Top 50 recruits in Georgia

BigChooch0405 said:
The below graphic was making its way around recruiting twitter in the past few weeks. Ignore the poster (Dwag premium writer) and look a the content.
We had to make 167 offers in attempts to build our current class. UF, UGA, UM, UT - all had to offer way, way more.

I'm generally curious. Do we need to streamline and put more attention into fewer offers or should we ramp it up and cast a wider net.

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It takes a pretty strong and deep support staff to evaluate and offer 250 or more prospects. Also, for some schools, there’s a lot more room for offering out-of-state kids than in-state since in-staters have a much higher likelihood of committing. Imagine if Alabama or Georgia offered 150 in-state kids how quickly their classes would fill up.... As a result, they can be pretty liberal tossing around out-of-state offers, which likely is reflected in this chart.
If we could had the evaluation resources some do, we should definitely be near the high end of a chart like this.
 
DressCheeseSideSeaboard said:
uga admitted a football player who had to teach himself how to read while he was there, in case you missed it. It was the feel-good story of the year.
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Feel good story:
  • Malcolm Mitchell had a 3rd grade reading level when he was admitted to uGA.
  • He passed two years of classes at uGA with a major in Communications with a 3rd grade reading level (which he subsequently raised in news stories to a "junior high" reading level)
  • He tore his ACL and decided to learn to read "at an elite level."
  • Joined an all-female senior citizens book club to force himself to read.
  • Then became a "published author" (FYI - he wrote a children's book then spent "$500 - $1000" to get it to market, which means self-published on Amazon. That doesn't make you an author, getting paid by a publisher makes you an author. I could self-publish this post on Amazon by tomorrow morning if I felt like burning some cash).
 
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The Mitchell story was a joke. Once you ask the simple question, "Wait...how did he get into college in the first place?", the warm and fuzzy starts to bristle under the realities of big time college football.
 
originalwombat said:
Once you ask the simple question, "Wait...how did he get into college in the first place?"
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It's a sad story that no one discusses. A CNN student found that 8-10% of student-athletes read below a 3rd-grade level.

Early in her career as a learning specialist, Mary Willingham was in her office when a basketball player at the University of North Carolina walked in looking for help with his classwork.

He couldn't read or write.

"And I kind of panicked. What do you do with that?" she said, recalling the meeting.

Willingham's job was to help athletes who weren't quite ready academically for the work required at UNC at Chapel Hill, one of the country's top public universities.

But she was shocked that one couldn't read. And then she found he was not an anomaly.

Soon, she'd meet a student-athlete who couldn't read multisyllabic words. She had to teach him to sound out Wis-con-sin, as kids do in elementary school.

And then another came with this request: "If I could teach him to read well enough so he could read about himself in the news, because that was something really important to him," Willingham said.
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As a graduate student at UNC-Greensboro, Willingham researched the reading levels of 183 UNC-Chapel Hill athletes who played football or basketball from 2004 to 2012. She found that 60% read between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. Between 8% and 10% read below a third-grade level.
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Put this in a different context
The issue was highlighted at UNC two years ago with the exposure of a scandal where students, many of them athletes, were given grades for classes they didn't attend, and where they did nothing more than turn in a single paper.
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https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html
 
Athletic Supporter said:
Does the Tech men's basketball program recruit as well or better than UGA's?

If so, what are they (the basketball program) doing that the football program might emulate?
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We’ve had such turmoil in the basketball program that we haven't recruited especially well vis-a-vis UGA in recent years. Nevertheless, you're right that in years past we have had a generally more successful program than UGA. Nevertheless, I share the view that we'e talking apples and oranges.

Most obviously, the institutional interest in basketball a UGA is way lower than in football, so they're just not trying as hard in basketball. (The interest is lower at Tech, too, but the differential is not as great.)

Second, the dynamics of basketball mean that you only need one or two 'impact' players to totally change how the year goes. So really reaching to get an academically-unprepared-but-highly-talented player in basketball has a bigger effect than the same approach in football.

Along the same lines, those premium players may well leave after a year or two anyhow to turn pro (which is much less common in football), meaning they're gone before the true depth of their academic unpreparedness becomes evident.

Third, the 'college is a pipeline to the pros' argument cuts in our favor in basketball, but in UGA's favor in football. We've got a lot of alumni playing professionally, whereas UGA does not.

Fourth, SEC:football::ACC:basketball. If you're a great player who wants to succeed on the biggest stage, Tech gives you a bigger stage than UGA does, again the opposite of football.

Fifth, while I haven't been to Stegman in forever, our facilities are pretty nice. McCamish is a great facility, and feels like a top-notch place to play.

Sixth – and hey, I'm running out of steam and beginning to stretch here – the heart of basketball is urban, and we're an urban school. A typical basketball recruit may be more attracted to our location and less to Athens, relatively.

Alright, I'm gonna stop there. Just some initial thoughts...
 
18in32 said:
We’ve had such turmoil in the basketball program that we haven't recruited especially well vis-a-vis UGA in recent years. Nevertheless, you're right that in years past we have had a generally more successful program than UGA. Nevertheless, I share the view that we'e talking apples and oranges.

Most obviously, the institutional interest in basketball a UGA is way lower than in football, so they're just not trying as hard in basketball. (The interest is lower at Tech, too, but the differential is not as great.)

Second, the dynamics of basketball mean that you only need one or two 'impact' players to totally change how the year goes. So really reaching to get an academically-unprepared-but-highly-talented player in basketball has a bigger effect than the same approach in football.

Along the same lines, those premium players may well leave after a year or two anyhow to turn pro (which is much less common in football), meaning they're gone before the true depth of their academic unpreparedness becomes evident.

Third, the 'college is a pipeline to the pros' argument cuts in our favor in basketball, but in UGA's favor in football. We've got a lot of alumni playing professionally, whereas UGA does not.

Fourth, SEC:football::ACC:basketball. If you're a great player who wants to succeed on the biggest stage, Tech gives you a bigger stage than UGA does, again the opposite of football.

Fifth, while I haven't been to Stegman in forever, our facilities are pretty nice. McCamish is a great facility, and feels like a top-notch place to play.

Sixth – and hey, I'm running out of steam and beginning to stretch here – the heart of basketball is urban, and we're an urban school. A typical basketball recruit may be more attracted to our location and less to Athens, relatively.

Alright, I'm gonna stop there. Just some initial thoughts...
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This makes a lot of sense. As a fan, I just would like to think there is some way, perhaps via a concerted marketing campaign, to tap into the urban aesthetic that is so appealing about Georgia Tech. By that I mean, it's located in, arguably, the hippest city in the nation, and the stadium is right in the heart of it. In many ways it's more exciting than playing in a typical gigantic stadium in the countryside. But, perhaps, it's just more appealing to the fan than the recruit?
 
gtphd said:
It's a sad story that no one discusses. A CNN student found that 8-10% of student-athletes read below a 3rd-grade level.
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A lot of these kids struggle to qualify. I remember in 2011 when Nick Marshall was committed to us and one of our competitors to keeping him was Garden City Community College, the little school in Kansas he visited just one month before Signing Day, since qualifying was so much in doubt. Of course he ended up finding his way to Georgia and then Auburn, but I think would have flourished with us had he stuck to his original plan.
To be competitive, you sometime have to find a tuba player for the band.
 
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2 things:

1. There is a big difference between an offer and a commitable offer. If all of the Alabama and UGA offers were commitable, they would have filled up a year ago.

2. GT faces a lot of obstacles, some of our own making and some we have no control over. However, in the words of CPJ, “it is what it is”. We would be so much better off it we would quit whining about it. Trying to run down others to explain your inadequacies just exposes your insecurities. GT is a fabulous school with a better than average sports program, be proud of it.
 
BackstreetBuzz said:
2 things:

1. There is a big difference between an offer and a commitable offer. If all of the Alabama and UGA offers were commitable, they would have filled up a year ago.

2. GT faces a lot of obstacles, some of our own making and some we have no control over. However, in the words of CPJ, “it is what it is”. We would be so much better off it we would quit whining about it. Trying to run down others to explain your inadequacies just exposes your insecurities. GT is a fabulous school with a better than average sports program, be proud of it.
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Yeah number 2 starts with getting rid of CPJ
 
O'Leary used to recruit the northeast -of course he had connections there which obviously helped. Johnson's recruiting base is not near as broad. Part of that may be the recruiting/staff budget he has had to work with, but I just feel a school like Tech needs to look beyond the state of Georgia. I know there is talent here, but I think I read somewhere in this thread we offered to something like 65 percent of the top recruits in the state -well how many of those did we/will we land?

#broadenthebase
 
gogt5 said:
Yeah number 2 starts with getting rid of CPJ
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banhammergot.jpg
 
GT65_UGA89 said:
O'Leary used to recruit the northeast -of course he had connections there which obviously helped. Johnson's recruiting base is not near as broad. Part of that may be the recruiting/staff budget he has had to work with, but I just feel a school like Tech needs to look beyond the state of Georgia. I know there is talent here, but I think I read somewhere in this thread we offered to something like 65 percent of the top recruits in the state -well how many of those did we/will we land?

#broadenthebase
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Read BackstreetBuzz's post no.1. It's true.
 
GT65_UGA89 said:
O'Leary used to recruit the northeast -of course he had connections there which obviously helped. Johnson's recruiting base is not near as broad. Part of that may be the recruiting/staff budget he has had to work with, but I just feel a school like Tech needs to look beyond the state of Georgia. I know there is talent here, but I think I read somewhere in this thread we offered to something like 65 percent of the top recruits in the state -well how many of those did we/will we land?

#broadenthebase
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Actually, with UGAs recent success they are getting more players from outside of GA and therefore they are leaving more high ranking in-state guys that hopefully want to play for a state school and it should be us. We need to take advantage of UGA not promoting the “let’s keep GA players in GA” angle and push it ourselves.
 
hvacENGR said:
Actually, with UGAs recent success they are getting more players from outside of GA and therefore they are leaving more high ranking in-state guys that hopefully want to play for a state school and it should be us. We need to take advantage of UGA not promoting the “let’s keep GA players in GA” angle and push it ourselves.
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This is true. Unfortunately, other school have filled the void instead of us. Somehow, in State, GT has got the reputation of being located in a crime infested slum, having terrible facilities, having no fans, requiring impossibly hard courses (Calculas), running an offense that does not translate to the pros and not having a party scene. Some of these things are absolutely false, but the rep is hard to overcome.
 
BackstreetBuzz said:
This is true. Unfortunately, other school have filled the void instead of us. Somehow, in State, GT has got the reputation of being located in a crime infested slum, having terrible facilities, having no fans, requiring impossibly hard courses (Calculas), running an offense that does not translate to the pros and not having a party scene. Some of these things are absolutely false, but the rep is hard to overcome.
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It’s about 10 lies in this post
 
smokey_wasp said:
You really think that's the elephant in the room as far as recruiting is concerned, rather than academics, money, etc? Its more like you are focusing on the cockroach hiding in the crack of the wall and ignoring the room itself.
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Do you honestly believe if the academic issues didnt exist, then 4 and 5 star kids are willing to play in this system!? Jesus Christ..

I coach high school football in the metro area, and my cousin is an up and coming starting QB for a school in Atlanta. These kids do not want to play in the option unless they dont have any other offers.
 
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