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goldfan24

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GI is reporting Brock Vereen, CB from Valencia, Ca. has given his verbal to Minny today.

Good size CB at 6' 175 and runs a 4.45 forty.

It appears the Gophers will have plenty of competition for playing time in the secondary.


This will be a great class down the road. Plenty of talent/depth coming into the program the last 3 classes. Now the Gophers need their coaching staff to stay and develop these last 3 classes.
 




Welcome Brock! Locking up the secondary and O line, WR and hopefully RB in this class sure is nice.
 


Other offer listed is a Stanford offer, so you know he should be a smart kid.
 

Good to see another commitment and another guy with at least one other very solid offer.


I do find it strange that we have not landed a DE/pass rusher in this class despite having so many commits. I hope that area of the team is addressed by signing day.
 

Nice, I like this commitment, it's a position of need, he's got good size, good speed, good genetics. Welcome aboard Brock.
 




EG#9 said:
Good to see another commitment and another guy with at least one other very solid offer.


I do find it strange that we have not landed a DE/pass rusher in this class despite having so many commits. I hope that area of the team is addressed by signing day.
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I wouldn't worry about it too much, we have signed a lot of DE prospects in the last few classes. (Hageman, Garin, KGM, Wilhite).
 

EG#9 said:
Good to see another commitment and another guy with at least one other very solid offer.


I do find it strange that we have not landed a DE/pass rusher in this class despite having so many commits. I hope that area of the team is addressed by signing day.
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Dont worry we have Matt Garin who i think will be really good!! And Josh Allen maybe if he doesnt play o-line who i think could be good DE next year.
 

goldfan24 said:
GI is reporting Brock Vereen, CB from Valencia, Ca. has given his verbal to Minny today.

Good size CB at 6' 175 and runs a 4.45 forty.

It appears the Gophers will have plenty of competition for playing time in the secondary.


This will be a great class down the road. Plenty of talent/depth coming into the program the last 3 classes. Now the Gophers need their coaching staff to stay and develop these last 3 classes.
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didn't brock's older brother become the starting RB for Cal when jahvid best went down earlier this season?
 





boy we are sure adding a hell of alot of depth in our secondary!! good stuff!
 

Vereen's brother had 40+ yards against us his year in spot duty as I recall?
 

I flew to Denver on Dec 1 and sat next to Brewster in first class. He said he was on a recruiting circle that was taking him to CO, CA, AZ and TX and then back to MSP on Dec 8 to start practice for the bowl game.

I asked him what he thought the recruiting needs were for this season and he said the critical needs were OL, RB, DT and DB, but that every position would be looked at for improvement. He did not specifically say anything about DEs.

However, he thought that the Gophers would be in the Alamo Bowl against either Oklahoma or Texas Tech, so who really knows if he told me anything factual :confused:
 

Brewster had every reason to think we SHOULD have been in the Alamo, and I actually thought that is where we were heading this season (with all the offseason non-sense with MSU). If we had gone to the Alamo Bowl we would have been playing Oklahoma or TT, so i'm sure it was factual that he thought we were going to go to the Alamo.
 

Sumtimegophs said:
However, he thought that the Gophers would be in the Alamo Bowl against either Oklahoma or Texas Tech, so who really knows if he told me anything factual :confused:
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The way things were playing out for MSU and the Alamo Bowl, it did look like they might take the Gophers if only to avoid the bad publicity surrounding MSU's program. I'm sure the bowl selection comment was wishful thinking and his comments about recruiting were spot on.

BTW: I think for once the Alamo Bowl made the correct choice because MSU had a better Big Ten record than we did.
 

It's going to be fun to see what the measurements are when they pull out the yardstick and he jumps on the scale. I've seen listed heights from 5-9 to 6-0 and weights from 160 to 180. I don't really care, because it appears the kid can play and that's what really matters.
 

I'm always skeptical of the 40 times that are posted on rivals, scout, etc. Who takes these times? A 4.45 40 is smoking fast. Think about the NFL combine. Top flight NFL WR/DB run a "real" 4.45. Since so many of the skill position players also double in track as sprint/hurdle/jumpers, I like to see what they do with legit tape measures and FAT (Fully Automatic Timing for non-track readers) times. I looked up Vereen's 100m time from last season. The best time I could find was 11.44, which definitely does not translate into a 4.45 40. Obviously there are many factors that could play into either time (wind, injury, etc.), but it is hard for me to get too excited about a 4.45 40 from a guy that wouldn't make the finals of the 100m dash in a lot of conferences in Minnesota. I'm not trying to put down Brock, because I have never seen him play. I guess my point is that until there is a more standard measure of the 40, it shouldn't be considered so strongly like it is by colleges and even the NFL (see Troy Williamson). Fast 40 does not mean great football player.
 

I once had a track athlete who would have won every race had it ended at the 40 yard mark. Sadly for him it did not. He had a tough time placing in the 100 in any major meet.

Burst and quickness are not the same as speed.

But you're right, you can't trust those posted times.
 

RunGopherRun said:
I'm always skeptical of the 40 times that are posted on rivals, scout, etc. Who takes these times? A 4.45 40 is smoking fast. Think about the NFL combine. Top flight NFL WR/DB run a "real" 4.45. Since so many of the skill position players also double in track as sprint/hurdle/jumpers, I like to see what they do with legit tape measures and FAT (Fully Automatic Timing for non-track readers) times. I looked up Vereen's 100m time from last season. The best time I could find was 11.44, which definitely does not translate into a 4.45 40. Obviously there are many factors that could play into either time (wind, injury, etc.), but it is hard for me to get too excited about a 4.45 40 from a guy that wouldn't make the finals of the 100m dash in a lot of conferences in Minnesota. I'm not trying to put down Brock, because I have never seen him play. I guess my point is that until there is a more standard measure of the 40, it shouldn't be considered so strongly like it is by colleges and even the NFL (see Troy Williamson). Fast 40 does not mean great football player.
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He is listed as having run a 10.7 100m this past spring (junior year).

http://www.canyonhighcowboys.com/track/2009FoothillBests.htm
 

Sure, there are guys that have the quick burst at the beginning and then fizzle out as a sprint continues. Two points about that: 1) Usually the guys that die half way through a 100m dash are very weak and more than likely on the smallish side, and B) that wouldn't bode well for a corner that has to cover a deep third of the field against a WR who doesn't slow down after 40 yards. Nowadays, if you want to be considered as a D1 DB/WR you need at least a 4.5 on your resume in the 40, otherwise it is hard to get noticed. Look at the list of recruits for the Gophs. The slowest DB/WR that we have coming in ran a 4.5, the fastest a 4.4. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what most recruiting boards look like at all schools. It really is a joke. Until all of the recruits run an indoor 40 (no wind) with the same exact circumstances, we should just assume that DB/WR/RB all run 4.5 or better.
 

Whenever you see the 10.7 rounded to the nearest tenth of a second, that means it was a hand time. Unless it is listed to the nearest hundredth (FAT), I find that hand-times can be way off. I won't submit times for state bests with my athletes unless they are done with FAT because there is so much room for error. I have had guys run 10.8/10.9 at the beginning of the season in 50 degree weather hand-timed. Then at the end of the season on a nice day and a bit of a tailwind run a much more accurate 11.31. The 10.7 doesn't fully convince me, but it does sound better than 11.44. I couldn't find any results for the end of the year, section prelims or finals for Brock. It looked like he didn't run, so maybe he was dinged up towards the end of the year...who knows.
 

RunGopherRun said:
Sure, there are guys that have the quick burst at the beginning and then fizzle out as a sprint continues. Two points about that: 1) Usually the guys that die half way through a 100m dash are very weak and more than likely on the smallish side, and B) that wouldn't bode well for a corner that has to cover a deep third of the field against a WR who doesn't slow down after 40 yards. Nowadays, if you want to be considered as a D1 DB/WR you need at least a 4.5 on your resume in the 40, otherwise it is hard to get noticed. Look at the list of recruits for the Gophs. The slowest DB/WR that we have coming in ran a 4.5, the fastest a 4.4. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what most recruiting boards look like at all schools. It really is a joke. Until all of the recruits run an indoor 40 (no wind) with the same exact circumstances, we should just assume that DB/WR/RB all run 4.5 or better.
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I wouldn't say they fizzle as much as the other guys have a higher top speed. It just takes them longer to get there. But still you're right, the times can't be counted on at all.

There's a nice published piece that talks about 100 equivalents and how some of these 40 times reported would be world class speed, which you just don't see in 18 year old males. The point being it's highly unlikely that they're anywhere near accurate. I think it's an old Rivals piece, but I can't remember.
 


Schnoodler said:
I wouldn't say they fizzle as much as the other guys have a higher top speed. It just takes them longer to get there. But still you're right, the times can't be counted on at all.

There's a nice published piece that talks about 100 equivalents and how some of these 40 times reported would be world class speed, which you just don't see in 18 year old males. The point being it's highly unlikely that they're anywhere near accurate. I think it's an old Rivals piece, but I can't remember.
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Thanks. That sounds interesting...
 

Schnoodler said:
trying to find the article for you I stumbled upon this doozy. Now this would be one of the worst answers of all time.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080220185850AAuY9KX
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Wow. Some people really are clueless aren't they!! :)

Like you said in an earlier post, it really is hard to finitely compare the two distances, just like being a good 100m runner doesn't necessarily mean you are a good 200m runner. Luckily I'm a math teacher, so I'll do some figuring and see what I can come up with.
 

You've got start time reaction, running start, iffy timing, to many weird things that make it totally unreliable and not even reflective of the sport for which they're measuring.

Interesting quote about the fastest track 40 ever:

Let me give you one more example to prove my point. In 1988 Ben
Johnson ran a then world record of 9.79 seconds to win the Olympic
Gold medal.

Well it turns out that he was on steroids at the time and was
stripped of his title.

Subsequent breakdowns of his 'roid induced run timed him as he
reached the 40 yard mark. (By the way his times at 50 and 60
meters were faster than the current world records at that
distance.)

His time?

4.38 seconds.

Mark Zeigler sums this up perfectly:

"He was running in spikes . . . on a warm afternoon perfectly
suited for sprinting . . . with a slight tailwind . . . with
years of training from arguably track's top coach, Charlie
Francis . . . with Carl Lewis and six others of the fastest men
on the planet chasing him . . . with 69,000 people roaring at
Seoul's Olympic Stadium . . . with hundreds of millions of
people watching on TV . . . with the ultimate prize in sports,
an Olympic gold medal, at stake."

Yet he only ran a 4.38 40 yard dash?
 

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