2017 Badger Football

[Kerb Hohl]

ESPN has UW 40th in their recruiting class ranking. That's behind OSU, Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Maryland, and MSU. Also behind Duke(!).

Blah

This same statement could be written for any of the other years that recruiting rankings have been out and judged Wisconsin.

[midranger]

I think the skill position recruits are about as good as it gets at UW absent some instate 5 star stud.

[MickeyDavis]

Good skill position pickups, kept big Badger beef in state. F*** the rankings, it's a good class.

[midranger]

Good skill position pickups, kept big Badger beef in state. F*** the rankings, it's a good class.

Agreed. As always, could have used a beast DT, but we always seem to find some guy to fill that spot. Either a converted OL, beefed up DE, walk on or something else.

[Kerb Hohl]

Good skill position pickups, kept big Badger beef in state. F*** the rankings, it's a good class.

Agreed. As always, could have used a beast DT, but we always seem to find some guy to fill that spot. Either a converted OL, beefed up DE, walk on or something else.

Hopefully we can find one in the next cycle since we hopefully have 3 years of Rand. Of course, you want to have a bit more depth than that. Granted, Rand may be more of a big DE, I don't know.

Plus, 2 more years of Sagapolu.

This also just made me remember what a giant disappointment that Patterson and his recruited buddy Krenwick Sanders ended up being.

[midranger]

I see Rand as a DE/DT hybrid type depending on down and distance.

[Mags FTW]

ESPN has UW 40th in their recruiting class ranking. That's behind OSU, Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska, Maryland, and MSU. Also behind Duke(!).

Blah

This same statement could be written for any of the other years that recruiting rankings have been out and judged Wisconsin.

I would like to think that it's not unrealistic for UW to pull in higher ranked recruiting classes when:

1) The team finished #9 in the final rankings, and usually finishes in the Top 25.

2) The school itself is consistently ranked as one of the top public schools in the country. #10 by Forbes.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/larafishbane/2016/07/07/top-25-public-schools-2016/

3) The city is consistently rated as a Top 10 college sports town, sometimes #1.
www.bleacherreport.com/articles/2641172-ranking-the-top-15-college-football-towns-in-the-country

4) They play in the 22nd largest stadium in the country, pro or college.

5) It's a Top 10 party school, sometimes #1.

6) They have 2 very high profile NFL players who are alum in Watt and Wilson that they could use as recruiting tools.

7) You can tell kids they will get to play against Michigan and Ohio State, likely get to play at Lambeau, and highlight the LSU & Alabama series as possible future marque matchups.

Yes, the rankings are meaningless right now because we don't know who will pan out. But to get excited about about a 4 star recruit and at the same time rip the overall rankings is hypocritical.

[ReasonablySober]

I know the success the Badgers have had for a long time with recruiting classes that underwhelm in the rankings. I get it.

But I agree with Mags, and it's often the same problem I have on the basketball side. I can't wrap my head around having one of the top athletic programs in the country year in and year out, but never have a class that the recruiting services consider among the best.


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[Kerb Hohl]

We've reached a point where UW could theoretically try to jump the shark to try to become Michigan or Ohio State. It might be possible at this point now.

One of the main issues is geography. Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan are all in states that have ~2x the population of Wisconsin. Also, all of those stats are basically touching each other. Some of them are closer to the south where everyone agrees that football players grow on trees. Penn State and Ohio State are close to Maryland/New York/Virginia, which don't have great football on the whole.

Here's something for illustration:

247 Wisconsin state recruiting rankings for 2017 - it only lists 26 players. 1 4-star player. That 4-star player moved in from Arizona before the season. 9 of them are going to UW. 6 others going to B10 schools. Wisconsin's HS players are clearly a bit underrated because there is a bit less exposure as compared to the sheer mass of players in other states.

247 Ohio state recruiting rankings for 2017 - it lists 139 players. 17 4-star players. I'm not going to bother to count but I'd guess that 50 of them are going to power 5 schools and 50 of them are going MAC or a similar conference.

Yes, there's more competition in Ohio with some MAC teams and D3 teams. In Michigan you've got MSU and the MAC schools. But these states are all located in a triangle of gigantic population bases with giant urban bases.

Wisconsin has the nice setup of being next to Illinois, Minnesota, and a reasonable distance from IN, MI, OH, etc. but it's more on the outskirts.

The key for Wisconsin is less competition so they get a lot of walk-ons from WI and the surrounding states because of less D3 and D1 competition. We develop all of these guys.

Other than Romo, there are zero **** good QBs from this state unless you count Kaepernick. Basically ever. (RS, I know you'll mention your brother, but you get the idea).

Last point - do you want to try to go into Florida or Texas and play big boy recruiter like Urban Meyer? It could work. We have prestige now. It'll be at the expense of some players that we keep from the area and develop. I know that we have way more prestige at this point, but I'd like to point you to Tim Brewster's recruiting classes as to what happens when you get the scraps of 5-star recruits from these states.

[Kerb Hohl]

Summary from my post above:

1. Wisconsin and surrounding states are smaller and have less D1-level football players. We do have an advantage of poaching from mostly **** football states (IL, MN, IN), but we don't have much to chose from. Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania all have 3-4x the football players in their states, have programs that keep the players there, and all of those states have easy access to one another.
2. Do you want to take a risk on going into Florida, Texas, Ohio, California and come out victorious with the best players? A very scary proposition if you lose on that risk. You generally have to ignore local guys to go out and put all of your attention on those guys.
3. We lock in-state guys down early and their recruiting rankings don't get the spike of more offers...because generally these guys are locked down and don't get the offers.

We have to go out of state for 80-90% of our skill players. We play our style so we can consistently win with the players that we have nearby. Most HS kids from Florida are not excited by smashmouth football. Even if we can market a good pro-style offense - they know that they're going to probably only throw 20 times/game.

The one option around this is to be Tennessee and recruit solely by recruiting rankings (and not look for what you can coach or evaluate for yourself) and cut all academic and character standards way down. Nah.

[Kerb Hohl]

7) You can tell kids they will get to play against Michigan and Ohio State, likely get to play at Lambeau, and highlight the LSU & Alabama series as possible future marque matchups.

Hey, son. I know you live in Ohio, have been an OSU fan all your life, have an offer from OSU, are being recruited by coaching legend Urban Meyer, your parents will be able to drive 45 minutes to all of your home games...

...but you'll get to play against Ohio State if you come to Wisconsin!

Does this do a pretty good job of describing to you why most of the guys we get from Ohio are the ~15th best guy in the state based on the recruiting site rankings? Then go on down the line and insert great football state's name in for Ohio and say that same previous sentence.

[Mags FTW]

7) You can tell kids they will get to play against Michigan and Ohio State, likely get to play at Lambeau, and highlight the LSU & Alabama series as possible future marque matchups.

Hey, son. I know you live in Ohio, have been an OSU fan all your life, have an offer from OSU, are being recruited by coaching legend Urban Meyer, your parents will be able to drive 45 minutes to all of your home games...

...but you'll get to play against Ohio State if you come to Wisconsin!

Does this do a pretty good job of describing to you why most of the guys we get from Ohio are the ~15th best guy in the state based on the recruiting site rankings? Then go on down the line and insert great football state's name in for Ohio and say that same previous sentence.

That point is referencing players from Ohio that did not get an offer from OSU.

Example: 4 Star Safety who at least got an offer from us, and chose Kentucky.

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/211995/tyrell-ajian

I'm sure kids like him dream of playing in the Shoe. Or maybe they get a chip on their shoulder from not getting an OSU offer? You never know. It's a possible selling point.

[Kerb Hohl]

7) You can tell kids they will get to play against Michigan and Ohio State, likely get to play at Lambeau, and highlight the LSU & Alabama series as possible future marque matchups.

Hey, son. I know you live in Ohio, have been an OSU fan all your life, have an offer from OSU, are being recruited by coaching legend Urban Meyer, your parents will be able to drive 45 minutes to all of your home games...

...but you'll get to play against Ohio State if you come to Wisconsin!

Does this do a pretty good job of describing to you why most of the guys we get from Ohio are the ~15th best guy in the state based on the recruiting site rankings? Then go on down the line and insert great football state's name in for Ohio and say that same previous sentence.

That point is referencing players from Ohio that did not get an offer from OSU.

Example: 4 Star Safety who at least got an offer from us, and chose Kentucky.

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/211995/tyrell-ajian

I'm sure kids like him dream of playing in the Shoe. Or maybe they get a chip on their shoulder from not getting an OSU offer? You never know. It's a possible selling point.

Sure, we offer the 15th best player in most good states that lock up their talent. We offered the 15th best player in Michigan, a safety, and got him. And then the 15th best player from Ohio went to Kentucky because we had our safety or because then we stopped recruiting him. Also, Kentucky might have been a much easier drive for the guy.

http://247sports.com/Player/Scott-Nelson-84331?Institution=2847

Also, your argument of "hey, recruit, you get to play against X" get to play in the SEC if they go to Kentucky.

[Mags FTW]

Hey, son. I know you live in Ohio, have been an OSU fan all your life, have an offer from OSU, are being recruited by coaching legend Urban Meyer, your parents will be able to drive 45 minutes to all of your home games...

...but you'll get to play against Ohio State if you come to Wisconsin!

Does this do a pretty good job of describing to you why most of the guys we get from Ohio are the ~15th best guy in the state based on the recruiting site rankings? Then go on down the line and insert great football state's name in for Ohio and say that same previous sentence.

That point is referencing players from Ohio that did not get an offer from OSU.

Example: 4 Star Safety who at least got an offer from us, and chose Kentucky.

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/211995/tyrell-ajian

I'm sure kids like him dream of playing in the Shoe. Or maybe they get a chip on their shoulder from not getting an OSU offer? You never know. It's a possible selling point.

Sure, we offer the 15th best player in most good states that lock up their talent. We offered the 15th best player in Michigan, a safety, and got him. And then the 15th best player from Ohio went to Kentucky because we had our safety or because then we stopped recruiting him. Also, Kentucky might have been a much easier drive for the guy.

http://247sports.com/Player/Scott-Nelson-84331?Institution=2847

Also, your argument of "hey, recruit, you get to play against X" get to play in the SEC if they go to Kentucky.

The argument wasn't whether it should always work or not. It was simply that it could be used as a recruiting tool.

[Kerb Hohl]

That point is referencing players from Ohio that did not get an offer from OSU.

Example: 4 Star Safety who at least got an offer from us, and chose Kentucky.

http://www.espn.com/college-sports/football/recruiting/player/_/id/211995/tyrell-ajian

I'm sure kids like him dream of playing in the Shoe. Or maybe they get a chip on their shoulder from not getting an OSU offer? You never know. It's a possible selling point.

Sure, we offer the 15th best player in most good states that lock up their talent. We offered the 15th best player in Michigan, a safety, and got him. And then the 15th best player from Ohio went to Kentucky because we had our safety or because then we stopped recruiting him. Also, Kentucky might have been a much easier drive for the guy.

http://247sports.com/Player/Scott-Nelson-84331?Institution=2847

Also, your argument of "hey, recruit, you get to play against X" get to play in the SEC if they go to Kentucky.

The argument wasn't whether it should always work or not. It was simply that it could be used as a recruiting tool.

I think I've pretty clearly laid out that, while we have some good recruiting tools, we're starting out at a major disadvantage because in our state + the 3-4 surrounding states there are probably 5 4-star guys and 1 5-star guy in a given year and we're still going up against Meyer, Harbaugh, etc. for the elite guys in our own state in a given year. Ohio State might have 15 4-stars and 2 5-stars in their own state + closer access to similarly loaded states.

In Florida or Texas or California, we're probably 15th or 20th in pecking order. As much as we want to peddle great academics and Russell Wilson to kids, LSU has lower academic standards to get guys in, multi multi million dollar facilities, the NFL pipeline, and usually they can say they'll feature an option QB or whatever it may be. I'm not sure you would argue that we'd be better than 15th or 20th in the pecking order in the football-rich states.

Then throw in the fact that our own highly rated guys we get are locked down early so their ratings are not inflated by more offers sometimes.

Final point: Weather. Even Columbus is a little bit warmer. I don't think anyone would argue that a kid from New Orleans would rather stay with warmer winters even if they spurn LSU.

And there you go. That's why we're always somewhere in the 25-45 range in national rankings.

[trwi7]

I would like to think that it's not unrealistic for UW to pull in higher ranked recruiting classes when:

You need to recruit players that you're at least reasonably confident will be able to get into the school. There's no point in going after recruits that aren't going to make the grade. That's a huge issue with Wisconsin. Other schools will make exceptions, Wisconsin is pretty strict about who gets in. Doesn't matter if you're an athlete, if you don't have the grades and the test scores, you're not getting in.

[Kerb Hohl]

Jim Leonhard is the new DC.

[Turk Nowitzki]

Very interesting. Quite a rapid ascent for a guy with zero coaching experience before last season.

[Mags FTW]

I would like to think that it's not unrealistic for UW to pull in higher ranked recruiting classes when:

You need to recruit players that you're at least reasonably confident will be able to get into the school. There's no point in going after recruits that aren't going to make the grade. That's a huge issue with Wisconsin. Other schools will make exceptions, Wisconsin is pretty strict about who gets in. Doesn't matter if you're an athlete, if you don't have the grades and the test scores, you're not getting in.

Doesn't Duke have high academic standards?

[Kerb Hohl]

I would like to think that it's not unrealistic for UW to pull in higher ranked recruiting classes when:

You need to recruit players that you're at least reasonably confident will be able to get into the school. There's no point in going after recruits that aren't going to make the grade. That's a huge issue with Wisconsin. Other schools will make exceptions, Wisconsin is pretty strict about who gets in. Doesn't matter if you're an athlete, if you don't have the grades and the test scores, you're not getting in.

Doesn't Duke have high academic standards?

They play a spread offense and reside in a football hotbed region.

Also, you can always pick 5-10 teams that will have one special year of recruiting or a used car salesman coach for a year or 2 to jump the Badgers.

The entire SEC, OSU, Michigan, PSU, maybe MSU, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Florida State, Miami, Clemson, UCLA, USC, Oregon if Nike is right. Maybe a few ACC/B12 schools I'm forgetting.

Those 20-30 schools have easier sledding recruiting and will have better classes most years. Sprinkle in a lucky Utah, Texas Tech, or Missouri, or a Duke (just picking random teams) recruiting class...10 other teams will be ahead of the Badgers in a random year.

Beyond the 20-30 teams I listed, the Badgers will consistently out-recruit them over the long haul. There's always going to be fluctuations that randomly allow for Duke to be better.

Most importantly, ESPN's recruiting rankings consistently suck. 247 is better and has Badgers at 40 and Duke at 47.