Fleck says MN is putting much greater emphasis on recruiting and developing high school athletes than through Portal

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gopher-revolution said:
More teams may be jumping on the Indiana model and trying to build through the portal, which could possibly leave more talent to be found in at the high school level?
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And when they are developed Indiana and alike’s come along and poach them.
 

I don't think this would mean the portal wouldn't be a big part of the program. But programs that don't have the high NIL budget, this has to be the way. Recruit, develop and portal. Create a program where players largely want to stay. I think that is where it is right now. Lots of guys could have left for more money but chose to stay. Then use the portal to fill in the gaps where needed.

Focusing on the portal year after year with limited NIL is not sustainable IMO. The top programs with the big bucks can reload every year through the portal. Minnesota (and almost everyone else) cannot.
 

I think every one glosses over how many now all star players Indiana had on that team that followed the coach from JMU. these were the guys that were never highly sought after. Heck one of them won the national championship for him. there is still room for a player being developed this might play out in our favor.
 




acemac said:
honestly the thought of the NFL for lots of players is becoming less and less important.
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Why do you say that? I know players aren't as anxious to get to the NFL with the money they can make in CFB but I still think making it to the NFL is still a big goal of many players.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I don't really bother trying to compare our situation to places like Oregon because they are completely different (this was true before the big chages of the last few years as well).

The reality of college football is that there are going to be the handful of top teams that are competing at a different level then most of the rest. The new landscape has shifted that some and allowed a team like Indiana to join the club but it is still a pretty small group of big spenders and much as we would love to be it is highly unlikely that we ever join that particular club.

We live in that huge jumble of teams in that next tier below the top teams. Trying to figure out a way to assemble a roster good enough to get into the playoff from time to time.
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My point being, teams like the Gophs might be able to strip off some highly rated HS players if losing their expected early playing time to portal players becomes a trend.
 

Nothing wrong with this approach for a program like Minnesota.

Need the team to be competitive on a yearly basis and spend the NIL money wisely to keep the majority of players interested enough to stick around.
 
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gopherphil said:
And when they are developed Indiana and alike’s come along and poach them.
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Maybe one super-predator team might poach one player a year from a team that is funded at the Gophers' level (about $18M, mostly in House settlement B1G revenue sharing). The math just isn't there for wholesale poaching. The 15 or so super-predator teams have roster limits. And they already have plenty of very highly-skilled top players on their rosters. They don't need to poach much, and they simply don't have the roster space to poach much. And a significant part of their poaching efforts are going to be to pry "lateral" transfers out of competing super-predators. The only two real losses purely for money the Gophers have had are Bucky Irving and Koi Perich, both to Oregon. I don't count Phillip Daniels because he essentially went home to play for the home state team (as a depth piece) that didn't want him out of high school ... and he ended up surprising everybody at Ohio State by winning a starting job. Maybe there were a few other pure money plays that resulted in top-producing Gopher players transferring up stream, but they are not jumping to mind.
 

acemac said:
honestly the thought of the NFL for lots of players is becoming less and less important.
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Yes, a lot of good players are staying in college an extra year (at the top-paying schools) for the $$$. This is another factor clogging up the rosters of top-15 schools and pushing more 4* and higher rated 3* HS recruits to places like Minnesota. We get to see more talent. Maybe we lose some of it down the road, but we keep a lot of it because there just isn't enough roster space (or uncommitted dollars) at the top 15. There are two sides to each coin. PJ is looking at and inclining his thinking toward the bright side.
 

acemac said:
I just think that leaving college with 5-8 mill in your pocket makes the NFL much less of a need
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I'm surprised we haven't seen a trend of players retiring after college football instead of entering the Draft. Make that $5-10M and quit and go do something else with a big head start.

It's a path for guys who don't have tremendous NFL prospects, don't have a passion for the game, or who want to avoid long term injury.
 

fmlizard said:
I'm surprised we haven't seen a trend of players retiring after college football instead of entering the Draft. Make that $5-10M and quit and go do something else with a big head start.

It's a path for guys who don't have tremendous NFL prospects, don't have a passion for the game, or who want to avoid long term injury.
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Guys who have played football their whole life and have already tasted the money are absolutely going to try and get more in the NFL. You might get the random one, but will never be a trend.
 



Everyone says the transfers cost way more NIL, but I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe for the high end guys, but your blue chip high schoolers probably cost more than former blue chips that didn’t produce in their first couple years of college. There’s thousands of kids still sitting in the portal that would cost nothing at this point.
 

btowngopher said:
Everyone says the transfers cost way more NIL, but I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe for the high end guys, but your blue chip high schoolers probably cost more than former blue chips that didn’t produce in their first couple years of college. There’s thousands of kids still sitting in the portal that would cost nothing at this point.
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The number of high school players that can command big pay for play money is going to be fairly limited.

Makes sense that in general transfers would cost more then high school payers because transfers have shown they can play in college.
 

acemac said:
honestly the thought of the NFL for lots of players is becoming less and less important.
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I think if an underclassmen is considering declaring for the NFL draft but is projected to be a Day 3 pick, he'll probably make more money sticking around for the extra year in college than going to the pros.
 

fmlizard said:
I'm waiting for the first major FBS school to completely cease high school recruiting and be very open about it. Will happen soon. Doesn't mean it will work for them but someone's going to try it.
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I've thought about this as well. Personally though, NCCA football needs an overhaul before it gets more out of whack.
 

I like it. If we can agree that we dont have the same resources to attract players like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana now....... then we have to do things differently than they do or you have no shot.
 

Lou Brown said:
I like it. If we can agree that we dont have the same resources to attract players like Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana now....... then we have to do things differently than they do or you have no shot.
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I agree that PJ needs to approach things differently. Depending on players who are 18-21 going against players who are 20-24 or older and getting it done is a very big longshot.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I don't know that anyone will be able to totally drop high school recruiting but Deion Sanders is basically doing this at Colorado. For the upcoming season he has 12 high school commits and 42 transfers.

Last year he had 15 high school guys and 34 transfers.
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Last year, Colorado went 3-9, 1-8 in its conference.
 

Schnauzer said:
I hope I’m wrong. In this climate, saying we are going to suddenly recruit and develop without losing players in great numbers to the portal… well, it sort of feels like the beginning of the end.
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1000% correct.
 




MNVCGUY said:
So the question is, is this a change in philosophy or just Fleck articulating what our strategy is and has been in regards to high school and the portal?

Because if it is business as usual then to this point it has not made us into a feeder program in fact has been just the opposite. Outside of a couple guys we have managed to keep our top guys around with very few key contributors electing to transfer out.
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Ya, we recruited 31 players and added 19 in the portal. We lost one big time recruit and a couple of game day contributors to the portal...the rest we churned. If that's the plan? I liked it this year.

The reality is we probably can't afford more difference makers from the portal, so we have "chosen" to emphasize recruiting. Evidently, they get paid less? 247 says we have the 26th ranked class in the country. If PJ's emphasis gets us a Top 26 class each year...we will be fine. BUT, we gotta get some freshmen contributors or the higher rated members of the Top 26 class will go shopping in the portal. Perich played well as a freshman...hopefully we got a handful who contribute on game day this year.
 

1983 said:
1000% correct.
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I don't think so at all. If we recruit better classes form the high school ranks, and retain at about the same rate we do currently... that could be a good formula.
 

MNVCGUY said:
The number of high school players that can command big pay for play money is going to be fairly limited.

Makes sense that in general transfers would cost more then high school payers because transfers have shown they can play in college.
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That is what I believe. There is only so much revenue-sharing and NIL money. And it is concentrated at certain schools. It isn't unlimited. If the rich schools are spending big on 22-year-old, proven-production transfers (big $$$), they will have less to allocate for HS players that need development. Oregon has a big budget, but it ain't the Pentagon.
 

CentralGopher said:
Maybe that makes the most sense NIL wise. Getting the best transfers is typically more expensive than a highly ranked high schooler. Keeping them is still difficult but having them here for a year or two is better than not at all if you can’t afford the transfer market.
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Agree, much cheaper to pay a high school kid $50,000 who has not proved himself on the field yet, vs a high end tranfer portal kid $1,000,000.
 

GophersInIowa said:
I don't think this would mean the portal wouldn't be a big part of the program. But programs that don't have the high NIL budget, this has to be the way. Recruit, develop and portal. Create a program where players largely want to stay. I think that is where it is right now. Lots of guys could have left for more money but chose to stay. Then use the portal to fill in the gaps where needed.

Focusing on the portal year after year with limited NIL is not sustainable IMO. The top programs with the big bucks can reload every year through the portal. Minnesota (and almost everyone else) cannot.
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Totally agree. I think Fleck is doing what needs to be done at Minnesota. He is not getting the huge financial backing that other programs have. Fleck has to rely on developing HS kids and using the portal to fill in some gaps of need. He just did that once again. I like it!
 

Kitzmann57 said:
Agree, much cheaper to pay a high school kid $50,000 who has not proved himself on the field yet, vs a high end tranfer portal kid $1,000,000.
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Yep....more risk in player not panning out or blowing up and leaving but when you don't have the resources you have to do the best you can with what you have available.
 

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