What will it take to crack the Cretin pipeline?

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Stan

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Year after year Cretin puts out highly rated recruits, and year after year, we see these kids go out of state.

I don't blame Kill, nor did I blame Brew, nor did I blame Mason. Clearly there is an issue bigger than a single staff. Is it a culture of mistrust with the school from an academic or athletic standpoint? Is it that the U isn't "cool" enough at Cretin? It's one thing to lose Cretin kids to Notre Dame, but we're now losing them to other schools, albeit very good programs.

What will it take for us to break into this pipeline? And how come this school seems to have 1-2 really top kids, but doesn't often even have mid-level recruits that we could sign and coach up into a BT contributor. It's kind of strange that they will have a recruit a year or so that the helmet schools covet, but no recruits that Western Michigan or Ohio go after.
 

Tim Gordon is going to Eastern Michigan.
Jonathan Harden went to Western Michigan.
 

It would be interesting to hear some Cretin insiders weigh in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 


Roblaw- just exactly is their malfunction?
 




Its hard to understand Cornell. Almost from the beginning he seemed to have little interest in the Gophers. He never really seemed to give Kill and the program a chance. I can understand a kid wanting to get away from home. However, I do not like them to attend a BIG school and then come back into his home state and play against his home team. It could be worse. He could have chosen Iowa or Wisconsin.
 

The pipeline to Iowa started with the Alts and continues with Binns they all have come back and serve on the coaching staff. Cretin being a Catholic school means that Notre Dame will always be in the picture. The Iowa situation might not improve until Ferentz retires but a couple of straight victories would help. To a degree being a private school, a lot of the students go away for college, so that going to play a factor as well.
 



Stan said:
Year after year Cretin puts out highly rated recruits, and year after year, we see these kids go out of state.

I don't blame Kill, nor did I blame Brew, nor did I blame Mason. Clearly there is an issue bigger than a single staff. Is it a culture of mistrust with the school from an academic or athletic standpoint? Is it that the U isn't "cool" enough at Cretin? It's one thing to lose Cretin kids to Notre Dame, but we're now losing them to other schools, albeit very good programs.

What will it take for us to break into this pipeline? And how come this school seems to have 1-2 really top kids, but doesn't often even have mid-level recruits that we could sign and coach up into a BT contributor. It's kind of strange that they will have a recruit a year or so that the helmet schools covet, but no recruits that Western Michigan or Ohio go after.
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It's just a Cretin thing. Actually probably a private school thing, but Cretin appears to be the cream of the crop athletically.
These kids are recruited for their athletic talents in middle school from all over, to go play at a private school that is "the best" at everything. It's really no surprise when those same kids end up leaving to go play for "the best" colleges, even if it's probably a poor fit.
It's been going on there for years and years.
There's nothing that can be done. It seems like the coaches there have no sway whatsoever over the kids, since the coaches genuinely appear positive on the U.

As far as Cornell goes, I at least appreciate he took a proactive approach to the U, and at least didn't play with the media and fans like Ragnow, Henderson, Reid Travis, etc
 


How do we know Floyd, Onuwalu, Cornell etc. would have gone or considered the gophers more if they went to another school? JC and Ragnow didn't go to Cretin but they chose not to come here anyways. We just struggle
with getting 5 star guys to stay home and all of them happen to go to Cretin. Ever heard of Shady Solomon, Zach Mottla or Connor Rhoda? Ray Hitchcock even is a coach at Cretin.
 

Win a B1g Title outright and get a string of competitive winning seasons. Winning cures all.
 



Others have said it in this thread already, but it really does simply boil down to winning more and winning consistently. People try to make it more complicated than that, but it isn't. The "cool" schools got so because they win a lot which leads to a lot of other things that make them "cool". There's a reason that kids go to USC instead of Cal, and to Notre Dame instead of Indiana, and to Ohio State instead of Cincinnati.
 

Winning more will definitely help, but I think location also plays a factor. For most people, when you are done with high school you are ready to move onto something new and different. For a recruit that lives and goes to high school in Eden Prairie, moving to the U campus is a whole new world even though its only 20 miles away. It would feel like "moving away," even though you are relatively close to home. For someone at CDH, the U is literally 5 miles away, so I could see where it might feel to a recruit like being in the same neighborhood that you grew up in.
 

Galt has it right. Many high school kids just want to go away to college if they get the chance. The large majority of DI prospects in Minnesota live in the Twin Cities Metro Area. For them, going to the U is not going away to college. On the other hand, most DI prospects in Wisconsin live outside the Madison Metro Area. They can go away to college and still play for the Badgers. This factor should not be overlooked or underestimated.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Others have said it in this thread already, but it really does simply boil down to winning more and winning consistently. People try to make it more complicated than that, but it isn't. The "cool" schools got so because they win a lot which leads to a lot of other things that make them "cool". There's a reason that kids go to USC instead of Cal, and to Notre Dame instead of Indiana, and to Ohio State instead of Cincinnati.
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Dpo nails it.
 

John Galt said:
Winning more will definitely help, but I think location also plays a factor. For most people, when you are done with high school you are ready to move onto something new and different. For a recruit that lives and goes to high school in Eden Prairie, moving to the U campus is a whole new world even though its only 20 miles away. It would feel like "moving away," even though you are relatively close to home. For someone at CDH, the U is literally 5 miles away, so I could see where it might feel to a recruit like being in the same neighborhood that you grew up in.
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UpnorthGo4 said:
Galt has it right. Many high school kids just want to go away to college if they get the chance. The large majority of DI prospects in Minnesota live in the Twin Cities Metro Area. For them, going to the U is not going away to college. On the other hand, most DI prospects in Wisconsin live outside the Madison Metro Area. They can go away to college and still play for the Badgers. This factor should not be overlooked or underestimated.
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Geographical proximity is the #1 factor to the average college football recruit. If you don't give them an excuse to go away (not winning enough) they are more likely to stay home than not. Only on a self-loathing Gopher board could we give proximity as a disadvantage.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Geographical proximity is the #1 factor to the average college football recruit. If you don't give them an excuse to go away (not winning enough) they are more likely to stay home than not. Only on a self-loathing Gopher board could we give proximity as a disadvantage.
Click to expand...

Let me now prove to everyone with facts and data how wrong you are. The state of Florida has not 1, but 3 "big-name" D-1 schools: FSU, Florida, Miami. All three schools, especially FSU and Florida, have won significantly in the last 10 years. So let's check on the top 10 recruits out of Florida for 2014 and see where they went:

http://247sports.com/Season/2014-Football/RecruitRankings?State=FL

Out of the top 10 recruits on 247 sports, 4 of 10 went out of state.
Out of the top 20 recruits, 9 went out of state.

Bottom line, it's really not that preposterous that some kids want to move away from home.
 

John Galt said:
Let me now prove to everyone with facts and data how wrong you are. The state of Florida has not 1, but 3 "big-name" D-1 schools: FSU, Florida, Miami. All three schools, especially FSU and Florida, have won significantly in the last 10 years. So let's check on the top 10 recruits out of Florida for 2014 and see where they went:

http://247sports.com/Season/2014-Football/RecruitRankings?State=FL

Out of the top 10 recruits on 247 sports, 4 of 10 went out of state.
Out of the top 20 recruits, 9 went out of state.

Bottom line, it's really not that preposterous that some kids want to move away from home.
Click to expand...

You're quoting results from top 10 and top 20 recruits. I said "average recruit". Boy, you really "prove[d] how wrong [I am]", didn't you?
 

John Galt said:
Let me now prove to everyone with facts and data how wrong you are. The state of Florida has not 1, but 3 "big-name" D-1 schools: FSU, Florida, Miami. All three schools, especially FSU and Florida, have won significantly in the last 10 years. So let's check on the top 10 recruits out of Florida for 2014 and see where they went:

http://247sports.com/Season/2014-Football/RecruitRankings?State=FL

Out of the top 10 recruits on 247 sports, 4 of 10 went out of state.
Out of the top 20 recruits, 9 went out of state.

Bottom line, it's really not that preposterous that some kids want to move away from home.
Click to expand...

You can just read the summary if you wish: http://jse.sagepub.com/content/9/1/67.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

Also, just so you know, in the facts you did present STILL over 50% chose to remain local. There are approximately 100 D1 programs in the country and still over HALF decided to say in the same state. I don't think you're crafting a very good argument.
 

Could just be that the people that can afford to send their kids to private high schools and choose to do so also choose to send/encourage their kids to go private colleges or smaller colleges that have a better teacher/student ratio.

I am an alum and as much as I love the school and the gophers I didn't send my three kids there, because I didn't feel that kind of impersonal large school was a good fit for them.
 

I no longer consider Cretin a Mn school and I'll just have to suffer through life w/o watching their graduates in M&G.
 

He picked OSU over Minnesota because of academics.
 


dpodoll68 said:
Geographical proximity is the #1 factor to the average college football recruit. If you don't give them an excuse to go away (not winning enough) they are more likely to stay home than not. Only on a self-loathing Gopher board could we give proximity as a disadvantage.
Click to expand...

Great, the average recruit wants to be a gopher. It's only the real good ones who want to leave. So no problem here.
 

Correlation does not equal causation. Kids could be more likely to go to college close to home because they want to go to the hometown school. It is also possible that, once we get past the elite superstars that are on everyone's radar, that kids are more likely to be recruited by the coach of the local school because he will have connections with the local high school and can more easily send assistants to watch the kid's games. My bet is it is a combination of both factors.
 


nsmike said:
The pipeline to Iowa started with the Alts and continues with Binns they all have come back and serve on the coaching staff. Cretin being a Catholic school means that Notre Dame will always be in the picture. The Iowa situation might not improve until Ferentz retires but a couple of straight victories would help. To a degree being a private school, a lot of the students go away for college, so that going to play a factor as well.
Click to expand...

Didn't John Alt go to Columbia Heights? Also, wasn't it his son Mark that played Hockey at Minnesota?

BTW Cornell went to OSU because he was embarrassed for Eddie George...:clap:

On a serious note, Just having visited a couple of feeder schools to Cretin, you can feel some pressure to go to Notre Dame. The rest is probably peer pressure, etc that drives some away from Minnesota.

While winning more games is part of it, winning the hearts and minds of local youth plays a factor. The coaches caravan is a good start.
 

proudgopher said:
Its hard to understand Cornell. Almost from the beginning he seemed to have little interest in the Gophers. He never really seemed to give Kill and the program a chance.
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Why is that hard to understand? I honestly find that way easier to understand than the people who take for freaking ever to make up their minds between us and a school that is entirely unlike us. If your top two choices are Minnesota and Arkansas, that's like not being able to decide if you want to buy a sensible 4-car sedan or drive a humvee. How long does that honestly take?

If you don't believe the Gophers are going to be an elite program in the next four years, and it's imperative to you that you go to an elite program, by all means tell the coaches that and move on. That's entirely understandable in my mind.
 

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