Editorial

Recruiting Season Rules

By ryan ⋅ January 2, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I know that football is over but basketball season really doesn’t start for me until the conference games start. Unless we get an automatic bid for winning the unofficial SWAC championship, I’m just not that interested.  However, from the end of bowl season to early February there will no doubt be much discussion on the players that Coach Briles will be signing to play for the Bears next fall. I thought I’d put together some ground rules for discussion. Well,  it’s more like a list of things that annoy the hell out of me during recruiting. (Joker Voice) And….Here….We…Go..

• Referring to an area as “fertile” or a group of recruits as “crop.” These are human beings, not perishible staple foods.
• You “stockpile” nuclear warheads, not position groups.
• Referring to anyone as a “Beast.” Newsflash people: most kids that can play division 1 football (especially on the OL or DL) are beasts compared to the 99.5% of the kids they play against in high school.  Go look at any high school roster.  It’s chock full of kids that go like 6′-230 that play offensive guard or DT. Of course a guy who is signed to a Big 12 school and goes 6′5- 285 is going to be “beast-like.”
• “This guy is the real deal.” If I had a dollar everytime I heard that about Aaron Karas I’d be a millionaire. That’s all I need to say about that.
• Rattling off cone drill times and power clean weights. As a local radio personality likes to say: “Watch the damn game.” Any clumsy fool can train his body to do measured exercises. I want to see a player put seperation between him and a defender. I want to see a player blow his opponnet off the line of scrimmage. I want to see him make people miss.

This is a good starting point. There are many more. Recruiting is probably 70% of what makes a coach successful. The best players generally win. On top of that, you need talented guys with some experience to play and build depth with. I randomly ran across this blog examining the 2005 and 2006 classes. These are the guys that should be starting this year as 4th and 5th year players. You can probably guess how they turned out.

Tags: Briles, Football, Recruiting