Heading out this afternoon to see family. Unless something big happens, I’m not going to be getting back on the computer until Tuesday.

Going to pull a few tabs I’ve been meaning to hit (two for quite a while).

You know how most Americans think of themselves as middle class? Or moderate, politically? That’s how most college sports fans think of their views towards star-rankings in recruiting — a favorite topic of Reed’s.

We believe that maybe we have a slight lean or bias either towards the raw talent versus the development and evaluations by coaching staffs. Reality becomes a subjective thing…

I’m starting to digress.

This article hits on not just coaching staffs finding diamonds in the rough, but players that would be missed because they were playing out of position.

A college coach who hits on about half of his recruits does pretty well. That may seem like a low expectation, but, in their evaluations, college football coaches must deal with the trickiest variable of all: puberty. Most males undergo radical physical changes between age 15, when they start getting recruited in earnest, and age 22, when they typically graduate from college. So, coaches must master the process of projection.

NFL teams have entire scouting staffs devoted to evaluating prospective players. They can ask potential draftees to undergo elaborate medical tests, which show everything from a player’s recovery from injuries to the density of his bones. They also have a distinct advantage, as everyone they evaluate is at least 20 years old.

College coaches aren’t so lucky. They can’t medically evaluate players, so they must rely on observation, experience, genealogy and old-fashioned intuition as they try to decide whether a 200-pound high school quarterback might someday grow into a 260-pound defensive end. Or whether a 240-pound high school tight end will leave for the NFL as a 300-pound center.

There’s a bunch of successful anecdotes in the story, and this one came back to me after Terrelle Pryor was cut — again — from an NFL team. After which, Pryor’s agent, let word out that Pryor was (finally) willing to switch positions from QB to WR — and was quickly signed by the Browns. (Yet, Pryor still can’t quite admit that.)

One of the anecdotes concerns Larry Fedora — presently the UNC head coach — when he was at Southern Mississippi, and finding Jamie Collins. Dan Mullen at Mississippi State quizzed his own coaching staff on how they missed the kid.

After Collins blossomed at Southern Miss, Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen asked his assistants why they didn’t make a run at the prospect in the 2009 recruiting cycle. The answer? Mullen and staff arrived between December ‘08 and January ‘09. They lacked the time to do the same homework as Fedora’s staff, which arrived in the state a year earlier. However, once Mullen and his staff settled in, they also began to find Miracle-Gro gems.

Coaching turnover does more than simply hurt recruiting with decommits, it means new staffs having to play catch-up on evaluations and everything else.

Bigger coaching salaries, bigger expectations, and fan bases that will ask, “we are paying that kind of money to finish last?” That’s going to be at least one group of fans of a school in the SEC West, as every school in that side of the conference is paying their head coach at least $4 million/year.

But the SEC has become almost a different level entirely, with nine of its 14 coaches making at least $4 million. Even Kentucky is paying its football coach, Mark Stoops, more money ($3.6 million) than national runner-up Oregon, which just extended Mark Helfrich for $3.5 million per year.

“Nebraska is one of the winningest programs in history, and they just hired another head coach from a Power 5 league (Oregon State’s Mike Riley), gave him a million-dollar raise and what he’s making at Nebraska would put him last in the SEC,” Mississippi State athletics director Scott Stricklin told USA TODAY Sports. “So the SEC is pretty committed to the sport of football, and I think we’re mirroring our fans’ passion and interest in the sport.”

Mississippi State was the last SEC West school to announce a new contract for its coach this year, following Arkansas, which raised Bret Bielema from $3.2 to $4 million, and Ole Miss, which bumped Hugh Freeze from $3.15 to $4.3 million following interest from Florida.

Market forces dictate it, more than anything else. But I’m sure Pitt fans would never go to the rate of pay as the basis of complaining. Nope. Never.

Marquee non-con games are increasingly held at neutral sites, rather than set as home-and-home. Why? It’s always about the money.

Non-campus games are profit-driven. Just because your school could contend for a title doesn’t mean it’s attractive.

Will you and at least 20,000 of your friends cough up for a $150 ticket and two nights in a hotel? Schools need to prove drawing power to neutral-site organizers.

Schools that tend to appear in Atlanta and Dallas boast massive fan bases — Alabama, LSU, Clemson, Auburn — or are locals like TCU who can help fill Cowboys Stadium.

And organizers want stability.

“[The time between planning and the game] is getting shorter, but we’re still looking at the coaching situations,” said the city source. “Let’s say last year we signed Michigan to come in here in ’17 to play a Power 5 team. Now maybe Jim Harbaugh doesn’t want to travel to open a season or wants a softer schedule as he starts to rebuild. Depending on how the contract is built, you could be stuck, or you could have a losing program coming in here that isn’t ready for that kind of game.”

Don’t expect to see Pitt in one of these games for a while.

Happy 4th everyone.