Will Kill succeed as a recruiter?

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ruppertflywheel

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As we close out this season it looks like we will end up with marginal class. Are you satisfied, concerned? I remember what the old Iowa coach Hayden Fry said: " Recruiting at times is like being a car salesman. You have to be good enough to sell a car that a person really doesn't want to buy" What if Hoke, Golden, Patterson, etc. had exceped the Gopher position would we have a better class coming in? I remember Coach Kill said : "Recruiting is recruiting no matter what level you are at". Do Holer's buy that?
 

The 3 guys you mentioned are recruiting to helmet schools or a school that is a Top 5 program, lets not compare what coach Kill is able to do, to what they do. This class will end up better than I expected. You can't recruit kids for a month and think you are going to sway them from programs that have been recruiting them for over a year. Thats just stupid. Give the guy a full recruiting cycle before we go getting into these stupid discussions.

And why call this a marginal class. If you look at "average stars" we will have a better class than 4 other BT schools, not too bad for a coach transition.
 

Good question. Did Hoke change Carter's mind because he's Brady Hoke or because he's "selling Michigan?" I would guess that there would have been some defections from our current class regardless of who took over. Brewster had just started to recruit to a system and high school athletes are likely as sensitive to that as anything else football-related when making a decision.

I agree with Kill that "recruiting is recruiting no matter what level you are at," just like baseball is baseball wherever it is played. The basic rules are the same, but the game is played more crisply and ably the higher up you go. In other words, you set up your recruiting system and do the same things as you've always done in terms of "form", but as you move to a higher level of competition you have to use your system to lure better athletes/players--the "substance" of the process.

I'm confident Kill can get it done.
 

We will only truly know the ranking of the class in 5 years.
 

ruppertflywheel said:
As we close out this season it looks like we will end up with marginal class. Are you satisfied, concerned? I remember what the old Iowa coach Hayden Fry said: " Recruiting at times is like being a car salesman. You have to be good enough to sell a car that a person really doesn't want to buy" What if Hoke, Golden, Patterson, etc. had exceped the Gopher position would we have a better class coming in? I remember Coach Kill said : "Recruiting is recruiting no matter what level you are at". Do Holer's buy that?
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The final results aren't in yet, looking at the current list wouldn't this be a career year by Mason's recruiting standards?
 


"Will Kill succeed as a recruiter?"

Yes.
 

Rodriguez would have had Carter if he had offered him. All Hoke had to do is offer. Really didn't have much to to with Hoke. I think that Kill would still have the best class of any of the other coaches mentioned. He was the only one that has been recruiting strongly in the midwest for the last few years.

What the Gophers accomplish on the field will go a long way toward Kill's future in recruiting. I think he will be succeed or at least get us back to being respected as a football program. We have to be respected before we can move to the next goal.
 

I think we should assume that Jerry Kill is hopeless as a recruiter. If he can't get kids to walk away from schools that have been recruiting them for a year, or two, in 5 whole weeks, he just doesn't have it. Let's get a new coach, who is calling Joel to let him know?
 

There's no question...

There is no question we should be able to know everything about Jerry Kill's recruiting abilities after he has been at Minnesota for six or seven weeks. Why wait until Wednesday to make definitive judgements?
Also, I thinks it's long past time we say for sure how long Kill will be at Minnesota and how many games he'll win with the Gophers. It should be clear to everyone by now that Kill will be at Minnesota for precisely ten years and win exacty 74 games. Since we now know everything there is to know about Kill's abilities as a recruiter and the success he'll have as the head coach, what else is there to talk about here?
 



Lonely is right, let's just have a vote on Kill's career here on signing day, and get it over with. Why watch the games? This is better than fantasy Football, you don't even have to wait for the games to be played to know the outcome, whoever has the strongest opinion wins.
 

People always make the mistake of believing someone is a good recruiter if they sign players that are highly ranked by recruiting services. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You are a good recruiter, no matter where you are, if you recruit kids that fit your system, keep them in school, develop them and win football games.

The notion that a two or three star kid that becomes all conference or all american only did it because they were "coached up" when they get to college is absurd. Those kids have a tremendous amount of talent as well. It is harder to see at the time they are being recruited, but they are certainly very talented athletes. The coaches that find them are great recruiters because they win a lot of games with players like that.

Jerry Kill is going to be successful if he finds kids that fit his system, those kids buy into his program and develop over 3-5 years. When you can announce a senior class on senior day of 18 and 10 are starting and the other 8 contribute in some way, instead of the 5 that will be announced next year for the Gophers, and when those kids are helping you win a lot of games, then he will be a successful recruiter.

Personally, I think he is going to be successful. I have seen or heard nothing to indicate that he would not. It is going to take time, but he is going to do it the right way, in my opinion. Kill being successful will make the battle for the axe that much more interesting and I hope he pulls it off.

It is the exact opposite of what I thought when Brewster came in.

Maybe one day there will be two axe battles in the same year. That would be awesome.
 

GVBadger said:
People always make the mistake of believing someone is a good recruiter if they sign players that are highly ranked by recruiting services. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You are a good recruiter, no matter where you are, if you recruit kids that fit your system, keep them in school, develop them and win football games.

The notion that a two or three star kid that becomes all conference or all american only did it because they were "coached up" when they get to college is absurd. Those kids have a tremendous amount of talent as well. It is harder to see at the time they are being recruited, but they are certainly very talented athletes. The coaches that find them are great recruiters because they win a lot of games with players like that.

Jerry Kill is going to be successful if he finds kids that fit his system, those kids buy into his program and develop over 3-5 years. When you can announce a senior class on senior day of 18 and 10 are starting and the other 8 contribute in some way, instead of the 5 that will be announced next year for the Gophers, and when those kids are helping you win a lot of games, then he will be a successful recruiter.

Personally, I think he is going to be successful. I have seen or heard nothing to indicate that he would not. It is going to take time, but he is going to do it the right way, in my opinion. Kill being successful will make the battle for the axe that much more interesting and I hope he pulls it off.

It is the exact opposite of what I thought when Brewster came in.

Maybe one day there will be two axe battles in the same year. That would be awesome.
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Well put and I would love to see the Gophers and Badgers play twice in a year.
 




ruppertflywheel said:
As we close out this season it looks like we will end up with marginal class. Are you satisfied, concerned? I remember what the old Iowa coach Hayden Fry said: " Recruiting at times is like being a car salesman. You have to be good enough to sell a car that a person really doesn't want to buy" What if Hoke, Golden, Patterson, etc. had exceped the Gopher position would we have a better class coming in? I remember Coach Kill said : "Recruiting is recruiting no matter what level you are at". Do Holer's buy that?
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Recruiting is a great deal more than being a "car salesman". I find it ludicrous that some people are putting so much weight on how many stars his recruits have and how his class compares with the helmet schools. What people should be focusing on is how Jerry and his staff are approaching recruiting, not whether this is a great class or not.

They are not selling cars! They are selling a program that is built on integrity, hard work, discipline and results. They also realize that the parents are a critical part in the decision making process. Their message to the parents is not only will their sons going receive great coaching, but it will done with integrity and emphasis on academics and the development of sons' life skills. Normally, Jerry and his staff goal spend a lot of time in developing a high level of trust with the recruit and their parents but were not able to do it this year, given the short amount of time they had. The 2012 class recruiting process will be quite different.

What we did learn this year about recruiting this year is how hard the staff works, how focused they are on their needs, what type of athletes they are after (athletic and fast), and how they solve problems such as the recruitment of their kicker.

Are they car salesmen? No, but they do know what they are doing and they do it well. Don’t worry so much how this class grades out but be happy about how well they go about their business. That is how a good program gets built.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Rodriguez would have had Carter if he had offered him. All Hoke had to do is offer. Really didn't have much to to with Hoke. I think that Kill would still have the best class of any of the other coaches mentioned. He was the only one that has been recruiting strongly in the midwest for the last few years.

What the Gophers accomplish on the field will go a long way toward Kill's future in recruiting. I think he will be succeed or at least get us back to being respected as a football program. We have to be respected before we can move to the next goal.
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From the sounds of it, Big Bird could have been the coach at Michigan and Carter probably would have gone there if offered.
 


Will Kill be able to take the ESPN 150 and pick and choose who he wants? No. Will Kill be able to identify kids he can succeed with and get enough of them to win? Yes.
 

The proof is in the pudding...

While I certainly enjoy following all of the excitement around recruiting, in the end I really don't care what the Gophers recruiting class is ranked. I care about what happens on the field in the fall. Ultimately, that is the only real data on the quality of a recruiting program. Certainly higher ranked classes would be nice for the publicity it generates, but if the coaching staff can take 2-3* players, develop them and win games...I'm a happy Gopher fan! The measure of a recruiting class is whether they help the team win...that's it. I'll take classes that contribute to Gopher wins over Rivals and Scout rankings every time.

We will have to wait until this fall, next fall and probably at least one more, before we truly know if Coach Kill has the program going in the right direction, i.e. getting better every day/year. If you want create a metric to judge progress, start counting the number of players that Kill recruits that become contributors to winning games. So, all of us rational people are going to wait until there is real data to make judgments.

Go Gophers!
 

corcoran1 said:
I think we should assume that Jerry Kill is hopeless as a recruiter. If he can't get kids to walk away from schools that have been recruiting them for a year, or two, in 5 whole weeks, he just doesn't have it. Let's get a new coach, who is calling Joel to let him know?
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Thanks for the chuckle - that's great!
 

I have never seen our hockey players as to the number of stars that they have coming out of high school. However I believe they have a good number of stars for each one of them. How are they doing in the standings year after year? When you look at other schools who seem to be doing better but with players with I believe fewers stars. It shows that hard work and commitment come in to play is worth more than a ranking. With that, I believe Jerry Kill is looking for players who will work hard, buy into the system and be successful in whatever they do when they graduate from the U. Just because you have 4 or 5 stars coming out of highschool, doesn't mean they have it when they go to college due to their lack of attitude of working out, studying etc.

Yes 4-5 stars may be nice, but when they come, lets get the right ones down the road.
 

The 3-5 yr. timeline is correct to find out if he can recruit or not. Alot of all stars as Fr. grow up to be busts and alot of those overlooked turn out to be starters or contributers. After reading Shamas column today and they tell the kids what to expect and to be sure thats what they want before they sign, I like the attitude and understand why some hot dogs back out and go somewhere else.
 


I am quite pleased at how recruiting has gone, considering we have gone through a coaching transition. I expect next year to be better.
 

GVBadger said:
People always make the mistake of believing someone is a good recruiter if they sign players that are highly ranked by recruiting services. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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I am completely on board with this philosophy. Football fans get way too caught up in Rival and Scout stars, Gopher fans are no different.

I did an analysis of several teams (Miami, Texas, Notre Dame, Georgia & Florida) following a Stewart Mandel Mailbag question he was asked about why Texas, Georgia and Florida were so bad in 2010. He said it was poor recruiting. I replied back to him on what level was he justifying that response?

To be specific, Mack Brown's five classes on board last fall averaged a team ranking of 4.5 when you averaged Rival and Scout rankings over that span. 4.5! In other words, Brown had a top five recruiting class across a five year period and his team was only slightly better than the Gophers this year.

Rival and Scout stars are way over-rated. Kill is a great coach and I will take his analysis of football talent, and that of his dedicated staff, over Rivals and Scout any day.
 

Rankings matter, therefore stars matter, so we have to do a lot better than this year in the future. It's unfair to judge Kill on the class this year (and he still could land some kids by signing day), but I have not seen anything so far that makes me confident in his ability to recruit going forward. It's not necessary for Minnesota to be 1-3 in the rankings out of the 12 Big Ten teams, but we do need to be somewhere between 4-7 most years. No coach is going to go out and defeat Tressel, Pelini, Ferentz, Bielema, etc on a regular basis with inferior talent.
 

Sumtimegophs said:
I am completely on board with this philosophy. Football fans get way too caught up in Rival and Scout stars, Gopher fans are no different.

I did an analysis of several teams (Miami, Texas, Notre Dame, Georgia & Florida) following a Stewart Mandel Mailbag question he was asked about why Texas, Georgia and Florida were so bad in 2010. He said it was poor recruiting. I replied back to him on what level was he justifying that response?

To be specific, Mack Brown's five classes on board last fall averaged a team ranking of 4.5 when you averaged Rival and Scout rankings over that span. 4.5! In other words, Brown had a top five recruiting class across a five year period and his team was only slightly better than the Gophers this year.

Rival and Scout stars are way over-rated. Kill is a great coach and I will take his analysis of football talent, and that of his dedicated staff, over Rivals and Scout any day.
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Let's be REAL specific. Texas WAS 5-7 last season, so I suppose if one squints real hard it might be possible to pretend they were 'slightly better' than the Gophers.

But...

Previous seasons records under Brown:

13-1
12-1
10-3
10-3
13-0
11-1
10-3
11-2
11-2
9-3
9-5
9-3

That's 128-28.

You might be right, and the whole 'stars' thing is way overrated, but I don't think Texas is a good place to look to start proving it.
 

Hey Ruppert, I like Kill's chances of succeeding as a recruiter better than I like your chances of defending your wife's honor in the Arizona lot at MOA.
 

I have faith in Kill as a recruiter ... more so than Ruppert's proficiency with a nine-iron.

- The Old Lady
 


sonnygarcia said:
The 3 guys you mentioned are recruiting to helmet schools or a school that is a Top 5 program, lets not compare what coach Kill is able to do, to what they do. This class will end up better than I expected. You can't recruit kids for a month and think you are going to sway them from programs that have been recruiting them for over a year. Thats just stupid. Give the guy a full recruiting cycle before we go getting into these stupid discussions.

And why call this a marginal class. If you look at "average stars" we will have a better class than 4 other BT schools, not too bad for a coach transition.[/QUOTE]

you are right. "average stars" only mater when they get the result you want. if they do not get the result you want Rivals, Scout and ESPN recruiting rankings do not mean a thing.
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