J.J. Denman Picks Penn State

1) Paterno’s old
2) Half our assistants, and three of our best recruiters, almost left
3) We screwed up last year.

etc.

It ain’t over til it’s over.

Sure, I may feel tense and nervous if things aren’t looking all that great (and they weren’t), but I wasn’t ready to judge the class a failure (like some people were) until all the letters were in.

I also realized that even if we did have a complete crap class last year, it wasn’t going to be the death of the program, as it was going to likely be bookended by 2 relatively strong classes.

And in which case, I am in no way talking or referring to you or people like you. However, last year almost every recruit post (especially the early ones) on BSD ended up decaying into a JOE MUST GO/FIRE [INSERT COACH NAME HERE] clusterf**k. People were declaring the dawn of the NEW DARK YEARS, and how this one class was going to destroy PSU football. As someone said above, most of those people never brought anything positive or insightful to the discussion and are no longer here.

Were you being rational and level-headed? In terms of questioning the staff, early on, perhaps, but that same staff was able to pull off a half-way decent class even when things were looking bleak and despite the slow start and other factors. Why were people like me able to stay grounded and look at the factors that played into the poor start of last year’s class, then look at the chess pieces still left on the board and realize well before signing day, “We’ve still got a damn good chance to make this a good class”?

A kid with a Bama-OSU-USC offer sheet have the potential to be great. A kid with a Toledo-Akron-Ohio offer sheet is going to be more of a project. I’m not saying a five-star will always be awesome just like I’m not saying the Bama-OSU-USC offer sheet kid will always be awesome. But the two are related.

With the new rules in place, more and more teams, Penn State inclusive, are throwing offers out to the highest rated prospects and seeing what sticks. It’s actually a decent strategy, as you don’t lose anything with a verbal offer, and if some 4 or 5 star kid from Georgia has any interest, then you go from there.

Unless you’re a conspiratorialist, stars are somewhat objective too. Paterno, Bradley and LJ watch film and create their “big board.” So do JC Shurburtt, Steve Wiltfong, and Sean Fitz. Do I trust the PSU staff more? Yes. But do I think that Sean Fitz is bumping kids or lowering kids as some sort of puppet master? No.

Though I agree with you on some of your points, let me address them in order.

But I don’t write off kids because they only get two stars. I’ll look for a reason why they don’t get a lot of stars, and if I find a reasonable explanation I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t think anyone is writing off completely a two-star kid, nor does anyone seriously expect the five-star kid to come in and win four Heismans. There still needs to be coaching, conditioning, etc. But, as has been pointed out elsewhere (and while typing this, by STU BOY above), a higher star generally means a higher chance of success.

Some kids just fly under the radar because they don’t go to big schools and their coaches don’t know how to play the recruiting game. The kids that go to the camps and the combines and play in big schools and have coaches that know how to put a highlight reel together and send it out get noticed more easily. A lot of what goes into the stars is politics. Does a kid get a lot of offers because he has five stars or does he get five stars because he got a lot of offers.

This I completely agree with. The kids from NY, MA, and the northeast in general aren’t going to get as many looks, just because, traditionally, there isn’t a great amount of talent in the area. Conversely, and the data show this, FL, CA, GA, etc. kids are disproportionately represented at the top. A lot has to do with access to camps, getting film out, etc.

he recruiting services are out to sell subscriptions because that’s their business model. So if Notre Dame and USC are going after a kid, it’s in their interest to hype that kid in order to generate interest around him. If he’s a two-star kid nobody will care. But if he’s a five-star kid, people will pay to hear what he says in his interviews.

This argument, however, I don’t really buy. Recruiting is a cottage industry, and while it is growing, there are going to be people that follow it and people that don’t. Despite what Rivals or Scout or 247 puts out, some people just won’t buy subscriptions. I think it is more in their interest to be accurate rather than pump up a kid just because he has a nice offer list. Again, though, those probably are correlated in that a high offer list typically means a better prospect which typically means more press. But to say that Sean Fitz or Cory James is hyping Jarron Jones or James Ross because they can sell more rather than the fact that they’re actually good is slightly skewed.

Sometimes you see a kid with four stars that nobody wants to offer. Some guy from Rivals watches him dominate in a camp and gives him four stars, but a head coach looks deeper than that. Sometimes there are grades issues or character issues the Rivals guy doesn’t pick up on in a camp. Maybe the kid can bench press a Buick, but if he can’t handle college life he’s no use to us. This is why I don’t necessarily freak out when I see them back off of a hot prospect.

Agree in part, dissent in part. Camps only tell part of the story, and despite what others may think, recruiting services understand that. A four- or five-star kid can destroy the bench, run a 3.4 40, or whatever, but if he’s a total dbag, we’ll back off (PSU at least, can’t speak for Saban, Kiffin, etc.). It’s why we backed off Marquise Wright last year, and I’m sure it’s why we back off kids this year. But I agree that trusting the staff’s judgment is paramount, unless they’re fielding a bunch of two-star kids that no one else wants.

Stars are flawed, but so are offer sheet comparisons, coach judgments, and recruiting service judgments. There is just as good a chance that JVP will miss on a kid as there is that 247 will miss on a kid.

In the end, the data are debate tools, allowing the fans and interested masses to compare and contrast how your team is building and rebuilding. Like you said, I get more excited when we get a five-star kid, but to say (and I’m not saying you said it) that stars don’t matter and I’ll like the kids when they get here is silly.

Penn State is as big of a name and has as much of a following as any other school.

Is that there is a difference between the abstract and specific views. Well of course there is. We’d be here for months if we specifically debated all 47 thousand (made up number) high school football prospects. But in the abstract, stars (and offer sheets and other factors that RUTS said) matter and the data show that, and to ignore them completely is silly. That is what I was trying to say with silly, not that the other side of the debate is actually silly.

Stars don’t matter on the individual level. Okay, fair enough. Deon Butler, Jordan Norwood, Antonio Logan-El, etc. But you’re saying offer sheets do matter, correct? I don’t really see the difference. It’s not like there are 5 star recruits with offers only from MAC schools or 2 star recruits with offers from Ohio State, USC and Alabama. Maybe there are, but I’m guessing it’s rare. And you could throw out the same individual examples for offer sheets that are thrown out in the stars arguments.

And above you say stars matter the least for offensive lineman b/c they’re the hardest to evaluate? Then why say there’s no doubt we got a gem in Denman?