Mason can't recruit ... I'm not so sure

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MNSpaniel

MNSpaniel

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I'm not a giant Mason supporter or anything but as I was keeping up with the latest recruiting portion of this sight I got to thinking that a whole lot of guys that played for Mason made it into the pros. So there is no doubt he was able to recruit and develop players. My problem is with all those guys making it into the pros and a good number of them playing at the same time you would have thought we could have won a few more games in some of those years.

Here is an overall list of Gophers currently listed on NFL team rosters that I picked up from this site. You could add Thomas Tapeh - Willie Middlebrooks to the following list too as playing for the Gophers. Are there any others who played for the Gophers during that era that aren't mentioned here. It may be unprecedented in Gopher history as far as the number of players one coach as sent to the pros.

Marion Barber III – Dallas Cowboys
Tyrone Carter – Pittsburgh Steelers
Greg Eslinger – Houston Texans
Ben Hamilton – Denver Broncos
Michael Lehan – Miami Dolphins
Rhys Lloyd – Carolina Panthers
Laurence Maroney – New England Patriots
Anthony Montgomery – Washington Redskins
Logan Payne – Seattle Seahawks
Darrell Reid – Indianapolis Colts
Gary Russell – Pittsburgh Steelers
Mark Setterstrom – St. Louis Rams
Matt Spaeth – Pittsburgh Steelers
Ben Utecht – Cincinnati Bengals
Greg White – Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Dom Barber – Houston Texans
Ernie Wheelwright – Baltimore Ravens

- Ben Flattum, Athletic Communications Student Assistant
 



Jack Brewer played a bit for the Vikings, too.....

Mase recruited a lot of good players and this list is a good one but I still don't think that recruiting was his forte and I don't think he enjoyed it nearly as much as Tim Brewster does.
You can't count Tyrone Carter on this list as he was a Wacker recruit. If you take him out, there were 10 offensive players and 5 defensive players with one kicker.

The thing that continues to confound me after all is said and done is how we could not recruit enough quality defensive players here over those 10 years. If he would have been able to land a few more we might have made it to a Rose Bowl. (Think back to that lousy Michigan game which if we had won we would have gone!) Mase always seemed to bring in very good running backs and he did a great job of grabbing guys that fit his offensive system. I still wish we had Mason's offense, but I am patiently waiting for the spread to get better. With the exception of Paris Hamilton, Mason's receivers were good blockers, too.

Mason did a good job of getting underrated talent perform better than expected and turning in the 10th or 11th class rated in the Big ten into a Bowl game. As you can tell from your list, he did bring in some great players while he was here, too!!
 





Brewer

Jack Brewer was one of those guys I was trying to think of but couldn't come up with his name. He was on Kfan quite a bit as a guest of the then PA/Dubay show or the morning show with the Superstar. Didn't he play for Baltimore in his stint in the pros ???
 

Wacker

Wacker recruited Ben Hamilton and Tyrone Carter.

He was here for 10 years, I would sure hope you could put together a decent list.
 



I believe I had a similar discussion elsewhere

I think both Iowa and Wisconsin have close to 30 players in the NFL. I think we have about the same number as Northern Illinois.
 

Iowa and Wisconsin have had a lot more success than us so they probably should have more. The point was the way everyone talked about coach Mason's lack of recruiting you would have thought that nobody of any worth ever set foot in the Metrodome for the Gophers. From the looks of the players on the list that wasn't true
 

I think we are pretty close to the bottom of the big ten in terms of players in the NFL. If you think that shows Mason was a good recruiter that's up to you.
 

I don't have all the information on all the teams. I think there were long stretches that recruiting wasn't very good at all. I think in a few years they landed some star players and other players played well above their star ratings.

However, I think a good number of those guys played together. When you put that many quality players on the same team I would have hoped the results were better. So I'm kind of giving Mason a Plus/Delta at the same time. Some of you guys or gals who are much better at the facts than me could look and see how many of those guys would have played at the same time. I'm just guessing but it just seems like many of them were knocking heads during overlapping years.
 



This was a good thread MN Spaniel and you brought up some good info in it. You need to save this thread and then compare it to what Tim Brewster does (hopefully over that same 10 year time period.)

My guess is if Brewster stays here for 10 years, the list will be quite a bit longer and the players will have lasted in the NFL for a much longer duration as well because they were better players, but it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.
 

MNSpaniel said:
I don't have all the information on all the teams. I think there were long stretches that recruiting wasn't very good at all. I think in a few years they landed some star players and other players played well above their star ratings.

However, I think a good number of those guys played together. When you put that many quality players on the same team I would have hoped the results were better. So I'm kind of giving Mason a Plus/Delta at the same time. Some of you guys or gals who are much better at the facts than me could look and see how many of those guys would have played at the same time. I'm just guessing but it just seems like many of them were knocking heads during overlapping years.
Click to expand...

I would say Mason did a better job of developing players than recruiting them. You can get success with that on offense but it is a lot harder on defense. The reason, offense dictates where the ball goes and defense reacts to what is dictated which is why the defensive athlete generally has to be better stronger and faster than the offensive athletes and you have to play good team D to contain the offensive athletes. A guy like Ron Johnson (played WR for the Raven's--3rd Rd 2003 draft--not on your list but he was the best receiver during Mason's tenure) had good size and great hands but when he got to the NFL he didn't have the speed to get separation. You can get away with those athletes on offense in college but you can't on defense.

Mason generally fought MAC teams or lower BCS schools (like Iowa State or Indiana) for recruits and if Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa were interested he shied away. He would rather look for a diamond in the rough and develop him than try to win recruiting battles. That worked well for him in 1998 when we were at a recruiting disadvantage against better programs but by the end of his tenure we were going to bowls on a regular basis and he was still landing the 9th-11th ranked class in the Big Ten because he never changed his philosophy. That philosophy is what made us plateau at the Sun Bowl and never moved us to a New Year's Day bowl.

Gopher fans owe a lot to Mason for bringing us out of mediocrity. He has a very specific skill that is perfect for turning program around and he managed to do it at Kent State, Kansas & Minnesota and won Coach of the Year in each conference. Once we got to that stage he probably should have left and found another program in need of a turnaround (ISU) because he didn't have the skill set to advance to the next level. This is the same in business, some people are entrepreneurs and should hand the reins over to professional management and go start a new business, some managers are turnaround experts and need to leave once a company is "saved", etc.
 

MNSpaniel said:
Iowa and Wisconsin have had a lot more success than us so they probably should have more.
Click to expand...

Do you think there might be a chance that Wisconsin and Iowa were more successful and had more NFL players because they recruited better than Mason?
 

tjgopher said:
Do you think there might be a chance that Wisconsin and Iowa were more successful and had more NFL players because they recruited better than Mason?
Click to expand...

Yes. But neither of them set the world on fire with their recruiting either. Wisconsin was generally 33-49 under Alvarez and Ferentz has been up and down with his best class ranked #10 overall and his current class #11 in the Big Ten as of today. They both recruited better than Mason on average but both programs excelled because they did an excellent job of developing players. Iowa to some extent gets screwed on the ratings because they have a lot of recruits from Iowa which is considered "weak recruiting ground." Minnesota players deal with the same perception and consequently the state is actually one of the most underrated football states if you look at players that go pro from MN vs. stars given by Rivals (I read a study on it a month or two ago--we were in the top 5 if not #1).
 


Other posters have made great points that Mason developed players well and wasn't a great recruiter.

Just to look at the original list of 17 NFL players, posters have pointed out that Carter & Hamilton weren't his recruits. Of the remaining guys, MBIII had only our offer and I don't think Eslinger, Setterstrom, Lloyd, Dom Barber, & Spaeth had a lot of top shelf offers. I don't know all the details about all the players on the list as I didn't start to follow recruiting much until a few years ago, but I think about the only highly ranked/recruited players on the list of 17/15 guys are Maroney and maybe Montgomery and Payne. Guys like Russell & Wheelwright had the talent, but Ohio St & co passed because of marginal academics. I don't know about Lehan, White, Reid or Utecht.

So, in summary, yeah Mason wasn't a total failure in recruiting - he did get a highly ranked guy here every few years or so and he was very good at finding diamonds in the rough and developing them - but his reputation that he couldn't get top talent here was very much on target.
 

Also...

Don't forget Willie, Weber and Decker. All of those guys will at least get a shot to try the NFL. Mase recruited them.

I think it is kind of funny, though, that with a few of our best players, they barely garnered an offer from Mason (I'm specifically thinking of MBIII and WVS...I think Decker was planning on going to St. John's until he got a late offer, too). It almost sounds like fell ass backwards into a few of these guys, so I'm not going to give him too much credit for recruiting them.
 

That list is horribly short compared to the same list for Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa, Penn State and Wisconsin. There are 17 names on that list. According to Wikipedia other schools have many more players in the NFL: 1) Ohio State 43, Michigan 54, Wisconsin 32. Mason's last three recruiting classes (2004-2006) ranked 58, 55, and 62 in the nation. Almost always near the bottom of the Big Ten. Ohio State's classes in the same years ranked 9, 12, and 12. For those who say recruiting rankings don't matter? Those Ohio State classes included Marcus Freeman, Vernon Ghoulston, Ted Ginn, James Laurinaitis, Brian Robiskie, and Beanie Wells to name a few.
 

If Mason were at Ohio State

My guess is that if Mason would have gotten the Ohio State job his classes would have been the same as what they have always gotten. All speculation but I feel his classes would have been just as good. Some of those institutions just recruit themselves.
 

You realize this was over a 10 year period and we are talking about a only a couple of players standing out a year with all sorts of lacking in many areas, especially on defense!
 

I give Mason lots of credit for landing an Eric Decker because he really turned into a great football player. I doubt Brewster would have recruited him except as possibly a walk-on, but that is just conjecture on my part. If Decker makes it to the NFL, I would chalk that one up in Mason's column.

I do think Brewster would have recruited Weber though - he was being recruited by numerous schools and he was not an unknown at all.
 

GoldRush: Weber was Mason recruit...

Remember, Weber ran the offensive scout team (at QB as a freshman) vs. the Gopher Defense prior to infamous Insight.com Bowl game vs. Texas Tech, the result of which led to Mason's firing...
 

Ay carumba..........you are correct -- I got my year mixed up.

I guess you gotta put that one in Mason's column, too.

Incidentally, I think Weber will be playing in the NFL in a couple years, too - I would be very surprised if he does not make it with someone.
 

I wouldn't say that Mason developed players that well. Anthony Montgomery was one of Mason's more heralded recruits and I always thought him to be a pretty big underachiever for the Gophers. Part of that may have been due to scheme or who surrounded him, but he's been a much better pro than I thought he'd be.
 

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