| 30 November 2010
A good member of the Bucknuts community posted this after seeing the American Coaches All-American team which included two linebackers on the first team who were from Ohio but were not Buckeyes:
<<<<<dmagnus1
Two of three All-American linebackers are from the Cincinnati Catholic League?
NEITHER on the Buckeyes?
Hello Mr. Tressel? Mr Fickell? Mr. Heacock?
My point was not that we disregarded a kid that everyone else had highly rated. Its easy to find
the kids that everyone else finds - like Hicks and DePriest.
My point is that during a recruiting cycle in which most people have expressed concern over the lack of LB recruits in the last several classes, and the apparent depleted state we find out LB corps to be in (weren't we discussing the possibility of burning Sabino's redshirt a few weeks ago - because we had rapidly grown thin at the position?), it is interesting to see what diamonds in the rough OTHER programs are finding in Ohio. Other than McVey, DePriest and Hicks, what other local LB recruits have we offered in the past two years? I'm sure there are some, but not many. We have been wiffing on the 5-stars. I wonder how many other kids we're missing on. BTW - isn't there some kid on the Wisconsin team that took B10 Freshman honors at LB a year ago - Borland? Was HE on our radar?
I wonder how much of our current LB "situation" is self-induced...<<<<<
We had higher rated guys on the recruiting roll that year, and you can't take everyone. The simple fact is you don't know who is going to live up to expectations and who is going to rise above expectations. There is no formula for projecting who will be the better player by the time their college careers are over. Nobody has the luxury of knowing how a players development is going to play out at the time decisions are made. You can't take them all. Not anymore. You have to pick and you have to pick when they are very young. Nobody saw something in Greg Jones that said he was going to be better than the linebackers the Buckeyes chose that year, or the linebackers Florida, Texas and USC took that year, who Jones outplayed based on the opinion of the American Football Coaches Association. Recruiting is voodoo economics at its best, or should I say worst, mixed with simple mathematics. You can only take so many every year. 25 at the most and 85 in any four year period. If this thing was more predictable recruiting would be a completely different ball game. High school All-Americans would be just biding their time until they go off to the NFL to make millions and the three-star recruits would be studying hard in the classroom at lower level institutions because they have no shot at the NFL.
If we could go back in time Michigan State would have gladly taken any of the linebackers on the Buckeyes recruiting roll and let us have Jones. They took Jones because they could not get any of the linebackers the Buckeyes took. Boston College took Luke Kuechley, the other Ohio All-American linebacker on the Coaches first team, because they could not get the players the Buckeyes offered, not because they did a better job of evaluation.
| Next > |
|---|
