Recruiting History

[romegajacket]

Does anyone know what GT's most successful year has been in recruiting?

Not a trick question, it's just that I never really followed college football recruiting all that much until the last few years.

Is the present recruiting the best we've had or is it pretty close?

 

[GT_Dean]

Son of Satan had a couple of REAL GOOD classes. At least one. He DIDN'T leave the it as bad as most people thought(even with the 1 win season).

This one WILL turn out to be the best imho.

 

[SMoney]

I think it's pretty hard to say what is the best year. You looking soley based on star ratings, or how the recruiting class actually turned out after showing up on campus?

 

[GEETEELEE]

I don't like referring to BL as satan (TIC, I know) he was not a bad man, just a poor head coach.

I do agree he had a couple of very highly regarded recruiting classes and although Lewis didn't leave the cupboard bare, GOL ran off a lot of players with a bad attitude, or simply didn't play them.

GOL had one top 20 recruiting class, IIRC, but a couple of his others were top 25.

It's hard to compare previous eras recruiting without the extensive analysis and rankings available today.

 

[GT_Dean]

I know GTL. It is more of a joke than anything now.

 

[Clito Jacket]

Thinking about George O'Leary's classes

This is perception, not carefully analysed data, but it seems to me George had recruiting classes that looked really good on signing day but didn't result in great football players. Some of his kids just seemed a little over rated and others didn't cut it academically. Then sometimes he just had bad luck. One year we signed a quarterback as prominent as Street and Nesbitt are today, maybe more so, only to have him leave school after two days when he found he didn't like living so far from home, IIRC.

 

[BarrelORum]

No. Our best recruiting years according to the services happened in 1987, 1989, 1990, 2000 and 2001 depending on who you asked. About 2 years ago, I made a post on the Hive and Stingtalk documenting the actual classes and the publication ranks, but I cannot remember it. I'm speaking strictly off of memory now, but here it goes.

GT has never had a higher ranking than 18th by any major publication. I believe we were around #18 in 1989, We were #19 or #20 in 2001 which is largely considered our best class in the modern recruiting day. Many thought we out recruited GA... but in that year, they still were ranked higher than we were buy the recruiting services.

In 2000 we cracked the top #25 by many services. We've had other ranked years, where someone like Emfinger had us listed as #13 I believe, but he was the only one. I remember the 1998 and 1999 classes were ranked by someone or another but not consistently across the services rankings. SuperPrep in the mid to late 80's had our classes rated pretty good, but no one else agreed with them. Its all so subjective.

Much to the annoyance of those that preach recruiting rankings... we've never recruited a top 10 class and if we recruited a top 15 class, not many people agreed on it. What is amazing is, this will probably not go down as our best recruiting year simply because with only 17 scholly's to give, we more than likely will end up barely in the top 25 at our current rate but no better than 17 or 18. That's just a guess and that is with Dwyer, Nesbitt, Clayror, etc. committing.

 

[jacketup]

The best year could have been 1975, but there were no "experts" then. Eddie Lee Ivery and Kent Hill were NFL first rounders as I recall, and I believe that 7 more of those guys were either drafted or signed free agent contracts. My memory could be faulty on this.

Of course, Pepper was their coach.

 

[floridajacket]

To really guage the past recruiting classes before Scout and Rivals, somebody needs to look at the draft picks or the all-ACC and all-American accolades bestowed upon a recruiting class and rank them compared to each schools or at least rank them from year-to-year. I remember most of the heralded 2001 class fizzled out while it would make sense for the late 80s classes to be great with the MNC that followed.

 

[pocket_watch]

The best year could have been 1975, but there were no "experts" then. Eddie Lee Ivery and Kent Hill were NFL first rounders as I recall, and I believe that 7 more of those guys were either drafted or signed free agent contracts. My memory could be faulty on this.

Of course, Pepper was their coach.

True. Also, wasn't Drew Hill in the same class?
Peppah could recroot!

 

[law_bee]

No. Our best recruiting years according to the services happened in 1987, 1989, 1990, 2000 and 2001 depending on who you asked. About 2 years ago, I made a post on the Hive and Stingtalk documenting the actual classes and the publication ranks, but I cannot remember it. I'm speaking strictly off of memory now, but here it goes.

GT has never had a higher ranking than 18th by any major publication. I believe we were around #18 in 1989, We were #19 or #20 in 2001 which is largely considered our best class in the modern recruiting day. Many thought we out recruited GA... but in that year, they still were ranked higher than we were buy the recruiting services.

In 2000 we cracked the top #25 by many services. We've had other ranked years, where someone like Emfinger had us listed as #13 I believe, but he was the only one. I remember the 1998 and 1999 classes were ranked by someone or another but not consistently across the services rankings. SuperPrep in the mid to late 80's had our classes rated pretty good, but no one else agreed with them. Its all so subjective.

Much to the annoyance of those that preach recruiting rankings... we've never recruited a top 10 class and if we recruited a top 15 class, not many people agreed on it. What is amazing is, this will probably not go down as our best recruiting year simply because with only 17 scholly's to give, we more than likely will end up barely in the top 25 at our current rate but no better than 17 or 18. That's just a guess and that is with Dwyer, Nesbitt, Clayror, etc. committing.

is this the post..

http://www.stingtalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11511&highlight=recruiting

the search engine on vboards is a MAJOR IMPROVEMENT

 

[hiveredtech]

The best year could have been 1975, but there were no "experts" then. Eddie Lee Ivery and Kent Hill were NFL first rounders as I recall, and I believe that 7 more of those guys were either drafted or signed free agent contracts. My memory could be faulty on this.

Of course, Pepper was their coach.

Back then you could sign a lot more kids. We signed 29 in 1975. They included 7 future NFL guys: Don Besseillieu (FL), Drew Hill, Kent Hill, Eddie Lee Ivery, Don Patterson, Al Richardson (FL), and Roy Simmons.

 

[pocket_watch]

Back then you could sign a lot more kids. We signed 29 in 1975. They included 7 future NFL guys: Don Besseillieu (FL), Drew Hill, Kent Hill, Eddie Lee Ivery, Don Patterson, Al Richardson (FL), and Roy Simmons.

I forgot about Donnie Patterson and Al Richardson being in that class. WoW!
For my money, I can't think of any class being better since.

 

[hiveredtech]

I forgot about Donnie Patterson and Al Richardson being in that class. WoW!
For my money, I can't think of any class being better since.

downside...that group only went to one bowl game and lost it in 1978 to Purdue (Peach Bowl).

 

[pocket_watch]

downside...that group only went to one bowl game and lost it in 1978 to Purdue (Peach Bowl).

I remember that well. Of course in those days, going to a bowl game, even a minor one like the Peach at the time, meant more than today imo.
I am not saying we would have beaten Purdue with Eddie Lee, but losing him to the cheap shot in athens took a lot of the wind from the sails. I still suffer from the dry heaves because of that.

I was referring to talent.

 

[ncjacket]

Truly outstanding class. Of course, that was MY class so it had to be great.

 

[hiveredtech]

I remember that well. Of course in those days, going to a bowl game, even a minor one like the Peach at the time, meant more than today imo.
I am not saying we would have beaten Purdue with Eddie Lee, but losing him to the cheap shot in athens took a lot of the wind from the sails. I still suffer from the dry heaves because of that.

I was referring to talent.

just if you are curious, 3 of those 5 years would have been bowl games today:

1975- 7-4
1976- 4-6-1
1977- 6-5
1978- 7-5
1979- 4-6-1

 

[BarrelORum]

is this the post..

http://www.stingtalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11511&highlight=recruiting

the search engine on vboards is a MAJOR IMPROVEMENT

Yes, Lawbee, thank you very much. I do recall I made a follow up to that post which had only the service rankings for the years between 1986 and 1996. But that one was definately one of the posts. Nice find.

 

[pocket_watch]

just if you are curious, 3 of those 5 years would have been bowl games today:

1975- 7-4
1976- 4-6-1
1977- 6-5
1978- 7-5
1979- 4-6-1

I think you are pointing out that we performed more poorly back then record wise, and would not even be in one of today's field trip bowls.
If so, I won't argue that we underachieved under Pepper. However, we played a beast of a schedule back then.

 

[hiveredtech]

I think you are pointing out that we performed more poorly back then record wise, and would not even be in one of today's field trip bowls.
If so, I won't argue that we underachieved under Pepper. However, we played a beast of a schedule back then.

not really pointing anything out necessarily, the topic just drew me to some interesting numbers. Somewhat surprising the struggle given the talent, but I am not looking for anyone to blame or anything like that.

During those years the hard teams always included Alabama, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Auburn, and Georgia. The easier teams included Tulane, Air Force, Navy, Duke...and someone like William&Mary, Citadel. or VMI. We were 1-4 against UGA during that span.

I have fond memories of going to games then, even when we lost.