The most impressive thing about our 2015 football recruiting class....

[Mesaclone1]

...is how many guys have multiple P5 offers. Most notable is how many guys we grabbed who have offers from Kansas State (5), which is important because we all know that nobody evaluates talent better than old Snaggletooth. That said, we beat out Missouri, Louisville and West Virginia multiple times for players, and even reeled in guys with elite offers from places like Ohio State, Texas A&M and Wisconsin.

Stars are a notoriously inaccurate way to evaluate recruiting, but examining which kids had offers from other P5 schools is a much better indicator of talent and potential (because coaching staffs in general are far better at talent evaluation than recruiting services...and they do intensive research/review before making offers). Using that as a primary criteria, I think the class we're about to bring in has to be seen as the best one in the past decade in terms of potential. I say "potential" because that's all that can be looked at on signing day in any given year. There's no telling if this...or any... class will meet its potential, but I think it is clear that we have much reason for optimism when looking at the impact of this group.



Early Signees
Jay Jones - Illinois, Indiana
Demond Tucker - Texas A&M, TCU, West Virginia, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Kansas State, Arizona State
Jomal Wiltz - California

Commits
Josh Coleman - Missouri, Penn State, Wake Forest
Julian Good-Jones - Louisville, Kansas State, Indiana
Denver Johnson - Washington State
Bobby Leath - Illinois
Bryce Meeker - Kansas State
Seth Nerness - Kansas State, Louisville, North Carolina, West Virginia
Jaypee Philbert - Arizona State, Kansas
Marcel Spears - Kansas State, Kansas, Missouri
Josh Thomas - Georgia Tech, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi State, Ohio State, Purdue, North Carolina State, Syracuse, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin


The offer lists used for this analysis come from rivals, so any imperfections are related to their background work.

 

[CYCLNST8]

Stars are a notoriously inaccurate way to evaluate recruiting

Oh, now you've gone and done it. Here come da haters...

 

[MilehighClone]

On paper it looks to be a huge upgrade. Can't wait for tomorrow!

 

[Jer]

Not bagging on the recruits, happy to have them, but I think you're missing one critical piece. Teams don't have the same sales pitch or goals with these players. All of those, for instance, are probably sold on being starters very quickly at ISU, where many of them would be recruited as projects or backups at many of the other schools. Not all offers are created equal.

 

[bosco]

If I want to be sad and depressed I'll just re-watch the TTU game.

 

[Stormin]

Not bagging on the recruits, happy to have them, but I think you're missing one critical piece. Teams don't have the same sales pitch or goals with these players. All of those, for instance, are probably sold on being starters very quickly at ISU, where many of them would be recruited as projects or backups at many of the other schools. Not all offers are created equal.

I don't buy the argument that schools recruit players out of HS to be career backups. IMO, they may be a project, but the school offering the scholarship expects the player have the potential to be a starter someday.

Offers may not be equal when it comes down to having scholarships and not having enough potential bodies to fill those scholarships. That happened a lot in the McCarney era. Those are known as reaches. But when a kid gets multiple Powrer 5 Conference Offers then that kid is not a reach. That kid has some talent.

 

[Jer]

I don't buy the argument that schools recruit players out of HS to be career backups. IMO, they may be a project, but the school offering the scholarship expects the player have the potential to be a starter someday.

Offers may not be equal when it comes down to having scholarships and not having enough potential bodies to fill those scholarships. That happened a lot in the McCarney era. Those are known as reaches. But when a kid gets multiple Powrer 5 Conference Offers then that kid is not a reach. That kid has some talent.

You worded it better than I did. I think the point is that ISU is looking at these as immediate contributors and most schools on the list would be looking at them as potential contributors over their 4-year career. They're still an upgrade over what we have today, don't get me wrong, but I think only looking at who offered is misleading as well as stars.

 

[Luth4Cy]

I have a feeling CPR won't be around when the incoming freshmen graduate, but this staff did a very good job with this class all things considered. Considering next season is probably make or break for this staff, I have a feeling we could see fewer guys redshirt than we are accustomed to.

 

[CycoCyclone]

no one, who started in the super bowl, was a 5* recruit.

 

[Jer]

no one, who started in the super bowl, was a 5* recruit.

But they did have coaches that developed them, something this staff has really struggled to accomplish. Not turning this into pro or anti any coach, but player development hasn't been our strongest asset the past couple years.

 

[im4cyclones]

I think this staff may be the best bunch of recruiters we have ever had. Can you imagine selling this turd to HS prospects? Our history is terrible, our climate isn't much better, our geography offers nothing unless you are excited about corn, we are located in a small city with no real excitement, our record the past two years has been horrid. And to top it off, the head coach is on the hot seat.

How we signed ANYONE with a P5 offer is beyond me. Makes you wonder what the staff can do when (if?) they have some success...

 

[Luth4Cy]

But they did have coaches that developed them, something this staff has really struggled to accomplish. Not turning this into pro or anti any coach, but player development hasn't been our strongest asset the past couple years.

To be fair, when you look at where the recruiting classes rank and where they finished in the league I'm not sure you can indisputably say player develop was less than average.

 

[Clonehomer]

But they did have coaches that developed them, something this staff has really struggled to accomplish. Not turning this into pro or anti any coach, but player development hasn't been our strongest asset the past couple years.

It sure sounds like you're turning this into anti-any coach

 

[cmjh10]

Not only can KSU evaluate talent, they can also develop it. CPR hasnt shown to be a great developer of talent. Lets wait a few years before we get too excited about this class.

 

[Mesaclone1]

Jeremy, no doubt that we stole some of these kids from some great schools thanks to the opportunity for early playing...but who cares. What matters is, we got 'em. I really don't care all that much what kind of sales pitch it took to reel them in, I simply care that these kids were talented enough to be pursued heavily by some tremendous schools. I am particularly impressed when I see KSU on a list, because Snaggle has proven over the years that he knows talent like few others do...he hits far more often than he misses, especially with JUCO kids.

 

[Jer]

It sure sounds like you're turning this into anti-any coach

I'm actually not Anti-CPR so that doesn't apply. I wasn't asking for his ouster at the end of last year and would love nothing more than for him to turn things around. I was simply making a statement that just looking at offers isn't necessarily any less misleading than looking at stars. Stars roughly align to levels of offers in macro, though obviously not always in micro.

Jeremy, no doubt that we stole some of these kids from some great schools thanks to the opportunity for early playing...but who cares. What matters is, we got 'em. I really don't care all that much what kind of sales pitch it took to reel them in, I simply care that these kids were talented enough to be pursued heavily by some tremendous schools. I am particularly impressed when I see KSU on a list, because Snaggle has proven over the years that he knows talent like few others do...he hits far more often than he misses, especially with JUCO kids.

Very valid point and very well stated.

 

[Aclone]

The most impressive thing to me about this class is that the staff has managed to salvage a modestly respectable class on the heels of a 2 win disaster. That's what's impressive to me.

 

[BWRhasnoAC]

This is pretty stout. Hoping for a surprise or two in our direction. Color me impressed with all the adversity here.

 

[CyFan61]

Stars are a notoriously inaccurate way to evaluate recruiting

This is probably the most frustratingly wrong statement that people keep making about recruiting.

Here's a hypothetical:

If there are 100 prospects and..

Five 5*
Fifteen 4*
Thirty 3*
Fifty 2*

Then just because ten of the 2*'s make the NFL compared to "only" four of the 5*'s, doesn't mean that recruiting stars are useless.

I'd be interested to read something about how "notoriously inaccurate" recruiting stars are, so long as it incorporates this kind of simple probability that is unexplainably overlooked by the major writers.

P.S. This post is not meant to be criticizing CPR or even to comment on ISU recruiting directly but only to comment on the quoted statement that I keep seeing over and over and which is simply untrue.

 

[mustangcy]

This class is flat out impressive considering the last two seasons. I agree with what has been said...if we can actually get back to a bowl game next year I'd love to see what this staff could do with a little positive momentum on the field. All things considered I would call this the most impressive recruiting effort I've seen since I've been an ISU fan.

Also, it's pretty hard to show quality player development when your best players are on the bench hurt, playing hurt or not even on campus when it's their turn to shine.