Comparing Recruiting

Just wanted to see what people thought about Chizik's ability to recruit compared to Mac's. I know most people are sour on Chizik and like Mac, but lets hear your honest opinions.

I think when Mac lost some good assistants his recruiting and record suffered causing him to recruit Juco's. That left his team's pretty shallow his last couple of years.

I think Chiz's 2008 class is the best overall class that we have had in the last 5 years. Here are most of the players that contributed and their class.

2008(true freshman) - Benton, Darks, S. Johnson, L. Johnson, Mahoney

2007 - dont know who's class to call this because of the job switch.

2006 (redshirt soph, true Juniors)- Arnaud, Lamaak, Parker, ARob, McDowell

2005 - (redshirt Jun, Seniors) James Smith, Chris Singleton, Marquis, Catlett, Reggie Stephens

2004 - (redshirt Seniors) Chris Brown, RJ, Scales, Travis Ferguson

I didnt count any JC guys because they only help for a short time and they didnt affect this last year. Look at how few of kids played out of the 2004 and 2005 classes, which should have been our seniors.

Ruemp and Bykowski also started a game or two as true frosh this year and Haughton and Ferguson saw ALOT of PT. Not to mention some of the promising guys that redshirted... that 08 class is GOOD...

I agree in theory about not wanting to see us recruit JUCO's, but it isn't really fair to eliminate them when they were a key part of those recruiting classes. Add Lamarcus Hicks, Tim Dobbins, Ahtyba Rubin, and Alvin Ace Bowen to your 2004-2006 list and it changes things quite a lot.

The 2008 class has a lot of potential but I'm not ready to crown them anything yet. Some of those guys would not have seen the field yet at most if not all other Big 12 schools. Sed and Darks probably played more than they should have this year as part of Chizik's youth movement, and the two CB's made some big plays but also gave up a lot of big plays.

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Originally Posted by MontyBurns

The 2008 class has a lot of potential but I'm not ready to crown them anything yet. Some of those guys would not have seen the field yet at most if not all other Big 12 schools. Sed and Darks probably played more than they should have this year as part of Chizik's youth movement, and the two CB's made some big plays but also gave up a lot of big plays.

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True, but the 05 and 06 classes left us in a bad spot of having to play alot of young guys at key positions... I wouldn't say it was due to the 'Youth Movement' as much as necessity...

You should also compare recruiting to the one man staff at Auburn:
The Auburn University Official Athletic Site - Football

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Originally Posted by Wesley

You should also compare recruiting to the one man staff at Auburn:
The Auburn University Official Athletic Site - Football

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LOL.

Gene has surrounded himself with all his friends!

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Originally Posted by Costanza

Just wanted to see what people thought about Chizik's ability to recruit compared to Mac's. I know most people are sour on Chizik and like Mac, but lets hear your honest opinions.

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Chizik was a far better recruiter.

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I think when Mac lost some good assistants his recruiting and record suffered causing him to recruit Juco's. That left his team's pretty shallow his last couple of years.

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Sorry, I laughed out loud when I read this. I liked Mac, but his real problems started when, by choice and design, he went for the "quick fix" after the insight.com Bowl, and signed a boatload of juco transfers. Second mistake was relying on the recruiting scraps and conversions that Loney had managed to turn into decent offensive lines--and his successors couldn't. Mac also signed far too many Iowa kids, who clogged the roster and never contributed.

Note that I didn't say that it was bad to sign Iowa kids, just that it was bad to sign too many of them, the ones who never had a chance in the first place.

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I didnt count any JC guys because they only help for a short time and they didnt affect this last year. Look at how few of kids played out of the 2004 and 2005 classes, which should have been our seniors.

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Chizik had an interesting tendency to find juco sophs to get into the S&C program.

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I think Chiz's 2008 class is the best overall class that we have had in the last 5 years. Here are most of the players that contributed and their class.

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As far as base athleticism, and talent across the board, the '08 class is the best I've seen at ISU in the past thirty years that I've been watching.

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Originally Posted by MontyBurns

The 2008 class has a lot of potential but I'm not ready to crown them anything yet. Some of those guys would not have seen the field yet at most if not all other Big 12 schools.

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You realize you're saying this about the best conference in the country? That's kinda like saying "Some of these guys wouldn't start as rookies for the '07 Patriots". :biggrin:

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Sed and Darks probably played more than they should have this year as part of Chizik's youth movement, and the two CB's made some big plays but also gave up a lot of big plays.

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Lots of freshmen do that, especially when safety help is nonexistent. And Darks reminded me a bit of Tracy Henderson, the reason for him not to play was more his slender (6-1 167) build, than any lack of skills.

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Originally Posted by Aclone

Chizik was a far better recruiter.


Sorry, I laughed out loud when I read this. I liked Mac, but his real problems started when, by choice and design, he went for the "quick fix" after the insight.com Bowl, and signed a boatload of juco transfers. Second mistake was relying on the recruiting scraps and conversions that Loney had managed to turn into decent offensive lines--and his successors couldn't. Mac also signed far too many Iowa kids, who clogged the roster and never contributed.

Note that I didn't say that it was bad to sign Iowa kids, just that it was bad to sign too many of them, the ones who never had a chance in the first place.



Chizik had an interesting tendency to find juco sophs to get into the S&C program.



As far as base athleticism, and talent across the board, the '08 class is the best I've seen at ISU in the past thirty years that I've been watching.

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Yeah, but we really needed some of those Jucos Mac signed after the insight bowl.... like Seneca Wallace, Tim Dobbins, Jeremy Lloyd, Lamarcus Hicks, Lance Young, etc. The OL Jucos that year did not pan out unfortunately, but it is hard to blame for going after them since our OL cupboard was beyond bare. Many of our All-Conf and NFL players in the Mac years were Jucos.

I think we we will always have to recruit a few Jucos here and there at Iowa State. Hopefully we can keep it in the 3-6 a year range, plugging in holes with Jucos and going after studs like the above mentioned players. We don't want to get to a point where we are signing 15 a year, but we will always have the need for a few to plug holes here and there and infuse talent onto our roster.

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Originally Posted by CloneIce

Yeah, but we really needed some of those Jucos Mac signed after the insight bowl.... like Seneca Wallace, Tim Dobbins, Jeremy Lloyd, Lamarcus Hicks, Lance Young, etc. The OL Jucos that year did not pan out unfortunately, but it is hard to blame for going after them since our OL cupboard was beyond bare. Many of our All-Conf and NFL players in the Mac years were Jucos.

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My main objection to that class was that Mac apparently had a great reaction for California high schools after the bowl win, with an excellent L.A. area recruiter on staff (am I thinking of Kirby Wilson? The former Illinois wideout?), and rather than establishing a four year baseline of talent, went for the quick fix--as if Cyclone fans wouldn't have been patient for a couple of years. And those OL recruits were a disaster. Many didn't even qualify.

Starting at the bottom, you better just get talent wehere you can get it. The worse is when players leave before their time is up.

Some of the Juco's were good, but my point was in long term it leaves you with no 4 or 5 year players actually contributing. This pattern causes you to have 2-10 years.

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Originally Posted by Aclone

My main objection to that class was that Mac apparently had a great reaction for California high schools after the bowl win, with an excellent L.A. area recruiter on staff (am I thinking of Kirby Wilson? The former Illinois wideout?), and rather than establishing a four year baseline of talent, went for the quick fix--as if Cyclone fans wouldn't have been patient for a couple of years. And those OL recruits were a disaster. Many didn't even qualify.

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Yes or else they didnt make it through the spring or the summer (I think just Colin Menard and Emanuel Valencourt made it out of the 5 or 6 JC OLmen and they weren't as good as advertised). They apparently weren't cut out for D1 ball. Remember Max Steward, the Stud California Juco LB in that class? He was his conference player of the year and a 4* recruit. I remember a friend of mine who was on the team at the time telling me that none of the coaches knew what happened to him (at least at first), he didn't show up in the summer when he was supposed to and none of the coaches could reach him. He just went AWOL and they couldn't reach him even by phone.

I do think after that class Mac did much better due diligence on his Jucos... they didn't all pan out but they at least qualified and made it to campus for practice. It seemed to me that Chizik did a really good job of that too, all of his Jucos pretty much qualified and made it.

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Originally Posted by CloneIce

I do think after that class Mac did much better due diligence on his Jucos... they didn't all pan out but they at least qualified and made it to campus for practice. It seemed to me that Chizik did a really good job of that too, all of his Jucos pretty much qualified and made it.

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True, but I think that class was the beginning of the downfall of the program--Mac just never really recovered, it became an endless process of trying to "fill holes", rather than build talent. And four or five years later was where it really hurt.

Of course, it also didn't help that every placekicker he signed thereafter got hurt, sometimes as little as a couple of weeks after signing day. :no:

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Originally Posted by Costanza

Some of the Juco's were good, but my point was in long term it leaves you with no 4 or 5 year players actually contributing. This pattern causes you to have 2-10 years.

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It does, but in Mac's case, without Jucos, we would have never had those 9-3 and 7-5 bowl seasons either. Probably not a single one of them, maybe one bowl season tops. Without his first big Juco class, no insight bowl, and possibly no more Mac as coach of ISU. Without Jucos like Seneca Wallace and Jeremy Lloyd, we have no Independence Bowl and Boise Bowl, no Top 10 ranking, and no 5 year winning streak over Iowa. Without L Hicks and Tim Dobbins we probalby don't go back to the Independence Bowl or the Houston Bowl.

So you have to take the bad with the good when recruiting Jucos.