruit. So are you comparing Embree to Harbaugh or Walt Harris? I'm confused.
 
Fairbanks

CU never fired Fairbanks. He left to go coach the New Jersey Generals of the USFL. He left AFTER NLOI day, but BEFORE Spring practices. Real swell guy. I don't think people fully appreciate the reclamation job Mac had on his hands.

I still can't put Hawkins at the level of Fairbanks. Fairbanks was pure football evil. Hawkins was merely a completely incompetent retard.

Based upon reports from people that know, Fairbanks was a substantial alcoholic.
 
Dude. I don't really know where you are going, but Gerhart won the Doak Walker and was the runner up for the Heisman. But you conveniently label Gerhart as a system guy...WTF?? He almost won the god damn Heisman. Who is the Gerhart in our class? Or better yet, who is the Andrew Luck in our class? Will Dillion be the best quarterback in college football his freshman, sophomore and junior seasons? BTW - Harbaugh's second class (dismissing 2007 - he was hired December 2006) was rated #20, jackwad.
You don't know where I'm going? No one thought Gerhart was going to be a Heisman finalist but he was considered to be a system guy when he signed. Connor Wood could be that, you don't know. Obviously LSU saw something in Wood that they liked. Here are the class rankings for Stanford:

2007 (4-8):
#10 in the Pac 12, not in top 50 nationally
2008 (5-7):
#9 in the Pac 12, #50 nationally
2009 (8-5):
#3 in the Pac 12, #20 nationally
2010 (12-1):
#5 in the Pac 12, #26 nationally

Seems like Harbaugh built Stanford off of solid guys who fit a system. Clay Norgard could be our Gerhart, maybe Justin Solis, or maybe he'll be in the 2013 class. Our 2012 class will be higher ranked than Harbaugh's 2008 class as well. Hell, our 2007 and 2008 classes were rated higher but we're at separate ends of the college football spectrum right now.
 
You don't know where I'm going? No one thought Gerhart was going to be a Heisman finalist but he was considered to be a system guy when he signed. Connor Wood could be that, you don't know. Obviously LSU saw something in Wood that they liked. Here are the class rankings for Stanford:

2007 (4-8):
#10 in the Pac 12, not in top 50 nationally
2008 (5-7):
#9 in the Pac 12, #50 nationally
2009 (8-5):
#3 in the Pac 12, #20 nationally
2010 (12-1):
#5 in the Pac 12, #26 nationally

Seems like Harbaugh built Stanford off of solid guys who fit a system. Clay Norgard could be our Gerhart, maybe Justin Solis, or maybe he'll be in the 2013 class. Our 2012 class will be higher ranked than Harbaugh's 2008 class as well. Hell, our 2007 and 2008 classes were rated higher but we're at separate ends of the college football spectrum right now.

"could". We all hope so, but it's just like the "well coach Mac had horrible records his first few years at CU, so every coach that starts off with a sub.500 record at CU will end up having the success that Mac did" rationale.
 
Hawk did that exact same thing btw. Recruiting to your system isn't exactly ground breaking stuff. Hopefully Embree can find his Gerhart..

Still not sure how that's a massive improvement. I'm talking about offers here. Obviously Embree's plan involving a certain type of player sounds a lot better than kids having the right handshake and a certain twinkle in their eye, but going back to what BB said, that's not exactly a great way to measure our progress. We need to beat out P12 programs for recruits because every game I watch, I see kids we missed out on who are now killing us. We can talk about how much more awesome Embree is than Hawk, but at the end of the day it's how does Embree and Embree's players compare to P12 players.

Have a lot of confidence in this staff and think we will be pleased come February, but means closing strong.

The Stanford analogy does not necessarily relate to our situation because Harbaugh's first two class (the transitional 2007 class and the 2008 class) were both pretty small, with only 36 combined players. In Embree's transitional class, he took 23 players (22 made it on to campus) and he has been quoted as saying he wants to take 26-28 in this class. If that ends up happening, we are talking about 12-15 more players than the "Stanford model". Pretty significant difference in numbers there, which means Embree's margin for error is smaller.
 
Two things.
One, Our team sucks right now. We lack talent, we lack depth, we have a terrible attitude. Other than that not to much is wrong. It is very easy to get negative right now. Go 1-7 with a series of games where we lost by 30 only because the opponent let up makes it easy to get down on everything. Our recruiting is not killing it with a top 10 class and a bunch of obvious future stars. To me however our recruiting is making a major step up from where we have been and we have a bunch of commits who look to be PAC level recruits at the minimum. It is a long way to LOI day so we could lose some guys and we need to add a bunch more guys. Lets not freak out until we see what the signatures bring.

Secondly it is ridiculous to try to compare current recruiting to other teams, past CU coaches, etc. What we have to ask is will the class we are bringing in help us to be competitive in conference. What Harbaugh did or Hawkins did or anyone else did really doesn't matter. What matters is that we bring in a group of players that help CU play well enough on the field to win football games, go to bowls, and develop toward conference championships. My impression is that our current class is a step in the right direction but nobody will really know for at least a year or two when they get on the field.
 
Have a lot of confidence in this staff and think we will be pleased come February, but means closing strong.

The Stanford analogy does not necessarily relate to our situation because Harbaugh's first two class (the transitional 2007 class and the 2008 class) were both pretty small, with only 36 combined players. In Embree's transitional class, he took 23 players (22 made it on to campus) and he has been quoted as saying he wants to take 26-28 in this class. If that ends up happening, we are talking about 12-15 more players than the "Stanford model". Pretty significant difference in numbers there, which means Embree's margin for error is smaller.

Good comments.
 
Have a lot of confidence in this staff and think we will be pleased come February, but means closing strong.

The Stanford analogy does not necessarily relate to our situation because Harbaugh's first two class (the transitional 2007 class and the 2008 class) were both pretty small, with only 36 combined players. In Embree's transitional class, he took 23 players (22 made it on to campus) and he has been quoted as saying he wants to take 26-28 in this class. If that ends up happening, we are talking about 12-15 more players than the "Stanford model". Pretty significant difference in numbers there, which means Embree's margin for error is smaller.

I guess this sounds weird since I was being so negative, but I fully buy into our coaches having a really good eye for talent. I'm actually liking last years class quite a bit, granted it being a transition class. We have been first to offer on a ton of kids that have subsequently blown up. I was simply trying to compare offer lists to some of Hawk's classes which weren't nearly as bad as Mtn was trying to make them sound.

I just hope we don't go from offering good players that the coaches have found to marginal at best players. Having the best eye for talent in the world doesn't really matter if you can't hold onto them until signing day (Erich Wilson). My worry is that we're going from offering Brandon Beaver and Ishmael Adams to Tyler Hasty and Will Jackson and now we're at some of the recent CB offers, I'll withhold names so that I don't single kids out.

Another significant factor that hasn't been discussed much in this thread is what our coaches can do when given talent. It was painfully obvious that Hawk and his staff were completely unable to turn talented high school players into solid college players. Progression of players was pretty much non-existent in the last few years, very few kids ever got better. Hell, a lot regressed somehow. It remains to be seen what Embree and crew can do with talent, but I'm going to say that they'll develop talent pretty well. That's what Harbaugh did imo. That guy and his staff took their talent (not on a USC level) and turned it into a team that could beat USC.

I'm just trying to say that regardless of on field results we need to be doing better. We have 13 slots to fill, so the coaches need to get it done and fill them up with 13 solid players. Plus an early enrollee if possible..
 
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