Alaska Griz said:I'm not going to try and grade a currently incomplete class who will mostly all redshirt and train under one of the best strength coaches in the country for a year. But some thoughts:
As far as the mention of stars per class, I can't make any sense of this, especially with a class of half Montana kids, who for the most part do not receive stars. Gabe Sulser was an exception because of his FBS offers. On a side note, Garrett Graves is an exciting recruit at QB. Hope he is the next All-American from Lincoln County after Blaine (Troy)and Vince (Libby).
Just for fun, if the goal is to acquire as many stars in a class as possible, then UM should only recruit out-of-state, where nearly all of our recruits are two and three star players. Or, just recruit transfers, where it is much easier to pick up star-rated kids who washed out of their FBS school for one reason or another. If we simply do those things we can nearly double the amount of stars in our future classes. Ta-da.
Would that make a stronger class? No. Hero sports might rate it higher, but that's about it. For the record, I believe the 5 and 4 stars are a whole different deal. From all the film, Gabe Sulser and Milton Mamula are two of the biggest gets in the class so far, imo. Mamula - 0 stars. Sulser - 2. One thing Hauck said is with our facilities we need to be consistently recruiting against the Mountain West schools going forward. I agree.
Another way of evaluating recruits as fans is to look at what schools you beat out to get the recruit. I see hardly any mention of this. This would seem more constructive than stars at this level. Across the board, if you are beating out nearly all FCS schools who also offer your recruits, that's good. If you are beating out FBS schools on a number of recruits, that's great. In this sense, you're using the film study skills of other college coaches. Again, Montana kids seem to fall outside this scenario, except for the Sulser types of the state, who could have went a lot of places.
I don't really prescribe to those methods at this level though. Watch a lot of tape, find good young men that will buy into the TEAM; feed them (once they've signed), coach them, hope for the best. Look at NDSU signing nearly their whole class in the early signing period with almost no transfers. Looking at the quality of players they got, that's awesome. As far as hyping a high school class at this level, all you have to do is look at the attrition rate of past classes to realize many won't see meaningful snaps for two years, and between that time many will get injured, transfer, or never improve significantly. Cliché as it is, waiting a few years is a must, which brings me to...
The thing that has me MOST excited about this class is something Bobby has talked about on many occasions. Ultimately, recruits have to buy into a program before they can contribute and reach their potential. This goes beyond a recruiting trip and letter of intent. This class has a good number of kids who simply wanted to be Griz. In Bobby's words, with these types "the investment is already there." This is generally true with most Montana kids, however, in this class several headliners like Sulser, Cole Sain, and Nash Fouch off the top of my head have Grizzly roots and wanted to be Griz from day one. This is an instance where a strong football tradition pays back. I think it will translate into strong leadership, accountability, and perhaps lower attrition amongst this class. We shall see!
One more thought on the cb situation. It makes sense to me that Hauck wants to see what players can switch positions before he uses the rest of his scholarships. He'd be a fool to not utilize the players on the team. Rather than cut a bunch of highly regarded athletes, why not wait until after spring ball, balance out the roster numbers to improve depth and then actively seek players to come in and fill holes. For now, folks can only guess at which wr will make a good cb. It might be 1, it might be four. Nash was a wr just over a year ago and is, imo, already our best cb with a very high ceiling...Okay, sorry for long post. Off to the basketball game. Go Griz!
Fantastic and well thought out post