Ex dog coach's thoughts on recruiting stars and

[IM79]

coaching in general

Our favorite dawg reporter, Chip Towers, interviewed outgoing Coach Mike Ekeler. He had some very interesting things to say about coaching, recruiting and recruiting stars. Stars and recruiting are our favorite topic around here , right?

Q:what if anything you’d change about college football coaching if you could …

“People talk about hiring great recruiters; I think that’s an absolute joke. If you’re labeled that, 99 percent of the time that means you can’t coach a lick. That’s a fact. There are very few exceptions. Ed Orgeron is a fantastic recruiter and he’s probably the best defensive line coach of them all. The guy is big-time. It’s great to recruit 5-stars, but then they come in and play like 2-stars. It’s too bad that’s how this profession is, but that’s part of the deal now.

“It’s not about recruiting, it’s about evaluating. That’s one of the things I learned from Ed Orgeron. It doesn’t matter if he’s a 2-star or a 5-star, it’s how you evaluate it and what you think you can do with him. That’s what I learned from him. Again, you recruit them. But there’s only about five players in the country that are totally different than everybody else. Everybody else can fall into a similar category. At that point it’s about developing and teaching. It’s about evaluating and developing your talent. And that’s a fact.”

 

[MACHETE]

Tell that to Bama and all their 5 stars...

 

[Architorture23]

Meh, the difference in UGAy's d-line and our d-line over the past few years would seem to indicate otherwise.

either that, or we should hire Mike Ekeler.

 

[DressCheeseSideSeaboard]

ITT, we learn which StingTalker we should hire to coordinate recruiting and evaluate talent,

 

[GTCrew]

Tell that to Bama and all their 5 stars...

If that was true every Bama player would make and blow up the pros.

Bama has like 80 coaches, seriously. Their janitor was probably a former NFL assistant and probably makes 200k. They have broken the system. And college football is bleeding support.

 

[MACHETE]

It's called the law of averages. Tell me this, wouldn't you rather have Alabama's class every year and tale your chances on developing their talent?

 

[TampaBayJacket]

I guarantee you Bama's 4-star third stringer would likely start on our team in just about every position.

 

[IM79]

Somehow I think he was talking about normal regular semi-pro teams, I mean, schools. I don't think a school that recruits like GT was even crossing his mind when he made those comments.

 

[andrew]

It's called the law of averages. Tell me this, wouldn't you rather have Alabama's class every year and tale your chances on developing their talent?

Exactly. No one is saying star rankings are the be all and end all, or that coaching isn't important, or that player ratings are always accurate.

But probably wise, four and five star players are going to have a much better chance of developing into great players than two or three stars, all other things equal. That gives you a much greater margin for error on all that other stuff, as well as injuries, bad luck, etc.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G850A using Tapatalk

 

[Dirty Jacket]

sounds like a bernie sanders supporter

 

[ScionOfSouthland]

Did you guys see Dalvin Tomlinson play in the national championship game? The guy is a junior and I saw him make 1 tackle on Monday night. If he was at GT he would have been a 3 year starter. That is the talent difference between Georgia Tech and Alabama. a 4 star at Alabama is a backup. A 4 star at GT is a 4 year starter.

 

[johncu]

Yeeaaah, this guy comes across like a really rich dude that says money doesn't matter. Try telling that to someone who doesn't have any.

 

[swampsting]

Did you guys see Dalvin Tomlinson play in the national championship game? The guy is a junior and I saw him make 1 tackle on Monday night. If he was at GT he would have been a 3 year starter. That is the talent difference between Georgia Tech and Alabama. a 4 star at Alabama is a backup. A 4 star at GT is a 4 year starter.

They also have DeShawn Hand, who was 1-2 in the nation as a prospect with Peppers, the Michigan DB, on the bench.

 

[olgoldandwhite]

Tell that to Bama and all their 5 stars...

Even they have flops. They just have more talent to begin with. If you have 85 of the top players in the nation, you can field a pretty good 22-30 players.

 

[olgoldandwhite]

I like the comment on only about 5 can't miss players in the nation.

 

[gespacho_the_slender]

Bama has like 80 coaches, seriously. Their janitor was probably a former NFL assistant and probably makes 200k. They have broken the system. And college football is bleeding support.

Pretty much. UGA just fired a perennial 9-10 game winning coach on a suspect metric.

Count Alabama coach Nick Saban among the critics of Georgia’s decision to fire coach Mark Richt after a 9-3 season.
“I don’t know what the world is coming to in our profession,” Saban said when asked about Richt’s firing Sunday night on an SEC Championship game teleconference. “Mark Richt has been a really good coach and a really positive person in our profession for a long, long time. I think when you win nine games that’s a pretty good season, especially with the body of work he has been able to put together there.”

Seems a little disingenuous to me...

 

[non-gineer]

either that, or we should hire Mike Ekeler.

How about Ed Orgeron? If he's still the DL coach at LSU, maybe he's ready to be a DC again.

 

[ChrisW]

Stars are pretty terrible, but they are not meaningless. I've seen multiple studies that show that 4-star athletes are slightly more likely to make the NFL or All-Conference than a 3-star. If there is any correlation at all between apparent athleticism and performance, which seems reasonable, then even a terrible evaluator will pick out good players at a slightly higher rate than picking randomly.

I would be interested to see if using number of P5 offers does a better job than number of stars to predict the percentage of players that will make an All-Conference team.

 

[THWG247]

How did Richt hold that shiite show together for 9 wins last season?

 

[midatlantech]

Stars are pretty terrible, but they are not meaningless. I've seen multiple studies that show that 4-star athletes are slightly more likely to make the NFL or All-Conference than a 3-star. If there is any correlation at all between apparent athleticism and performance, which seems reasonable, then even a terrible evaluator will pick out good players at a slightly higher rate than picking randomly.

I would be interested to see if using number of P5 offers does a better job than number of stars to predict the percentage of players that will make an All-Conference team.

I will bet you anything that the small difference between 3 and 4 star and the NFL jump is more related to higher stars out of high school being physically bigger. I am sure that 6'6" OT's who garner higher stars make it to the NFL at a higher rate than 6'3" OT's, even though both may play exactly the same in college.