Posted by wildcat98 on 5/19/2014 7:36:00 PM (view original):
I would agree with this. At a C+ prestige, I basically have never won a recruiting battle with even a B/B+ prestige team. I'm either doing something VERY wrong, or I maybe just need to stop having any such battles.
well... these battles can be won. you are new to d1, really, you aren't the subject of the debate here. you should struggle, thats what happens when you are new to the BCS scene. granted - its a bigger transition than it used to be - which i don't like. but thats not really the point. the point is, someone who really knows what is going on, should get a program to that level in a reasonable time frame. if you are an a- coach, getting a new (crap) BCS program to a b/b+ shouldn't be that hard for you. if you are an a+ coach, getting a new BCS program to an a-/a shouldn't be that hard. but, i think it really is, theres this hump, of trying to get past the 2nd round or so, that is very difficult to get over. the top teams are just so good, and the talent level drops off a cliff at lower levels. you see the top guys on top teams - how the hell can you compete with that - even if you do a tremendous job, and sign the absolute best players available out of "everyone else"? you really can't... and thats the problem.
when i took over south carolina, i won 2 battles in successive seasons - a b prestige battle for a local, vs duke, also local, with their a++ prestige, 1 more opening, and 15k more from the conf (maybe it was 20k, something like that). the next, as b+, we beat a++ UNC for an international, after they took a guy off me, out of revenge. they had the same # of openings, and 15-20k more from the conference. with all that, i still felt the rebuild was extremely hard, incomparably harder than previous BCS rebuilds, before recruit generation. we did go from b- to a- in 4 seasons, so i can't say i failed there, and eventually we were as good as any program. but man, it was hard! and i was really trying - knowing all these things you are still trying to figure out - it was really hard. i can't really express how amazed i was, at how hard i had to try, just to accomplish what was trivial just a couple years earlier, putting in way less effort. granted, i'd lost some of my coaching prowess, but i was a much better recruiter, and the raw effort level was much higher. i remember UK, first season, we had the worst team ever, got the worst rpi in the whole country, of any human. the previous coach had gotten fired. our 3rd season, we were in the final 4, as good as any title team, and were in position to compete with anyone (even though i was ready to retire and instead just sat there sucking for another year). its really incomparably harder today, to rebuild so you can compete at the level a coach is able to compete at, whether its the a- level, the a/a+ level, the championship level, whatever. i just think its bad for the game to be set up that way, and i think all the proof anyone could ever need, is in how 30% of all d1 teams got dropped shortly after the release, after a long period of stability.
5/19/2014 8:09 PM (edited)