Big 12 Talent and Recruiting Slipping

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...t-concern-should-be-its-football-talent-drain

 

That about sums it up!

 

Yup. We're the new SWC.

Being inside the new SWC vs looking from the outside at the old SWC reminds me of Han Solo's great line about the tauntaun: "And I thought they smelled bad ... on the outside."

 

The author of the article formerly worked in Alabama and South Carolina, and seems to me his article reeks with delight over the shortcomings in recent years for the Big 12, FWIW. Doesn't mean the article is inaccurate...Thanks, Boren!

 

Our 1st round picks have been a mix of 5*s, 4*s, and 3*s.

5*s - Peterson, McCoy, Harris
4*s - Brown*, Joseph, Gresham
3*s - Williams**, Williams, Bradford
1-2*s - Clayton, Woolfolk, Johnson

*Brown was all over the place depending on service and time of the year. He started out a 5* and then slipped because of grade concerns.
**But Williams was on the cover of prepstar! nevertheless he wasn't in the California top 100 that year, if you look at the rankings, the top 100 cuts off at the border of 3* and 2*.

No offense to the author, but he isn't taking into account the premium that the NFL places on certain positions. Our 1st rounders were almost always at these premium NFL positions that had a run on them.

 

The problem as I see it is that you guys and the whorns no longer have the state of Te*as to yourselves. Both Bama and LSU have made serious inroads there and with our continuing to play neutral site games in jerry world for the foreseeable future(we open 2016 for instance against SC there in Sept) on a regular basis I think we will continue to heavily recruit the area. Saban will not play OOC H/H's but instead wants to use the high profile neutral site games in large urban/metro areas to make a bigger profit due to the payouts for the university and assist with recruiting. So far it has worked.

 

It doesn't really matter to me where the author comes from, the things he points out are borne out with the statistics. He isn't making stuff up, he's reporting based on what is happening in the drafts.

Since 2011, I've argued that the conference is slowly eroding competitively. This article just shows another way to lend credence to that belief.

We need out of the Big 12. Inviting in Houston or BYU...that's not going to ease to eroding of competition.

We have to be realistic. The Big East was once a football conference, and once in the BCS. The Big East - for football - is longer gone because it became a joke from a competitive standpoint. We shouldn't sit by at the Big 12 becomes the old Big East.

I really hate that Boren has apparently tied our fate to Oklahoma State. How in the world is it our fault that they sucked for so long that no one wants them?

Boren and Castiglione screw up an SEC invitation. Now, we just need to get into one of the other P5s so we can watch the Big 12 sink from afar, not sink with it.

 

For what it's worth, we're playing Houston at NRG Stadium to open this season. I'm fine with playing at a pro football stadium, but wish it was going to be against a marquee opponent.

 

Please list the recruits you have "snaked" due to playing in one neutral site game like its some grand strategy. Saban just doesn't want to play home and homes bc he's a big ***** and he'll get whooped in them.

God I hate you Saban worshipers. I don't hate much, but I hate you. I see it all the time here in Bham. Looking forward to your descent back to mediocrity you Saban/Finebaum/Bama pole smoking loser.

And that was my nice reply.

 

What have I or any Alabama fan ever done to you, seriously? Hate is a pretty strong word, and yet you choose to live and earn your living here. Again, why the hate? We all come here to discuss a GAME. Your constant verbal attacks and flaming are totally uncalled for.

Again to explain--OOC h/h's are break- even arrangements financially for universities whereas the neutral site games net a big payoff. ( Example--we got $7million last sept to play Wisconsin.) That is a fact, and the reason behind the business decision to schedule them. Im not opposed to h/h's, we swept the last one we played, which was Penn State back in 2010/11. As for the effect they have on recruiting, we have signed a ton of players out of both ATL and the DFW metro area in the last 9 yrrs, whereas before we were not. The correlation speaks for itself.

 

Houston has a pretty dang good program right now. Gotta hand it to y'all for scheduling this one and in their house. Do y'all get a return game in Norman?

 

I see you typing and talking but all I hear is, "Waaaaaaaaahh, Cryyyyyy, Loooove Meeeee. I'm Just a caveman. " GTFO Bama troll.

 

I read on another board that Jackie Shipp has been hired by Mizzou as the DL coach. I sure hope he doesn't take to the recruiting trail like he did to the Tulsa golf courses.

As far as the early season Neutral Site Games...

I don't know how well these neutral-site games between good teams go over with schools that spent a boat-load of $ recently to upgrade their stadiums which they only use a half a dozen times a year or the town merchants who lose one game every 2 years to them, but it looks like they're here to stay.



From Sept 2015

College Football’s Opening Week Evolves From Mismatches to Can’t-Miss Matches

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/sports/ncaafootball/marquee-matchups-aim-to-grab-college-football-fans-right-from-week-1.html?_r=0#story-continues-2





Previously, college football had eased into the season with a glut of low-risk mismatches, which produced a series of blowouts that came and went unnoticed amid the fanfare of the arrival of the N.F.L. season.

But that first kickoff game in 2008 led to the creation of a lot of other high-profile early-season matchups, and with the eager help of television networks, they have turned the start of the season into a powerful national advertisement for college football. This year will be no different.

On Saturday, No. 6 Auburn will play Louisville in the latest kickoff game in Atlanta, and No. 15 Arizona State will face Texas A&M in Houston. The third-ranked Crimson Tide will play their sixth neutral-site kickoff game in the last eight seasons when they meet No. 20 Wisconsin in the Cowboy Classic in Arlington, Tex.

There are many reasons behind the surge in neutral-site games, including fans’ thirst for marquee matchups early in the season and the more practical budget needs of athletic directors.


Alabama and Wisconsin will each receive $4 million for their game this weekend. Stokan, whose organization created the early Atlanta kickoff game because it did not land a Bowl Championship Series game under the old format, said Auburn and Louisville would each be paid $3.5 million for their visit on Saturday.


“It was difficult to find good inventory in Week 1,” Brown said.

For coaches, though, the opening games have quickly become valuable opportunities because of the influence they can have on the calculus and perceptions that produce the rankings for the annual College Football Playoff.

A game against a top-10 team at a neutral site to start the season might have lifted the profile of one-loss Baylor or one-loss Texas Christian in 2014. The Bears and the Horned Frogs did not play a conference championship game, and their relatively weak schedules were used against them in the debate over the four teams picked for the first playoff, in January.



“You have to play one of these to mitigate the fact you’re not playing a not good enough schedule,” Saban said of the thinking behind adding a top neutral-site matchup. “You have to play a quality opponent outside your conference.”

He added, “From a scheduling standpoint, these neutral-site games have made it a little easier to do that because of the difficulty of trying to get home-and-home with some of these big names, like the Oklahomas.”

In many cases, striking deals has been about money. Brown said he often made more calls to colleges gauging their interest in playing neutral-site games than he received because athletic directors did not want to surrender their home-game revenue.

But the payouts from the games have begun to overcome that hurdle; Alabama will receive $6.5 million for its appearance in next season’s kickoff game against U.S.C. in Texas.

“From the business side of it, when you play home-and-home, like we did with Penn State,” Saban said, “you do great financially when you play them here; you don’t do great when you play them there. These games give you an opportunity to be positive every year.”

That could be yet another reason the number of kickoff games is expanding; Michigan and Florida announced last year that they would meet in Texas to start the 2017 season, and Atlanta will host two games that year in the city’s new N.F.L. stadium.

Brown left ESPN to start a game-scheduling database software company that he hopes will serve as a matchmaking apparatus for teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the Football Championship Subdivision and Division II. His clients can only hope it is as successful as he and Stokan were in building the first weekend of college football into a showcase.

“This was the one weekend of the year where college football had the landscape all to itself,” Brown said. “Thursday through Monday of that first weekend has been tremendous for the sport.”

 

You are totally missing what has happened in the state of Texas. For the longest time, every team in the state of Texas ran the single wing or some version of a 90% run offense. Those offenses tend to allow very easy talent evaluation because kids that are better look so much better on film. Now every team runs some version of the spread which tends to obscure a player being "better" because it allows athleticism or skill to blur the composite of the 2.

This is the Texas Top 100 from 2014 -> http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/rankings/rank-3312. The first RB is at #19 and he is one of the best prospects to come out of the state in years. The best QB is at #49. Then you look at WHO grabbed most of the players at the top and you see aTm who has finished 9-4 and 8-5.

 

I don't think you understand statistics. There has been a shift in the draft since the last CBA where high value positions (specifically CB) have been deemphasized in favor of previously less value positions like Safety.

Draftees by Position
OT 5 5 5 15
WR 3 5 6 14
CB 4 5 4 13
DE 5 2 4 11
LB 2 5 4 11
DT 4 2 2 8
S 3 4 1 8
QB 1 3 2 6
OG 3 1 4
OC 1 1 2
RB 2 2
TE 1 1 2


The 2 years before that:
DE 8 5 13
OT 6 2 8
QB 4 4 8
WR 3 4 7
CB 3 3 6
DT 3 3 6
LB 2 4 6
RB 1 3 4
OG 1 2 3
S 2 2
OC 1 1


The big 12 had 1/2 of those QBs. The SEC also has benefited from aTm and Mizzou moving over since they contributed a net 8 players that would have evened us out (15 vs 22) or that they have 20% more schools than we do, etc. etc.

 

Don't sweat the jealous here. As Bama pulls further away from us in legitimate national titles, many here get all the more thin-skinned. Stoops has already shown he isn't going to win another, and they all know it in the backs of their minds. It gnaws at some here, then, to see Saban and Bama continue to succeed.

As far as the Houston opener goes, no one will care about that game nationally because it is Houston. We have zero to gain from it. We lose...we're cooked in the minds of the national press and the playoff committee. We win...we should win because they are Houston and we are OU.

It's was stupid to waste an NFL stadium for a game opener on that type of opponent. Schedule LSU or some other regionally close power to play in the NFL stadium. Do not waste it on a G5 school like Houston. The downside is further down than the upside in this one.

 

You need serious help. Why not be honest with everyone on here and let them know who you REALLY are, nothing but a cow college fan in disguise that went to Auburn? You're certainly not a real Oklahoma fan. You see, real OU fans display some class and enjoy good, serious football discussion with fans of other traditional powers like their own and are courteous to such guests when they come over to their discussion boards. They leave the kind of crap you spew for the fans of wannabes like Okie State and Auburn. Do us both a favor and no longer address me in any discussions on here and I will refrain from doing so with you.

 

Don't worry--I won't. I have nothing but respect for Oklahoma football and the overwhelming majority of your fans, that' s one reason I keep coming back to discuss football here. Every fanbase has its whack jobs, yours and mine included.

I can certainly understand the disappointment that you guys experienced after the loss to Clemson, but I'm confident that Bob will have your team back in the playoffs. He's one of the top 3 coaches in the country(I'd put him behind only Saban and Meyer) and I don't think he's done winning championships just yet.

 

<giggle>

 

I'm not the one hanging out on an opposing teams board constantly looking for validation. I'm Sooner born and bred and I do enjoy talking football w/ Bama fans. Just not you. You've been a troll since day one. I won't apologize and I will continue to call you out.