Official 2022 Gophers Football Recruiting Thread: Links, Tweets, Videos, Rumors

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MNVCGUY said:
The only shock is how many people truly believe these sites can accurately grade all the prospects to that level with any sort of true accuracy.
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We used to say that economists published their GDP Growth Forecasts to two decimal places to prove that they had a sense of humor.
 

Off-GridTNgopher said:
There's a difference between a .876 3* and a .832 3* the 3* nebby gets are higher rated... That's why they are ranked higher... Why is that a shock?
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The shock is more that people think there is any legitimacy behind those numbers. I doubt if you saw the highlights of all the 3* RBs out there you could match the highlights with the score. And seeing as no one at 247 has seen all of them play the whole thing is a joke.

Nebraska beats us in the rankings every year (along with most of the Big Ten) and yet how good have they been the last decade in the Big Ten despite all of that?

Unless you are pulling in classes like Ohio State it just doesn't seem to matter. It wasn't always the case but now it is pretty obvious.
 

I'm not saying they are right with every grade. But the recruiting services generally are not that far off from each other on a per.player basis. There's more to recruiting than stars and rating.. I firmly believe that... But the analysis says certain kids are better. Some peaked and don't imporve, others peak and develop later... It's a crap shoot...
 

Dave H said:
The shock is more that people think there is any legitimacy behind those numbers. I doubt if you saw the highlights of all the 3* RBs out there you could match the highlights with the score. And seeing as no one at 247 has seen all of them play the whole thing is a joke.

Nebraska beats us in the rankings every year (along with most of the Big Ten) and yet how good have they been the last decade in the Big Ten despite all of that?

Unless you are pulling in classes like Ohio State it just doesn't seem to matter. It wasn't always the case but now it is pretty obvious.
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Yup. Nebraska gets players like Bryce Benhart who is rated as a 4-Star 0.9349 out of HS. Maybe things will improve with a whole new slate of experienced coaches.
 

Off-GridTNgopher said:
I'm not saying they are right with every grade. But the recruiting services generally are not that far off from each other on a per.player basis. There's more to recruiting than stars and rating.. I firmly believe that... But the analysis says certain kids are better. Some peaked and don't imporve, others peak and develop later... It's a crap shoot...
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Let's say you are looking at two high school linebackers, both 6'3 and currently 225 pounds. Recruiting service says one is slightly faster in the 40 and has a two inch better vertical. They each led their team in tackles.

Recruiting services put one at .872 and the faster guy at .879. It's a no brainer for Frost. The faster guy is rated higher. He will be the better player.

Another coach -- PJ comes to mind -- says, let's look at both. We need to talk to each guy directly, his parents, and his HS coach. An extra half step is good but only if he knows how to read his keys. Half step faster doesn't help if he takes two steps the wrong direction at the snap.

Fleck will take the guy most likely to play the position correctly and always be in the right position to make the play. This will also be the guy most open to team goals over individual goals. What we call cultural buy-in.

So in that one small hypothetical example the recruiting ratings don't mean jack. Speaking of Jack, anyone have a clue what number the services put on Jack Gibbens out of high school? I doubt they had a low enough rating to give him. Which proves again they don't know jack.
 


Off-GridTNgopher said:
I'm not saying they are right with every grade. But the recruiting services generally are not that far off from each other on a per.player basis. There's more to recruiting than stars and rating.. I firmly believe that... But the analysis says certain kids are better. Some peaked and don't imporve, others peak and develop later... It's a crap shoot...
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It isn't surprising that recruiting sites are going to have similar takes on players because they are working with the same video and stats for the most part. Plus we all know they borrow from each other because it is the only possible way to even pretend to evaluate the sheer volume of players they have to each year. But them agreeing with each other doesn't mean the ranking they give is right.

High rated guys don't pan out, low rated guys become stars. The recruiting sites are for the fans not the coaches. I think some lose sight of that fact.

That is not to say the coaches won't look at the sites or gain some info from them, but I guarantee you that most coaches could give a crap what ranking the recruiting sites give a player based on some highlights and stats. They are going to put their stock in their own evaluations of the whole player built over years of developing a relationship with the player, his coaches, and his family. Watching full game tapes and in many cases watching him live.
 

Dakota2 said:
Let's say you are looking at two high school linebackers, both 6'3 and currently 225 pounds. Recruiting service says one is slightly faster in the 40 and has a two inch better vertical. They each led their team in tackles.

Recruiting services put one at .872 and the faster guy at .879. It's a no brainer for Frost. The faster guy is rated higher. He will be the better player.

Another coach -- PJ comes to mind -- says, let's look at both. We need to talk to each guy directly, his parents, and his HS coach. An extra half step is good but only if he knows how to read his keys. Half step faster doesn't help if he takes two steps the wrong direction at the snap.

Fleck will take the guy most likely to play the position correctly and always be in the right position to make the play. This will also be the guy most open to team goals over individual goals. What we call cultural buy-in.

So in that one small hypothetical example the recruiting ratings don't mean jack. Speaking of Jack, anyone have a clue what number the services put on Jack Gibbens out of high school? I doubt they had a low enough rating to give him. Which proves again they don't know jack.
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Gibbens was unrated by Rivals and 247 coming out of high school. Truly an amazing journey from unranked high schooler to stardom at Abilene Christian and then Minnesota.
 

MNVCGUY said:
The only shock is how many people truly believe these sites can accurately grade all the prospects to that level with any sort of true accuracy.
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They wouldn't be raking in the dough, if people didn't believe it!

Of course, I wonder how much of it is telling the fans at these helmet schools "what they want to hear"!
 

Dave H said:
The shock is more that people think there is any legitimacy behind those numbers. I doubt if you saw the highlights of all the 3* RBs out there you could match the highlights with the score. And seeing as no one at 247 has seen all of them play the whole thing is a joke.

Nebraska beats us in the rankings every year (along with most of the Big Ten) and yet how good have they been the last decade in the Big Ten despite all of that?

Unless you are pulling in classes like Ohio State it just doesn't seem to matter. It wasn't always the case but now it is pretty obvious.
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They (247, et al) defend their methods by saying "look at the whole class each year, there is a proven correlation with the rating and success in college/NFL'.

That may be true. But my thing is like this: who can't give a high rating to the really obvious cream-of-the-crop?? The guys most likely to go to helmet schools and do really way, anyway?

So take off the top 10-20% of rated players, then what does the correlation look like? That would be my challenge. I bet it drops significantly.

As well, why can their rating systems have any kind of prediction accuracy for guys who go to lower schools but then develop into stars and great players?
 



Gophers_4life said:
They wouldn't be raking in the dough, if people didn't believe it!

Of course, I wonder how much of it is telling the fans at these helmet schools "what they want to hear"!
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As with a lot of things in sports it really doesn't matter if they are right as people just assume they are in their desire to get their hands on whatever content they can about their team.

It takes multiple years to know if the recruiting sites were actually right about a recruit and by that time fans have already moved on to the shiny new toy coming in to save their team and can't be troubled to go back and see if the sites were even close to right about players that are old news.
 

Mustang68 said:
Gibbens was unrated by Rivals and 247 coming out of high school. Truly an amazing journey from unranked high schooler to stardom at Abilene Christian and then Minnesota.
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It would be interesting to know what anyone who looked at him didn't like in HS or didn't see....
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
It would be interesting to know what anyone who looked at him didn't like in HS or didn't see....
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This is another interesting thing. There must be a couple hundred thousand kids playing high school football each year in the country.

How do they know who to even look at, to begin with? There's no way they can even give a "quick look" to everyone.
 

Gophers_4life said:
They (247, et al) defend their methods by saying "look at the whole class each year, there is a proven correlation with the rating and success in college/NFL'.

That may be true. But my thing is like this: who can't give a high rating to the really obvious cream-of-the-crop?? The guys most likely to go to helmet schools and do really way, anyway?

So take off the top 10-20% of rated players, then what does the correlation look like? That would be my challenge. I bet it drops significantly.

As well, why can their rating systems have any kind of prediction accuracy for guys who go to lower schools but then develop into stars and great players?
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It is easy for them to defend as long as people only focus in on the top schools. It all falls apart when you dig deeper but very few are going to do that as it is just easier to assume that if the recruiting sites say a player is going to be a star then he is going to be a star.

It is easy to pick out the good/great players, they stand out. But this idea that they can somehow rank players accurately to the degree that they do is just silly. We all obsess over rankings so I get why they do it, but the idea that they can accurately compare players from all over the country just doesn't make sense when you start to think about what would be involved in doing something like that.
 



Gophers_4life said:
This is another interesting thing. There must be a couple hundred thousand kids playing high school football each year in the country.

How do they know who to even look at, to begin with? There's no way they can even give a "quick look" to everyone.
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Yep, the idea that they can accurately rank thousands of players, playing at different levels, in different systems, against all levels of competition, who will never set foot on the same field at the same time makes zero sense.

They are just making an educated guess based on the info they have available (which may be super limited in a lot of cases). And yet many fans will just eat it up and assume it must be right.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
It would be interesting to know what anyone who looked at him didn't like in HS or didn't see....
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Nothing to back it up, but my guess would be he was a late bloomer physically or played somewhere that got very little exposure in high school.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Nothing to back it up, but my guess would be he was a late bloomer physically or played somewhere that got very little exposure in high school.
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Speed. Didn't have it in HS and didn't have it five years later. But his attitude and desire, along with good coaching and leadership qualities, made him into a very good LB. recruiting services have zero ability to see and project those attributes.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Your post completely underscores what is so frustrating to some of us about recruiting rankings and the obsession people have with them.

... They are signing flashier recruits that the recruiting sites claim are significantly better players than the guys we are bringing in. But there is so much that the recruiting sites just simply can't judge in their evaluations. They can look at stats and some highlights, but they don't meet most of the players in person, they don't talk to their coaches, they don't meet with their families.
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The free recruiting services basically do not do any evaluation -- they primarily rank players based on the offers they get. If they get offers from what is thought of as a higher-ranked university (e.g., Alabama) then that 'cruit gets a higher ranking. The 'cruit doesn't even actually have to exist to get rankings...
 

Full Speed Ahead said:
The free recruiting services basically do not do any evaluation -- they primarily rank players based on the offers they get. If they get offers from what is thought of as a higher-ranked university (e.g., Alabama) then that 'cruit gets a higher ranking. The 'cruit doesn't even actually have to exist to get rankings...
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I worked with a recruiting site for a while years ago. My job was to go through game film and find clips of various players that they were "evaluating". Some of the film was so bad it was next to impossible to identify numbers on the players to even know if they were on the field or not or if you were in fact looking at the right player.

But to your point, corners have to be cut, it is the only possible way they can do what they do without having a massive staff based all over the country. People really need to think about what it would take to truly evaluate the thousands of recruits playing high school football all over the country.

The recruiting sites do a decent job in very general terms, it just isn't possible to accurately rank all the players against each other with any sort of true accuracy.
 

per Shama:

It will be a surprise if the Gophers don’t add a running back before June from the transfer portal. P.J. Fleck and staff might well have been shopping even before Mar’Keise Irving announced last week he is leaving Minnesota.

Available running backs in the portal, per 247Sports, include Camar Wheaton, Alabama; Tharon Davis, Memphis; Joshia Davis, Colorado; Aidan Robbins, Louisville; and Peni Naulu, Washington State. Wheaton didn’t play for Alabama last season but coming out of high school he was the No. 1 RB in the nation, according to Rivals100. Minnesota recruits the Dallas area and Wheaton played in high school not far from Gophers high potential wide receiver Dylan Wright.


Go Gophers!!
 

BleedGopher said:
per Shama:

It will be a surprise if the Gophers don’t add a running back before June from the transfer portal. P.J. Fleck and staff might well have been shopping even before Mar’Keise Irving announced last week he is leaving Minnesota.

Available running backs in the portal, per 247Sports, include Camar Wheaton, Alabama; Tharon Davis, Memphis; Joshia Davis, Colorado; Aidan Robbins, Louisville; and Peni Naulu, Washington State. Wheaton didn’t play for Alabama last season but coming out of high school he was the No. 1 RB in the nation, according to Rivals100. Minnesota recruits the Dallas area and Wheaton played in high school not far from Gophers high potential wide receiver Dylan Wright.


Go Gophers!!
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Given MN record of developing running back it shouldn't be hard to replace Irving.
 


Q&A: Kyler Baugh on Transfer to Gophers “It is a great opportunity and I think it’s going to be a place I can call home away from home.”

By Chris Monter

gopherhole.com

Houston Baptist Transfer Kyler Baugh Talks Move to Minnesota- "It is a great opportunity and I think it’s going to be a place I can call home away from home." - GopherHole.com

Kyler Baugh, a 6-foot-3, 300-pound defensive lineman from Houston Baptist announced Thursday, that he was transferring to Minnesota. He could have two years of eligibility for the Gophers. Baugh had 52 tackles, 3 ½ sacks and 4 ½ tackles for loss this past season for the Huskies, who finished...
gopherhole.com gopherhole.com
 

MNVCGUY said:
Yep, the idea that they can accurately rank thousands of players, playing at different levels, in different systems, against all levels of competition, who will never set foot on the same field at the same time makes zero sense.

They are just making an educated guess based on the info they have available (which may be super limited in a lot of cases). And yet many fans will just eat it up and assume it must be right.
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Especially considering the difference between the 23rd class and the 55th class can be like 3 kids who might all flunk out or transfer
 


BleedGopher said:
per Shama:

It will be a surprise if the Gophers don’t add a running back before June from the transfer portal. P.J. Fleck and staff might well have been shopping even before Mar’Keise Irving announced last week he is leaving Minnesota.

Available running backs in the portal, per 247Sports, include Camar Wheaton, Alabama; Tharon Davis, Memphis; Joshia Davis, Colorado; Aidan Robbins, Louisville; and Peni Naulu, Washington State. Wheaton didn’t play for Alabama last season but coming out of high school he was the No. 1 RB in the nation, according to Rivals100. Minnesota recruits the Dallas area and Wheaton played in high school not far from Gophers high potential wide receiver Dylan Wright.


Go Gophers!!
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Wheaton is transferring to SMU, I believe.
 


MaxyJR1 said:
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I'm not a shot put expert by any means, but I assume to be that good it takes 1) strength, 2) balance, 3) good feet.
All of which to me would translate well to being an offensive lineman.
 

Word said:
I'm not a shot put expert by any means, but I assume to be that good it takes 1) strength, 2) balance, 3) good feet.
All of which to me would translate well to being an offensive lineman.
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it's mostly legs and hips. He looks every bit the part of a D1 OL. Position of strength on this team.
 

It looks like he was barely trying! Over 60 in high school is a great throw, 65 range is fantastic.

Doubt he'll have much competition at the state A level, there might be a guy or two close to him at AA.
 


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