Boom boom

Groo has some thoughts about our ‘Cocky neighbors in response to a post of mine about the recruiting gap between Georgia and the rest of the division.  It’s a good analysis and worth a read, but I confess the main reason I mention it now is because it gives me another excuse to post this.

That never gets old.

Advertisements

ABC, peeps.

A Seth Emerson reminder ($$) that Kirby is always on the recruiting mother:

The​ narrative on Cameron Nizialek​ is he​ just​ picked Georgia on his​ own,​ showed​ up​ in​ Athens two years​ ago, and​​ the eventual SEC and Rose Bowl champions had their starting punter drop into their lap. But that’s actually not true. And it offers some lessons on why Kirby Smart’s program operates the way it does.

The real backstory: Nizialek was graduate transferring from Columbia, an FCS school, after the 2016 season. And as obscure as he might have seemed, he was already on Georgia’s radar. James Vollono, then a special teams analyst, had known Nizialek through the kicking community and reached out to him. Nizialek also was talking to Clemson, which had invited him to attend the South Carolina game two days after Thanksgiving. That was a night game. Georgia played at noon just over an hour’s drive south. Why don’t you stop by here first, Vollono asked Nizialek, who agreed.

“And I actually talked to Kirby for like 20 minutes before the Georgia Tech game that year,” Nizialek recalled last week. “So, yeah, I think Kirby downplays his role in me coming there a little bit. But they definitely wanted me to come. Now, obviously, I wasn’t on scholarship, so it just kind of looked like I showed up. But they were definitely interested and wanted me to come from the beginning.”

That level of attention for an Ivy League punter… can you imagine what Smart puts into pursuing a five-star in-state stud?

The greatest trick the recruiting service devil ever played…

… was convincing the world that this kid existed.

My two cents:  one, jeez, that’s beyond embarrassing and, two, I’m surprised it hadn’t happened before.  And to think people shell out money for that.  Well done, Rivals.

Thursday morning buffet

Dig in, peeps.

• Bud Elliott writes about when coaches know to give up on continuing to recruit a kid.
• Boom’s cannon misfires.
• “… I’ve never represented the University of Nebraska as legal counsel, and I’ve never held myself out as doing so.”
• The rhythm of Signing Day.
• David Hale argues offseason momentum isn’t really a thing.
• Patrick Garbin takes a look back at Georgia recruiting, pre-Kirby.  His piece reaffirms two longstanding impressions I have:  Dooley was mailing it in his last two or three seasons and Donnan had the players to win a lot more than he did.
• “This is why offensive lineman shouldn’t be allowed to play high school basketball.”

“… everyone knows a championship contender is the sum of its parts.”

And one more look at team recruiting rankings:

Some of this confirms what you, myself and every college football fan around knows intuitively: for the last half-decade, no one in the country has been as dominant on the recruiting trail as the power trio of Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State.

Now, true, that’s not the entire story.

The on-field success of Clemson and Oklahoma have shown that conference and national championships can be won without top-five recruiting classes, but they also each serve as examples for the disconnect between signing day and game day. The Tigers were able to close the talent gap with Alabama, in part, because Christian Wilkins, Clelin Ferrell, Mitch Hyatt, Austin Bryant and other key pieces of the 2015 recruiting class chose to return to college for their senior seasons instead of going pro. If fellow 2015 signees Calvin Ridley, Da’Ron Payne or Minkah Fitzpatrick had chosen to do the same, then maybe that showdown in Santa Clara goes differently. Oklahoma, on the other hand, has done enough work on the recruiting trail to contend for Big 12 championships, but this average does not have a factor for the addition of Heisman Trophy-winning transfer quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray.

But it’s a large part of the entire story.  Kirby’s recruiting has made Georgia relevant nationally and there’s no reason to think that’s going to change any time soon.  Whether it pays off with the ultimate reward, well… that’s why we’re along for the ride, ain’t it?

(As an aside, if you’re wondering why Athlon’s average for Georgia differs from CBS’, it’s because Athlon screwed up the 2015 rankings of Georgia and LSU.)

The SEC is a Jimmies and Joes conference.

This chart comes from Athlon.

The chart below highlights the average recruiting ranking for all SEC programs across the last five years (2015-19), according to the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings, in addition to the won-loss record for each team (both overall and in conference) during the last five years (2014-18).

That’s a pretty solid correlation between wins and recruiting rankings there… except for Tennessee and Mississippi State.

They don’t pay you for what’s on the front of the jersey, pal.

They pay you for what’s on the back.

It seems likely that the Purdue football program’s new recruiting class will benefit coach Jeff Brohm on the field, but there’s no doubt it will help him at the bank.

Under the terms of his contract, Brohm will get a $45,000 bonus because the class was ranked among the nation’s 25 best by at least one of the outlets specified in an incentive provision of his agreement. The group was 25th in both the ESPN and 247Sports Composite rankings. (It was ranked 26th by rivals.com, the other outlet listed in the agreement.)

Meat on the hoof, and the cows don’t get a cut of the action.