VERY eye opening article re: football recruiting

[WoodlandsCock]

I think Gamecock fans need to take the time to read this eye opening article on the amount of dollars spent on football recruiting at all schools around the country. For 2012-2013 (class for which we are now seeing on-field results), South Carolina was dead last among SEC schools in the amount of money spent on football recruiting. However, the most troubling line in the article for me is this:

"Merely four schools, Wisconsin, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisville and North Texas, dedicated a smaller percentage of their budgets to football recruiting [than South Carolina]."

This is extremely concerning to me. Although I have never contacted a USC athletics administrator to voice a concern, I intend to e-mail Ray Tanner this week. Although spending significant money certainly does not guarantee success (see: Tennessee), I also believe in the expression: "Show me your budget, and I will show you your priorities." I would compare this trend to a city with a crime problem devoting a ridiculously small percentage of their budget to public safety, or a business whose success depends largely on advertising devoting a tiny percentage of its budget to marketing. At some point, if the business is struggling to gain new clients, an investor is going to question the management's budget and wonder why more resources are not being devoted to gaining new customers. And make no mistake, recruiting is a business, and like it or not, the recruits are the customers here.

A final thought: Although the article suggests that that South Carolina was the most "efficient" school in the SEC in terms of dollars spent compared to wins, I would argue the table is not comparing apples to apples. It is taking the dollars spent in 2012-2013 and comparing it to total wins between 2010-2014. However, the on-field results of the 2012-2013 recruiting class are just now being seen on the field here in 2015, while the total wins between 2010-2014 would need to be back-tracked to the dollars spent in previous years.


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/sto...ng-top-recruiting-spenders-usc-much/22603511/

 

[Laziness]

A few of us have been critical of our efforts in recruiting for a while now, and of course most people just call us negative, dumpers, etc. or tell us to trust the coaches, the coaches forgot more than we know about football, or stars don't matter. For the life of me, I don't see how this wasn't obvious to everyone.

Consider this: We had our best run in our history. We have a Hall of Fame coach. We upgraded our facilities tremendously. We have some of the best fan support anywhere. We beat our rival, another top program, 5 straight times. We had the overall number one pick in the NFL draft. We play in the SEC. Yet, we have seen no real increase in our recruiting level given all of that. I don't even know how that is possible to not have a spike at least one or two years. We got lucky to have some great talent in state for a couple years and we were poised to move up in the college football world, but we didn't take advantage of all that. It is mind boggling, and I don't understand why more people ignored what was going on out of sheer loyalty.

 

[Bongsummers]

A few of us have been critical of our efforts in recruiting for a while now, and of course most people just call us negative, dumpers, etc. or tell us to trust the coaches, the coaches forgot more than we know about football, or stars don't matter. For the life of me, I don't see how this wasn't obvious to everyone.

Consider this: We had our best run in our history. We have a Hall of Fame coach. We upgraded our facilities tremendously. We have some of the best fan support anywhere. We beat our rival, another top program, 5 straight times. We had the overall number one pick in the NFL draft. We play in the SEC. Yet, we have seen no real increase in our recruiting level given all of that. I don't even know how that is possible to not have a spike at least one or two years. We got lucky to have some great talent in state for a couple years and we were poised to move up in the college football world, but we didn't take advantage of all that. It is mind boggling, and I don't understand why more people ignored what was going on out of sheer loyalty.

Clearly we need another recruiting coordinator. Oh, right.

 

[WoodlandsCock]

Another thing so disconcerting is that these figures are from 2012-2013, which was right in the middle of the height of our success. If there was ever a time for our coaches to be burning up the recruiting trail, it was during this time period. It appears we made no effort at all to capitalize on our success. As Gamecock fans, we have every right to be livid.

The bottom line is that this failure falls squarely on the shoulders of Steve Spurrier. It is a complete failure of leadership on his part.

 

[rogue cock]

Another thing so disconcerting is that these figures are from 2012-2013, which was right in the middle of the height of our success. If there was ever a time for our coaches to be burning up the recruiting trail, it was during this time period. It appears we made no effort at all to capitalize on our success. As Gamecock fans, we have every right to be livid.

The bottom line is that this failure falls squarely on the shoulders of Steve Spurrier. It is a complete failure of leadership on his part.

Other than Mangus, do we have a coach that actually goes somewhere to recruit outside of driving distance.

 

[cocknjax]

Another thing so disconcerting is that these figures are from 2012-2013, which was right in the middle of the height of our success. If there was ever a time for our coaches to be burning up the recruiting trail, it was during this time period. It appears we made no effort at all to capitalize on our success. As Gamecock fans, we have every right to be livid.

The bottom line is that this failure falls squarely on the shoulders of Steve Spurrier. It is a complete failure of leadership on his part.

Did you read my post the other day on my xxxxxxxxth post, SPURRIER?

 

[WoodlandsCock]

Did you read my post the other day on my xxxxxxxxth post, SPURRIER?

No I don't recall that particular post....can you link back to it?

 

[cocknjax]

No I don't recall that particular post....can you link back to it?

I' ll see. It is in line with both of yours.

 

[cocknjax]

I' ll see. It is in line with both of yours.

Look on page two, toward bottom,title says:
For my 8,000th post....SPURRIER
Can't link from mobile

 

[WoodlandsCock]

Found it. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. It seems the lack of spending on recruiting can only be attributed to two things:

a.) We made some sort of strategic decision to limit our recruiting budget compared to other schools. If so, that plan certainly failed miserably.
b.) Our coaches simply did not work nearly as hard on recruiting as other schools, hence the lack of expenditures.

107.5 interviewed a state recruiting guy the other day, and he made the point that SC tends to target specific players too much, when can be hit or miss (i.e. Shaq Roland, for example). When we really go after a guy, we tend to do pretty well, but he implied that we need to do a better job of building overall long-term relationships with high school coaches and programs. We can't just swoop in during a player's senior year and expect to land him. Clemson does a much better job of building relationships earlier on, according to him.

 

[cocknjax]

I think Gamecock fans need to take the time to read this eye opening article on the amount of dollars spent on football recruiting at all schools around the country. For 2012-2013 (class for which we are now seeing on-field results), South Carolina was dead last among SEC schools in the amount of money spent on football recruiting. However, the most troubling line in the article for me is this:

"Merely four schools, Wisconsin, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisville and North Texas, dedicated a smaller percentage of their budgets to football recruiting [than South Carolina]."

This is extremely concerning to me. Although I have never contacted a USC athletics administrator to voice a concern, I intend to e-mail Ray Tanner this week. Although spending significant money certainly does not guarantee success (see: Tennessee), I also believe in the expression: "Show me your budget, and I will show you your priorities." I would compare this trend to a city with a crime problem devoting a ridiculously small percentage of their budget to public safety, or a business whose success depends largely on advertising devoting a tiny percentage of its budget to marketing. At some point, if the business is struggling to gain new clients, an investor is going to question the management's budget and wonder why more resources are not being devoted to gaining new customers. And make no mistake, recruiting is a business, and like it or not, the recruits are the customers here.

A final thought: Although the article suggests that that South Carolina was the most "efficient" school in the SEC in terms of dollars spent compared to wins, I would argue the table is not comparing apples to apples. It is taking the dollars spent in 2012-2013 and comparing it to total wins between 2010-2014. However, the on-field results of the 2012-2013 recruiting class are just now being seen on the field here in 2015, while the total wins between 2010-2014 would need to be back-tracked to the dollars spent in previous years.


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/sto...ng-top-recruiting-spenders-usc-much/22603511/

Here is C&P of the post I referenced:

For my 8,000th Post..SPURRIER
let me just say that what we saw last night was an unmitigated disaster, and taking off the Rose Colored glasses for a minute, every objective GAMECOCK will have to admit it, even if only to himself.
And as much as it hurts me to say it, every last bit of it belongs to Steve Spurrier. He owns it. He has had absolute control of the Football program for eleven years or so, been given everything he has asked for, all the resources necessary to put a consistent winner on the field, and what we saw last night was an embarrassment.

What we saw last night was Steve Spurrier’s work product.

I believe GAMECOCK Nation deserves a better one.

1 cocknjax, Sunday at 12:37 PM

 

[CAPTCOCK61]

While money is certainly needed for recruiting it simply doesn't cost that much to cover nc, sc, ga,or even florida. What we are truly missing at usc is closers. II would argue our football program has one of the worst group of recruiters, closers and talent evaluators in the nation and certainly the worst in the sec. This is where the true problem lies. Truth hurts.

 

[SpurBrice]

That article provides the most unacceptable info I've seen, in relation to our football program, since SI did their piece in '88.

 

[big9cock]

I'd say its on all of

Another thing so disconcerting is that these figures are from 2012-2013, which was right in the middle of the height of our success. If there was ever a time for our coaches to be burning up the recruiting trail, it was during this time period. It appears we made no effort at all to capitalize on our success. As Gamecock fans, we have every right to be livid.

The bottom line is that this failure falls squarely on the shoulders of Steve Spurrier. It is a complete failure of leadership on his part.

It falls on us for not spending the $ and the AD . Spurrier has donated and raised more money for this school than anyone. He's been complaining publicly for years about USC not spending money in recruiting "Mississippi St has its own plane!"

 

[lostcock]

The reality I think is two fold, we got a few unbelievable ones (Lattimore) because of Spurrier, and his name, but the other part is that the 2015 FR class was born in 1997 (sobering I know) and they know nothing about the SOS most of us do. Some have suggested that we have no idea how involved he is, and that's true, but if he is truly involved, that the 2nd part rings even more true to me. They see a 70 year-old man, that everyone outside of USC knows won't be here for 4 more years.

 

[FORKCOCK]

The reality I think is two fold, we got a few unbelievable ones (Lattimore) because of Spurrier, and his name, but the other part is that the 2015 FR class was born in 1997 (sobering I know) and they know nothing about the SOS most of us do. Some have suggested that we have no idea how involved he is, and that's true, but if he is truly involved, that the 2nd part rings even more true to me. They see a 70 year-old man, that everyone outside of USC knows won't be here for 4 more years.

Lattimore grew up a Gamecock, he was ours to lose. Same with Clowney.

 

[AnCRooster]

The administration would certainly allow for a bigger budget. Just need a coach willing to do the work required to use it.

 

[cockynchicago#]

I think Gamecock fans need to take the time to read this eye opening article on the amount of dollars spent on football recruiting at all schools around the country. For 2012-2013 (class for which we are now seeing on-field results), South Carolina was dead last among SEC schools in the amount of money spent on football recruiting. However, the most troubling line in the article for me is this:

"Merely four schools, Wisconsin, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisville and North Texas, dedicated a smaller percentage of their budgets to football recruiting [than South Carolina]."

This is extremely concerning to me. Although I have never contacted a USC athletics administrator to voice a concern, I intend to e-mail Ray Tanner this week. Although spending significant money certainly does not guarantee success (see: Tennessee), I also believe in the expression: "Show me your budget, and I will show you your priorities." I would compare this trend to a city with a crime problem devoting a ridiculously small percentage of their budget to public safety, or a business whose success depends largely on advertising devoting a tiny percentage of its budget to marketing. At some point, if the business is struggling to gain new clients, an investor is going to question the management's budget and wonder why more resources are not being devoted to gaining new customers. And make no mistake, recruiting is a business, and like it or not, the recruits are the customers here.

A final thought: Although the article suggests that that South Carolina was the most "efficient" school in the SEC in terms of dollars spent compared to wins, I would argue the table is not comparing apples to apples. It is taking the dollars spent in 2012-2013 and comparing it to total wins between 2010-2014. However, the on-field results of the 2012-2013 recruiting class are just now being seen on the field here in 2015, while the total wins between 2010-2014 would need to be back-tracked to the dollars spent in previous years.


http://www.greenvilleonline.com/sto...ng-top-recruiting-spenders-usc-much/22603511/

I understand few people here have a deep understanding of inferential statistics. The newspaper author certainly does not either.

With that said, this article in no way, shape or form demonstrates a significant correlation between recruiting budget (in whole or as a % of athletic budget) and on-field success. Anecdotally, the same article notes national champion tosu spent less than USC.

Rather the article merely poses the question.

Almost 10 years ago, I applied Machine Learning to understand significant factors that contributed to earning a BCS bid under the BCS Selection criteria at that time. I found the following were three significant factors:

1. Coaching staff stability - meaning the HC and Coordinators have been there for 5 or more years. (arguably auto-correlation here as BCS bids also correlate with staff being retained however they can also correlate with Coordinators leaving for HC jobs)
2. "Medium to easy" Strength of Schedule - having a median SoS around 40-50 which means playing a much harder SoS results in diminishing returns. (eg Beating 6 UNC or similar schools rewarded you more than beating say 1 Bama or similar, 4 UNC's and losing a close game to 1 Bama or similar.)
3. 2 yr Lookback Recruiting tier - I clustered recruiting rankings in multiples of 5 (eg Tier 1 = 1 - 5, Tier 2 = 6 - 10, Tier 3 = 11-15). If a team recorded 2-3 back to back similar Tiered classes, there was a strong correlation with its final ranking.

I would argue these 3 still apply today. Factor 2 even moreso since we have reverted back to humans ranking teams.

What I did not track was Recruiting Class retention. The data was not easily available. I assumed that the % of kids leaving early for the NFL would be similar for each tier but did not answer the question whether any schools tended to lose kids to academic / team violations at a different rate.

There is a ton more data today and the above factor learning can definitely be refined.

Now what I would absolutely love to see is USC investing heavily into Sports Analytics to retain staff, recruit players and schedule more intelligently.

Here's an excellent seminar on the topic from the MIT Sports Analytics Conference.

 

[section907]

What the article doesn't say is where is the money spent, etc.. Dabo's brother is head of security for Dabo. That Boy.... There is no doubt that he is getting paid money out of these recruiting funds to provide security while traveling etc.. Wasn't his brother that was in the car with him while he got pulled over for speeding.. - Providing security and getting paid???? I don't think coach Spurrier abuses the privileges of being the head coach like others do.. Unless you audit where the money is spent the article doesn't say much.

 

[Coyote89]

Recruiting is certainly among the key reasons the Gamecocks aren't as strong right now as during Spurrier's 3-year string of 11-win seasons. But it's not the negative trend some seem to think. Here's the 4-year track record of team recruiting rankings, which should comprise the vast majority of the current roster:

2015: #19
2014: #16
2013: #16
2012: #19

That may not be on par with Bama, Ohio State, FSU, etc. but it's still pretty strong. In fact, Spurrier has landed a top 25 recruiting class the last 10 years in a row. How many teams can say that, maybe 10 or so? And for several years, his teams out-performed their recruiting ranking, rising as high as #4 in the polls just 2 years ago. That's why he's a future hall-of-famer. He can identify and develop talent as well as anyone.

For a long time, his elite recruits all seemed to pan out whereas several 2-3 star guys significantly exceeded their recruiting ranking. But even a legendary coach can have a few miss-evaluations, and over the past couple years, the 4-star signees just haven't lived up to their recruiting ranking. It also didn't help that he over-promoted Lorenzo Ward to DC and later made the retirement comments that gutted a potential top 5 class and turned it into a #19 class last year.

But my main point is that it's not just about the budget. The recruiting track record you see here is nearly identical to the one that produced a trio of 11-win seasons and top ten rankings.

 

[Laziness]

Recruiting is certainly among the key reasons the Gamecocks aren't as strong right now as during Spurrier's 3-year string of 11-win seasons. But it's not the negative trend some seem to think. Here's the 4-year track record of team recruiting rankings, which should comprise the vast majority of the current roster:

2015: #19
2014: #16
2013: #16
2012: #19

That may not be on par with Bama, Ohio State, FSU, etc. but it's still pretty strong. In fact, Spurrier has landed a top 25 recruiting class the last 10 years in a row. How many teams can say that, maybe 10 or so? And for several years, his teams out-performed their recruiting ranking, rising as high as #4 in the polls just 2 years ago. That's why he's a future hall-of-famer. He can identify and develop talent as well as anyone.

For a long time, his elite recruits all seemed to pan out whereas several 2-3 star guys significantly exceeded their recruiting ranking. But even a legendary coach can have a few miss-evaluations, and over the past couple years, the 4-star signees just haven't lived up to their recruiting ranking. It also didn't help that he over-promoted Lorenzo Ward to DC and later made the retirement comments that gutted a potential top 5 class and turned it into a #19 class last year.

But my main point is that it's not just about the budget. The recruiting track record you see here is nearly identical to the one that produced a trio of 11-win seasons and top ten rankings.

The budget isn't the end all be all, but it is an indication of the level of importance we have placed on recruiting. Again, going off the numbers you used, how in the world have we not improved our recruiting standing given all the success we have had on and off the field the past 5 years? From facilities, to top 10 rankings, to beating Clemson 5 straight times, yet we still are in the 19-16 range. It seems impossible given all we had to show and offer for our recruiting to not have been improved. Also those classes a few years back had a few game changers in them, lately we have just been "filling needs."

Add on to that stories like coach not showing up for Chubb's visit last year, a story earlier this year where a WR we wanted chose Michigan over us because Harbaugh established a relationship with him and he had never heard from Spurrier except at our camp, and another story where we called a recruit to see why he didn't have us in his top ten to find out he didn't even know we had offered him. You don't hear stories like that from other teams, and it's frustrating.