Fourth and Dumb

Huzzah! The day of signing twelfth form matriculates to commitments for college is upon us! No popinjays allowed!

So much for trying to sound like Montgomery Burns, an idea that Red Stripe has made me think would be funny. Yay, Beer, indeed!

Not too many surprises on signing day, but a couple things:

Gators get OL Chaz Green late in the afternoon to cement the overall #1 consensus class. Like every year, the boilerplate reminder that dudes still have to pan out is well taken, but note that Bama and Texas and Florida have had multiple top-five consensus classes in the last four seasons and have lived at the top of the rankings.

Kiffy showed he’s not to be taken lightly as a recruiter, snagging Huge Human Seantrel Henderson at dinner time to stay in the top ten.

As a Gator, I’m constitutionally bound to hate Tennessee, but I will always keep a soft spot in my heart for signee Da’Rick Rogers, as he said today that he picked the Vols partly because Kiffin had left. My kind of kid!

FSU has restocked the pantry, and we can expect them to be very dangerous sooner rather than later, though for next season the defense should still be a bit of a disaster.

Sigh. One problem. After today, truly college football is over for now. Let’s start counting down till spring games, baby!

Just two days before the high school class of ‘10 signs their college lives away! Of course, Fourth and Dumb will offer spotty and highly selective coverage of aspects of signing day of interest to us, or, at least, to me.

Can the Gators hold onto all of their high-profile recruits and maintain the overall #1 class? Can FSU pull in a few last-minute five stars, particularly Christian Jones from the high school one mile from my house (Lake Howell in Seminole County, FL, by the way)? Will Kiffy be able to keep WR Kyle Prater and other stars to their oral commitments to USC?  Inquiring minds want to know, and we’ll try to sort it all out on Wednesday night and Thursday.

Since we’re on an SEC kick this week, here’s an update on a story Chris wrote about back in March, regarding the commitment of RB Bryce Brown to the Tennessee Volunteers.

It turns out that the NCAA is now investigating Brown for accepting cash to go on unofficial recruiting visits during his sophomore year of high school.

Assuming nothing inappropriate actually happened, hopefully neither any questions the NCAA might have, nor a minor hip injury, will keep Brown off the field.

Lane Kiffin and the Vols have been catching a lot of heat lately for the recruiting of Daniel Hood, a DL who was convicted of participating in the rape of his 14-year-old cousin (!) when he was 13 (!!). Hood’s accomplice was a 17-year-old who got ten years in prison, while Hood himself had been a ward of the state until age 17 while attending a Catholic high school.

Hood’s crime is indeed repugnant, but the kid was 13, and, not knowing the details, we don’t know whether he or the 17-year-old were the instigator, but it’s easy to assume it was the older kid. Regardless, he was given a penalty by the court which has been completed. Just as in the Michael Vick case, this country’s constitution says that after you do the time, you’re free (don’t get this absolutist Civil Libertarian going on voting bans and other post-penalty provisions in this country).

Mike Bianchi, columnist at my local paper, wrote that playing for an SEC team is a privilege, not a right, but indeed now that Hood has completed his sentence, he can now be afforded the privileges of any citizen. Bianchi also quoted the director of a sexual assault crisis center in Knoxville as saying,  “I worry about that message that UT is sending to the community, to the nation and to other young men . I think it’s a message that a winning football team is more important than what happens to a young woman’s life.”

That is indeed a terrible message, but I don’t think that’s what Hood’s recruiting says at all. Most important to note, Hood’s cousin, the victim of the ugly crime he committed, wrote a letter supporting his recruitment. She must believe that his culpability has been punished and that he doesn’t need to be punished by everyday citizens after the fact. I hope Hood has indeed changed his ways and will never again be a threat to any person. But at least in a football program he’ll be under more scrutiny and discipline than he would be if he was going to UT as a regular student, joining a frat, etc.

So ends this brief moment of positive statements about Tennessee football on Fourth and Dumb. Back to regular programming: Lane Kiffin sucks!

Some random thoughts about the 2009 SEC classes:

Lane Kiffin seems to have passed his first test as an SEC coach (well, second, if you have a test for having a hot-blonde-model wife who inspires facebook groups and websites of her own, as I most certainly do) by getting Tennessee’s best class in a few years.  Phat Phil had allowed Georgia, Florida, and especially Bama to make inroads into Tennessee, but Kiffin mostly locked down his in-state targets (with the notable exception of a last-second decommit by stud WR Marlon Brown, who’s heading to UGA), and he managed to steal two Gator commits: Nu’Keese Richardson and Marsalis Teague, both of whom looked to flourish in the Gator spread (and boy will I miss not being able to yell “Nu’Keese” at the TV set . . . well, in a positive way, that is). This should all come as welcome news to Vols fans, who are itching to be relevant in the SEC again (I know, I know, they were in the championship game last year!!! But that still doesn’t seem real).

One theory I heard that I think makes sense is the idea that a big year, like winning a national title, pays off not immediately but the next season out. This talk centered on LSU, which did well but not crazy good last year after their NC, but this year had a ridiculously good class. The rationale is that by the time your team wins a title, the vast majority of players have made trips or declared or at least are strong leans someplace. But the juniors, just starting the process, can get geeked about joining a team that just won big.

This effect might have been going on with the Gators, who saw some big decommits (the two WRs listed above as well as #1 DB Greg Reid, who went to FSU) despite their title run. The Gators just didn’t have many scholarships to give this year, so they only signed 16, including just one WR (Andre Debose, from Seminole HS, about 12 miles north of where I write this). But already there’s a lot of interest from kids in the 2010 class. The Gators were also likely hurt by the glut of returning players–being two-deep at EVERY defensive position will indeed frightenaway kids who aren’t either super-confident or willing to believe that it’s okay to get better and learn rather than being promised immediate playing time at a program that has less talent.

Georgia did great, and they’re going to have the big receiver Marlon Brown to go with last year’s freshman sensation A.J. Green. Now they just have to get a QB to throw it to them. UGA’s big-time QB recruit is Aaron Murray from Tampa Plant HS. All I know about that kid is that while visiting my brother-in-law in Tampa in October, I picked up the Tribune on a Saturday morning and saw that Murray had gotten an early rest after throwing seven TDs the night before . . . in the first half. Whether he can handle the SEC East right away is questionable, but the Dawgs look to be scary on offense in 2010.

South Carolina’s big coup was stealing WR Alshon Jeffrey from that other USC out West. If Stephen Garcia can stay out of jail, he can throw some balls his way.

Ole Miss signed 37 dudes. 37!!! Houston Nutt is awesome.

Dan Mullen didn’t do much with just a few weeks to recruit for Miss State, but they’re going to be fun to watch right away.

Everybody else? Eh, you know, they did fine, I’m sure.

The dust is settling on signing day, and the usual suspects are at the top of all the experts’ consensus winners. ESPN has it like this: LSU, USC, Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, Florida, Miami, Georgia, Oklahoma, FSU.  No real surprises there.

Les Miles and Nick Satan continue to work wonders by bringing in stars. With this class, luring big names like Russell Shephard away from Texas, Miles has proven that he doesn’t need Saban’s recruits to win. Keep in mind that if LSU had had a good starting QB last year, they could’ve likely beaten anybody. So they’ve reloaded. Satan kept his best players ins state and out of Auburn, and he held onto consensus #1 RB Trent Richardson.

Like anyone else watching ESPNU today, I got to see some clips of LSU’s Shephard; that kid is fast and strong, and I imagine that in fall 0f 2010 he’ll be starting for LSU, unless, of course, he lives his life like Ryan Perriloux, who got tossed out of Baton Rouge last season–therein lies the inherent difficulty of getting too excited about signing day.

Sure, championships are won based on what teams bring in today, but for every Percy Harvin there’s a Steve Shipp, a Gator recruit back in ‘95 who was the top-rated WR on everyone’s board, and by some lights the best overall player recruited that year. He barely got onto the field at UF during a stretch when they didn’t have the best receiving corps.

The one team that never ceases to amaze is USC. They pick up the country’s top QB prospect again, which appears to be a yearly prerogative for the Trojans. This year it’s Matt Barkley, who attended California’s QB assembly line, Mater Dei High School. Other notable QBs out of there: Matt Leinart, Colt Brennan, and 1964 Heisman winner John Huarte. Crikey. In the meantime, they can have verbal commitments broken by a top-five recruit like Manti Te’o or top-five OL Xavier Sua-Filo, and they still may have the best group in the country. What’s even more shocking is that some Samoan/Hawaiian dudes didn’t go to USC–isn’t it some kind of law for those guys to go to USC?

Okay, more to come. Stay tuned.

As ESPN had already agreed to send its Gameday crew to televise the Florida Orange and Blue game on April 12, Urban Meyer has decided to spice up the show a bit. Details are still sketchy, but Meyer will be allowing a number of UF students to come to practice and work out with the team, winnowing them down until one remaining student will get a chance on national TV to race against the four fastest Gators: RB Chris Rainey, WR Deonte Thompson, WR Louis Murphy, and, of course, WR Percy Harvin. Meyer says that if the student beats Harvin, he’ll immediately be given a full scholarship (dont’ know if that means he’ll have to take one away from someone else, though). Meyer didn’t say whether the student would get a scholarship if he beat any of the other three, though.

My own orange-and-blue bias aside, this is typical of Meyer’s promotional and recruiting smarts. He gets big airtime on ESPN for a glorified scrimmage and lots of press attention for a stunt, and don’t think that Class of 2009 high school stars don’t notice.

 Anyway, I’m enrolling in an online class so I can get in on this. I figure I can shave a few tenths off of my 7.8 40 time and take out that Harvin guy. Or at least Murphy.

Although my esteemed colleague Mr. Morlan understandably has a problem with “creepy old men staring down teenagers,” I, being sadly closer to the terms “creepy” and “old,” have no such compunction.

A lot of sports fans view the whole recruiting biz as pretty sleazy, perhaps especially now in the wake of the case of Kevin Hart, the HS senior from Reno who made up stories about being recruited by Cal and Oregon and even set up a press conference before suffering the humiliation of having to admit his deceit. And there is something off-putting about visiting fan sites and seeing crazed fans who seem more excited about recruiting victories in February than on-field wins in November. But the serious college football fan ignores signing day at his peril: plenty of evidence shows that, though a highly ranked recruiting class doesn’t guarantee success, it’s almost (almost!) guaranteed that your team can’t compete for the BCS title if it doesn’t bring in a consensus top-ten haul.

 According to CSTV’s rankings (just picking one–of course there are dozens of rankers out there), these were the top ten recruiting classes of 2004 (players entering college in the fall of 2004, and probably juniors/seniors this past season):

1. USC  2. LSU  3. FSU  4. Miami  5. Michigan  6. Oklahoma  7. Georgia  8. UF  9. Ohio St.  10. (tie) Texas/Tennessee

Here is the final AP poll from the 2007-8 season (with the CSTV 2004 recruiting class ranking in parentheses if the team didn’t appear above):

1. LSU  2. Georgia  3. USC  4. Missouri (21)  5. Ohio St.  6. West Va. (47) 7. Kansas (51) 8.  Oklahoma  9. Va. Tech (41–but note their 2005 class was #15)  10. Texas

This is highly unscientific, but it’s interesting (if not statistically significant) that six of the teams with top recruiting classes finished in the top ten four years later; Tennessee finished last season at 12 and UF at 13, meaning they were close as well. So the only two outliers from the 2004 recruiting rankings were FSU and Miami, two teams which have sort of flamed out the last couple years due to coaching stagnation and upheaval, respectively (among other things).

The four teams that made the top ten in 2007-8 without having top ten recruiting classes in 2004: Missouri, which had a good class in 2004 (#21) and rode a good qb and a great freshman wide receiver to some big wins; West Virginia and Virgina Tech, two schools which have (had in WVU’s case–sorry, Fred!) top-notch coaches and have become recent fixtures as football powers; and Kansas, a team which got hot and surprised people, which will always happen (and thank goodness–how boring would it get otherwise?).

Of course no one wins a national championship in February, but there’s a reason why some fixtures in the recruiting top ten in the 21st century (USC, OSU, Michigan, UF, Oklahoma, and LSU have all appeared in CSTV’s top ten recruiting classes at least four times thus far) are in the mix for the BCS title every year: they recruit well AND are well coached. Pretty common sense, and a good reason why creepy old guys like myself sweat out a bunch of 18-year-olds putting their signature on a piece of paper and faxing it to our alma maters.

 As Fred suggested, there will be big-time flameouts like Xavier Lee, and some two-star guys will compete for the Heisman. But I’ll bet that four years from now USC, Florida, Miami, LSU, Clemson and Alabama (though I will hope intensely that Saban fails) will be fighting for BCS title game berths. But not Notre Dame: even with a consensus #2 recruiting class they’ll find a way to muck it up.

Creepy old men staring down teenagers while the latter are signing contracts that essential hand the next four years of their life over makes me feel like a bad person. So, really, I don’t have anything to add to this discussion. Tomorrow I’ll take a look at the big results, but thanks to our favorite Florida State QB, Xavier Lee, I believe recruiting class rankings mean absolutely nothing.