Shama: Jerry Kill on recruiting in-state players: “we’re doing the best we can”

[BleedGopher]

per Shama:

Gophers coach Jerry Kill said “we’re doing the best we can” in recruiting state players. He believes the number of prospects who interest him as potential scholarship players can vary from five to 25. Having lived in Kansas, a state somewhat similar to Minnesota in population, Kill saw the importance of a large talent pool. “It has to do with population more than anything. More football programs, more schools, more players.”

later in the article:

Rochester, Minnesota native and former Gopher Darrell Thompson thinks major college programs, including the Gophers, have overlooked the quality and depth of the state’s recruiting pool.

“This (Gophers) coaching staff doesn’t realize that there is more here (prospects) than people (think),” Thompson said. “The grass always looks greener. Just like someone’s wife always looks cuter than your wife or some girl. Someone else always looks better.”

http://shamasportsheadliners.com/

Go Gophers!!

 

[short ornery norwegian]

I live in SW MN, so I don't see the metro-area players much (except for the Prep Bowl games on TV).

Generally, the best players in my part of the state wind up going to D2 or D3 schools. Marshall HS has sent a few kids to places like UMD, NDSU and the Dakota schools. Bottom line - the best kids in outstate MN either lack the size or the top-end speed to play D1 FB. Two kids I've seen who are playing D1 are Jonah Pirsig from Blue Earth (Gophers) and Tyler Marz from Springfield (Badgers.) Both kids had unusual size and athletic ability.

As far as the metro-area kids, I would venture a guess that more linemen get D1 scholarships as opposed to skill positions, but I don't have any stats to bear that out.

 

[HopherGole]

per Shama:

Gophers coach Jerry Kill said “we’re doing the best we can” in recruiting state players. He believes the number of prospects who interest him as potential scholarship players can vary from five to 25. Having lived in Kansas, a state somewhat similar to Minnesota in population, Kill saw the importance of a large talent pool. “It has to do with population more than anything. More football programs, more schools, more players.”

later in the article:

Rochester, Minnesota native and former Gopher Darrell Thompson thinks major college programs, including the Gophers, have overlooked the quality and depth of the state’s recruiting pool.

“This (Gophers) coaching staff doesn’t realize that there is more here (prospects) than people (think),” Thompson said. “The grass always looks greener. Just like someone’s wife always looks cuter than your wife or some girl. Someone else always looks better.”

http://shamasportsheadliners.com/

Go Gophers!!

Thompson is spot on. This is the top recruiting class we've had in years and Kill's staff has only offered a handful of seniors. Minnesota has players putting up numbers that are nearly unheard of this year and we will probably let them slip out of state. I only hope Kill doesn't have the same mindset Brew had-- recruit elsewhere and not harvest the talent in Minnesota.

 

[Ole]

Thompson is spot on. This is the top recruiting class we've had in years and Kill's staff has only offered a handful of seniors. Minnesota has players putting up numbers that are nearly unheard of this year and we will probably let them slip out of state. I only hope Kill doesn't have the same mindset Brew had-- recruit elsewhere and not harvest the talent in Minnesota.

List them.
The 12-15 Kill should offer a full scholarship. Which would be our entire class this year, but for arguments sake.

Jones
Ragnow
Stelter
Hassenhauer

Behr?
Hovey?
Woods?
Johnson III?
Menard?
Weber?
Gordon?
Ejiya?
Who are they missing out on?

 

[dpodoll68]

Thompson's premise is easily disproven. If there are so many great MN HS players, where is the deluge of them ripping it up at the I-AA level? Where are the vast quantities of former MN HS players in the NFL? There are certainly a handful of players that the Gophers have missed over the years, but that goes for every school everywhere. The problem is not missing out on low-end players; the problem is losing players to Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, etc.

It also seems like a strange criticism given that Kill has offered more "marginal" MN HS prospects than either of his predecessors.

 

[dpodoll68]

I only hope Kill doesn't have the same mindset Brew had-- recruit elsewhere and not harvest the talent in Minnesota.

Once again, this is an urban legend. Brewster recruited the MN players who were worthy of receiving Big Ten offers. People can't bitch about the quality of recruiting out of one side of their mouth and then bitch about MN HS players needing to receive more offers out the other side. Offering and signing more MN HS players who have only I-AA offers would, by definition, worsen the recruiting.

 

[e.bigelow]

Thompson's premise is easily disproven. If there are so many great MN HS players, where is the deluge of them ripping it up at the I-AA level? Where are the vast quantities of former MN HS players in the NFL? There are certainly a handful of players that the Gophers have missed over the years, but that goes for every school everywhere. The problem is not missing out on low-end players; the problem is losing players to Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, etc.

It also seems like a strange criticism given that Kill has offered more "marginal" MN HS prospects than either of his predecessors.

+1

 

[MNVCGUY]

Thompson's premise is easily disproven. If there are so many great MN HS players, where is the deluge of them ripping it up at the I-AA level? Where are the vast quantities of former MN HS players in the NFL? There are certainly a handful of players that the Gophers have missed over the years, but that goes for every school everywhere. The problem is not missing out on low-end players; the problem is losing players to Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, etc.

It also seems like a strange criticism given that Kill has offered more "marginal" MN HS prospects than either of his predecessors.

Could not agree with you more on this one. As you said there are always going to be guys that fly under the radar and slip through the cracks but the key for recruiting in Minnesota is to land as many of the top in state guys as you can because there are not all that many in any given year.

We do see a number of guys go to places like NDSU and do well but for the most part the majority of those guys would not be able to cut it in the Big Ten.

 

[Gopherguy0723]

For once I'm with Dpod. There is no talent in Minnesota. That's why they don't win. To win, you need to be a national power and take recruits from everywhere, or produce lots of instate talent because instate guys are the easiest to recruit.

We aren't a national power. We don't have lots of D1 talent.

If you want better football here, get a grassroots movement going at the local level. We need big time youth football programs in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Anoka, and probably Robbinsdale. Then, you need good middle school football programs at their respective middle schools. Heck, just getting those districts to offer football in middle school would help.

You need players. Our biggest school districts don't have enough organized football to produce enough talent for the Gophers to succeed.

It is going to take increased funding to these districts to restore their programs. So you're going to have to pay more in taxes, or you're going to have to raise a lot of private money for athletics.

That's the sad but true story folks. If we're not going to do that, then we should be happy with a .500 record every year, giver or take, and a nice upset every now and then.

 

[John Galt]

Thompson's premise is easily disproven. If there are so many great MN HS players, where is the deluge of them ripping it up at the I-AA level? Where are the vast quantities of former MN HS players in the NFL? There are certainly a handful of players that the Gophers have missed over the years, but that goes for every school everywhere. The problem is not missing out on low-end players; the problem is losing players to Wisconsin, Iowa, Notre Dame, etc.

It also seems like a strange criticism given that Kill has offered more "marginal" MN HS prospects than either of his predecessors.

I agree that Thompson's numbers are high, but his point has some validity: we've missed on too many guys in-state. Kill's strategy is spot-on, he's getting valuable players as PWOs or under-the-radar recruits that probably wouldn't have been at Minnesota in the past. 4 of our current offensive starters fit this category: Lauer, Christenson, Engel, and Fruechte. These are the kind of solid players we need in the program, in addition to the highly regarded national and MN recruits.

As for losing players to ND, Iowa, or Wisky, it's been talked up way too much. Off the top of my head, here are the players we lost to each of them in the last 10 years:

Iowa: Rucker, Binns,
ND: Onwualu, Floyd, Carufel (who ended up coming back)
Wisky: Brookins, Marz, Allen, Kelly

I might be missing a few, but losing 2-3 players to a rival team per decade isn't our main problem. It's that MN high school football doesn't generate enough D-1 prospects per year. We could have easily afforded losing the guys above if we were getting 8-12 MN recruits per year. I'm not saying that there are 8-12 high school players per year who can play D-1 football, but it would solve a myriad of problems if there were. Getting borderline D-1 prospects by way of PWO and the occasional scholarship will weaken the FCS and D-2 teams in the region that have done well with them, and will give the Gophers some potentially valuable players.

 

[MNVCGUY]

I agree that Thompson's numbers are high, but his point has some validity: we've missed on too many guys in-state. Kill's strategy is spot-on, he's getting valuable players as PWOs or under-the-radar recruits that probably wouldn't have been at Minnesota in the past. 4 of our current offensive starters fit this category: Lauer, Christenson, Engel, and Fruechte. These are the kind of solid players we need in the program, in addition to the highly regarded national and MN recruits.

As for losing players to ND, Iowa, or Wisky, it's been talked up way too much. Off the top of my head, here are the players we lost to each of them in the last 10 years:

Iowa: Rucker, Binns,
ND: Onwualu, Floyd, Carufel (who ended up coming back)
Wisky: Brookins, Marz, Allen, Kelly

I might be missing a few, but losing 2-3 players to a rival team per decade isn't our main problem. It's that MN high school football doesn't generate enough D-1 prospects per year. We could have easily afforded losing the guys above if we were getting 8-12 MN recruits per year. I'm not saying that there are 8-12 high school players per year who can play D-1 football, but it would solve a myriad of problems if there were. Getting borderline D-1 prospects by way of PWO and the occasional scholarship will weaken the FCS and D-2 teams in the region that have done well with them, and will give the Gophers some potentially valuable players.

It isn't just losing guys to Iowa, Wisky and ND but to any D1 school and yeah there have not been a ton of them but in a State with so few guys each year the loses get magnified that much more. I am sure someone will produce a list of all the guys that have left and done well so I won't try to come up with it

As for being successful with PWO, Brewster and Mason were both successful in finding guys that became good players. Many of those guys were from the state of Minnesota as well.

 

[EE_Gopher]

Ben Lauer was a 2 star recruit. I doubt Brewster would have picked him up because he needed high recruiting rankings to justify his hiring.

 

[dpodoll68]

Ben Lauer was a 2 star recruit. I doubt Brewster would have picked him up because he needed high recruiting rankings to justify his hiring.

The facts don't bear that out. Brewster signed 4 in-state HS 2-stars (Nance, Grant, Pride, and Rengel) and so far Kill has signed 3 (Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson). I don't foresee any in-state 2-stars getting an offer this year.

 

[John Galt]

It isn't just losing guys to Iowa, Wisky and ND but to any D1 school and yeah there have not been a ton of them but in a State with so few guys each year the loses get magnified that much more. I am sure someone will produce a list of all the guys that have left and done well so I won't try to come up with it

You're right, it is magnified because we don't produce as much high school talent as other states. What I'm saying is that the main issue with the talent on our team isn't losing these guys, it's that we don't have as much high school talent as other places. Alabama, Ohio St., and everyone else also loses 5-10 in-state recruits per decade to other schools. It doesn't affect them because they can still get 12-15 in-state kids every single year.

 

[John Galt]

The facts don't bear that out. Brewster signed 4 in-state HS 2-stars (Nance, Grant, Pride, and Rengel) and so far Kill has signed 3 (Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson). I don't foresee any in-state 2-stars getting an offer this year.

Over the last 3 years, it appears obvious that Coach Kill is far more adept at identifying 2-star talent than Coach Brewster was.

 

[Mulligan]

For once I'm with Dpod. There is no talent in Minnesota. That's why they don't win. To win, you need to be a national power and take recruits from everywhere, or produce lots of instate talent because instate guys are the easiest to recruit.

We aren't a national power. We don't have lots of D1 talent.

If you want better football here, get a grassroots movement going at the local level. We need big time youth football programs in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Anoka, and probably Robbinsdale. Then, you need good middle school football programs at their respective middle schools. Heck, just getting those districts to offer football in middle school would help.

You need players. Our biggest school districts don't have enough organized football to produce enough talent for the Gophers to succeed.

It is going to take increased funding to these districts to restore their programs. So you're going to have to pay more in taxes, or you're going to have to raise a lot of private money for athletics.

That's the sad but true story folks. If we're not going to do that, then we should be happy with a .500 record every year, giver or take, and a nice upset every now and then.

Uh, sorry, but that isn't a solution. We don't have the population base. There are very, very few high schools that don't offer football. Middle and junior highs offer football even with reduced budgets. A school in our conference has school four days a week because of budget, but they have middle school football. There are traveling teams for football. The opportunities are there. There simply aren't enough kids to take them. We are on the outskirts of the big population bases here. We've got the Dakotas on one side and Canada to the north. That hurts and it's not going to change. Don't tell me about Nebraska. They have a tradition of winning, and they have inroads to Texas and other hotbeds because of past affiliations.

We've been mediocre at best since the 60's. Partly because of that, there simply isn't the culture for football here that other areas have. No spring high school football practice. Very few televised games. No schools playing national schedules. Frankly, that's okay. As much as I'd like to see us go to major bowl games, I don't need to see it if the sport becomes way overblown in importance.

So I guess I'll be happy with .500 in the conference and an occassional breakthrough. Life has more to offer than centering it around high school or college football.

 

[tato2001]

Uh, sorry, but that isn't a solution. We don't have the population base. There are very, very few high schools that don't offer football. Middle and junior highs offer football even with reduced budgets. A school in our conference has school four days a week because of budget, but they have middle school football. There are traveling teams for football. The opportunities are there. There simply aren't enough kids to take them. We are on the outskirts of the big population bases here. We've got the Dakotas on one side and Canada to the north. That hurts and it's not going to change. Don't tell me about Nebraska. They have a tradition of winning, and they have inroads to Texas and other hotbeds because of past affiliations.

We've been mediocre at best since the 60's. Partly because of that, there simply isn't the culture for football here that other areas have. No spring high school football practice. Very few televised games. No schools playing national schedules. Frankly, that's okay. As much as I'd like to see us go to major bowl games, I don't need to see it if the sport becomes way overblown in importance.

So I guess I'll be happy with .500 in the conference and an occassional breakthrough. Life has more to offer than centering it around high school or college football.

All true. You can thank hockey for all that.

 

[Killjoy]

The facts don't bear that out. Brewster signed 4 in-state HS 2-stars (Nance, Grant, Pride, and Rengel) and so far Kill has signed 3 (Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson). I don't foresee any in-state 2-stars getting an offer this year.

dpodoll - Are you sure that is right? It was commonly accepted by many here that Brewster was the better recruiter. Many others also felt that Kill wouldn't be able to recruit at this level.

The reality is that even though Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson are just beginning their careers at Minnesota it is now obvious that Kill's 2-star recruits are are far superior to Brewster's four (Nance Grant, Pride, and Rengel). It is with fond memories that I remember how some people berated me when I suggested that Kill and company were better recruiter than Brewster.

 

[Dr.Don]

dpodoll - Are you sure that is right? It was commonly accepted by many here that Brewster was the better recruiter. Many others also felt that Kill wouldn't be able to recruit at this level.

The reality is that even though Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson are just beginning their careers at Minnesota it is now obvious that Kill's 2-star recruits are are far superior to Brewster's four (Nance Grant, Pride, and Rengel). It is with fond memories that I remember how some people berated me when I suggested that Kill and company were better recruiter than Brewster.

Killjoy, you give us lots of reasons to berate you.

 

[Off-GridTNgopher]

the best of the instate mn prospects does not always equate to big 10 caliber players... I still don't see how some of kills first true class got offers..... I don't care where the kids come from... mn, iowa, Hawaii, or the Galapagos islands... as long as they can play in the conference

 

[Gopherguy0723]

Uh, sorry, but that isn't a solution. We don't have the population base. There are very, very few high schools that don't offer football. Middle and junior highs offer football even with reduced budgets. A school in our conference has school four days a week because of budget, but they have middle school football. There are traveling teams for football. The opportunities are there. There simply aren't enough kids to take them. We are on the outskirts of the big population bases here. We've got the Dakotas on one side and Canada to the north. That hurts and it's not going to change. Don't tell me about Nebraska. They have a tradition of winning, and they have inroads to Texas and other hotbeds because of past affiliations.

We've been mediocre at best since the 60's. Partly because of that, there simply isn't the culture for football here that other areas have. No spring high school football practice. Very few televised games. No schools playing national schedules. Frankly, that's okay. As much as I'd like to see us go to major bowl games, I don't need to see it if the sport becomes way overblown in importance.

So I guess I'll be happy with .500 in the conference and an occassional breakthrough. Life has more to offer than centering it around high school or college football.

That's the only viable solution to help alleviate the problem. It won't solve the problem, but it will produce more players.

You're also absolutely right about us being in an area with a lack of population. Wisconsin and Minnesota have decent populations, but the Dakotas, Iowa, and Canada don't offer us anything.

It's simply not possible to consistently win big here in a sport that requires 85 scholarship players.

 

[Coolew01]

dpodoll - Are you sure that is right? It was commonly accepted by many here that Brewster was the better recruiter. Many others also felt that Kill wouldn't be able to recruit at this level.

The reality is that even though Lauer, Leidner, and Wipson are just beginning their careers at Minnesota it is now obvious that Kill's 2-star recruits are are far superior to Brewster's four (Nance Grant, Pride, and Rengel). It is with fond memories that I remember how some people berated me when I suggested that Kill and company were better recruiter than Brewster.

I don't know if he is a better recruiter, I do think he is a better evaluator of talent that he needs to fit his system.

 

[Killjoy]

Killjoy, you give us lots of reasons to berate you.

Okay Dr.Don - I will bite. You have pointed out in the past an error I made in the tense of the verb but I am not sure if that is what you are pointing to here. It could be that you are just saying that I deserved to be berated on general principles or you could be berating me for something more specific. Whatever it is, I want you to know that I have been berated by better men than you. As Groucho Marx once said "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

 

[GopherinPhilly]

I won't agree that MN football is offering as much opportunity for youths as the south. It isn't even close.

I graduated from a MN high school and have since lived in the FL and volunteered for two youth leagues while I was down there. Didn't live in big communities (30k or so) but they had 300 kids from 10-12 playing in this league split between 4 b teams and 4 A travelling teams. It was insane. The coordinator of the program was the local high school coach and the team coaches were military guys getting their merit badges for community service (not really called that, but basically what it is) and all the high school players were Asst coaches and such.

They played a game every Sat all summer and practiced 4 times per week for 2 hours.

They had a similar program for 12-14 year olds.

The high school and junior highs had spring practice and spring games, camps all summer long in addition to captains practice and fall camp. Plus they could have their conditioning & weight training coach in direct contact all summer long.

We don't have this in MN...not on this scale. And this is one rural community with 30,000 residents. We have this kind of opportunity for hockey and basketball, but not football. That is why we have so many more D-1 hockey and basketball players coming out of this state even though more kids play football than those two sports combined.

 

[Killjoy]

I don't know if he is a better recruiter, I do think he is a better evaluator of talent that he needs to fit his system.

If you are defining recruiting as being a used car salesman then there is no question that Brewster was better in this role. I have always taken a much broader perspective than that. Not only does it include what you have stated above but it also includes many more attributes such as work ethic, being a team player, etc.

 

[highwayman]

I won't agree that MN football is offering as much opportunity for youths as the south. It isn't even close.

I graduated from a MN high school and have since lived in the FL and volunteered for two youth leagues while I was down there. Didn't live in big communities (30k or so) but they had 300 kids from 10-12 playing in this league split between 4 b teams and 4 A travelling teams. It was insane. The coordinator of the program was the local high school coach and the team coaches were military guys getting their merit badges for community service (not really called that, but basically what it is) and all the high school players were Asst coaches and such.

They played a game every Sat all summer and practiced 4 times per week for 2 hours.

They had a similar program for 12-14 year olds.

The high school and junior highs had spring practice and spring games, camps all summer long in addition to captains practice and fall camp. Plus they could have their conditioning & weight training coach in direct contact all summer long.

We don't have this in MN...not on this scale. And this is one rural community with 30,000 residents. We have this kind of opportunity for hockey and basketball, but not football. That is why we have so many more D-1 hockey and basketball players coming out of this state even though more kids play football than those two sports combined.

You nailed it. It has nothing to do with population, it's about sport priority, facilities, and WEATHER. You can now play hockey Minnesota year-round. You can't play football or baseball. Even basketball here is not as big as in other states, partly because of hockey.

There aren't that many D-1 players coming out of Minnesota in either sport compared to states of similar size. Minnesota is in the low 40's for football recruits, but is the 21st most populous state. Far, far smaller states produce many more D-1 players: Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, well, you name it. The only states with less recruits are Connecticut, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, and Delaware.

In basketball, Minnesota is middle of the pack, with the same number of D-1 recruits since 1998 as NEW HAMPSHIRE and less than Nevada. Chew on that.

 

[Gopherguy0723]

You nailed it. It has nothing to do with population, it's about sport priority, facilities, and WEATHER. You can now play hockey Minnesota year-round. You can't play football or baseball. Even basketball here is not as big as in other states, partly because of hockey.

There aren't that many D-1 players coming out of Minnesota in either sport compared to states of similar size. Minnesota is in the low 40's for football recruits, but is the 21st most populous state. Far, far smaller states produce many more D-1 players: Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, well, you name it. The only states with less recruits are Connecticut, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, and Delaware.

In basketball, Minnesota is middle of the pack, with the same number of D-1 recruits since 1998 as NEW HAMPSHIRE and less than Nevada. Chew on that.

Kind of. He's absolutely right about our football programs. I made this point, and he expanded upon it. However, population is a huge factor that you're absolutely overlooking. We can get more out of what we have with better youth football, but population is a limiting factor.

 

[highwayman]

Kind of. He's absolutely right about our football programs. I made this point, and he expanded upon it. However, population is a huge factor that you're absolutely overlooking. We can get more out of what we have with better youth football, but population is a limiting factor.

First, I didn't fully look at the chart, it only listed 41 states (40+DC) and Minnesota was 35th.

Second, I guess I still don't understand. I counted 14 states smaller than Minnesota that produce more D-1 players--in many cases substantially more. I don't understand the population angle.

 

[GophersInIowa]

List them.
The 12-15 Kill should offer a full scholarship. Which would be our entire class this year, but for arguments sake.

Jones
Ragnow
Stelter
Hassenhauer

Behr?
Hovey?
Woods?
Johnson III?
Menard?
Weber?
Gordon?
Ejiya?
Who are they missing out on?

This year's class is so good that Rivals decided to have a MN Top 5 instead of the normal Top 10. The top end talent is good, but I don't think it is a deep class.

 

[GophersInIowa]

Once again, this is an urban legend. Brewster recruited the MN players who were worthy of receiving Big Ten offers. People can't bitch about the quality of recruiting out of one side of their mouth and then bitch about MN HS players needing to receive more offers out the other side. Offering and signing more MN HS players who have only I-AA offers would, by definition, worsen the recruiting.

By the numbers according to Rivals:

2007 - 13 MN kids signed with BCS level schools, 8 signed with MN. Of the 5 who signed somewhere else, only 1 did not have a MN offer.
2008 - 9 MN kids signed with BCS schools, 4 signed with MN. Of the 5 who signed somewhere else, only 1 did not have a MN offer.
2009 - 9 MN kids signed with BCS schools, 6 signed with MN. Of the 3 who signed somewhere else, only 1 did not have a MN offer.
2010 - 6 MN kids signed with BCS schools, 2 with MN. Of the 4 who signed somewhere else, only 1 did not have a MN offer.

So lets summarize: according to Rivals, 37 in state kids signed with BCS schools while Brewster was our head coach. Of the 37 players, 33 had offers from Brewster and his staff. Yep, HopherGole is right again, Brewster didn't recruit in state at all.