(Here is the last of a three part series on recruiting the prospective college players.  We left off yesterday talking about recruits and football camps… and greyshirts, etc…)

Rivals.com Chris Peak just wrote about the Pitt “Senior Elite” camp that we held last Sunday… here is an excerpt:

The Pitt coaches had positive feedback for all three local linebackers, as they did for Canton (Oh.) McKinley’s Kadeem Trotter, who was as impressive as any of them. The same goes for Buffalo (NY) Bennett’s Isaiah McDuffie, who is committed to Boston College (and was previously committed to Syracuse). And there were a few more who stood out, but I think you’re getting the picture: the linebackers were pretty good, and there are probably a few in that group who could be offer-worthy.

So here we have a recruit at our camp, Isaiah McDuffie, who has already committed to two different schools yet he’s paying his own way to attend a camp where he wants to get noticed by yet another school.  This is how it’s done these days.

A lot of fans and a ton of schools want the NCAA to adopt an ‘early signing’ policy in football like they do in basketball.  Last year the Conference Commissioners addressed the issue and punted it to at least this summer.  The gist of the proposal is that the schools would have the ability to have recruits sign an LOI as early as December of the recruiting year so they can ‘lock down‘ the kids they really need.

Is it a good thing?  Here is a great overview done by SB Nation in June 2015 that lays the details out well.

“College football’s National Signing Day is a February tradition. That’s the day recruits sign pledges to universities and commitments finally become official.

The Collegiate Commissioners Association is voting this week on a proposal that would create another three-day signing window, giving high school athletes the opportunity to sign prior to February. It’s expected to happen at some point — an early period could go into effect this year, from Dec. 16 to 18 [Update: the decision’s been “tabled,” so no early period for 2015] — and there wouldn’t be a limit on the number of recruits a school could sign during the early period.

Football has been one of the few college sports without an early signing period, joined only by soccer and water polo. Basketball’s early signing period has been considered a major success, because colleges do not have to continually recruit committed prospects once they’ve signed.”

I however, and since I’m from a Union Town originally, don’t like the idea of the recruits having their options closed off to them two months early when other and better offers may still come rolling in.  Here is an example: Let’s say that MacVitte was happy with his Pitt commitment when that phone call from Les Miles of LSU comes in.  Now MacVitte has to look seriously at a bigger and better conference and more national exposure during his college career… which could well translate into a better position in the NFL draft.

We saw that play out to our advantage in reality and MacVitte stuck to his word, but had he been pressured into signing in December that second option is suddenly closed to him. Can you imagine the pressure and threats that are going to rain down on these kids if the schools have that early date to use as extortion?

And believe me there is already enough heavy pressure on these kids to verbal early – giving the coaches the power to hang an early signing date over the student’s head is power the schools do not need and is unfair to the majority of HS recruits.  According to the article here is “Who Loses”:

Players who need more time. Before most kids decide on a college, they get a lot of time to figure out their choices.

That’s not true for football players, who sometimes get short windows in which a scholarship offer is actually an offer. Windows would shrink even more with an early signing period, and players wouldn’t be able to evaluate schools nearly as thoroughly.

Some athletes would be pressured into making decisions earlier, leading to less-informed decisions. If they decided to wait, they’d lose leverage and run the risk of losing that offer to someone who is ready to commit.

Many decisions would have to be made without official visits, the visits the school can pay for. Each recruit gets five of those visits, but they can only happen during his senior year. With high school football still going on, most athletes already have little time for these visits. With an early signing period, those who couldn’t afford to pay for their own visits would be at a disadvantage. (emphasis mine)

High school coaches likely couldn’t accompany players on many visits, and they’re the ones most likely to know the right questions to ask.”

I have noticed that lately the business of college football is being skewed more and more in the school’s favor as years pass. What they want to do now is take bargaining power out of the kids hands completely and even cut down on the player and his family’s ability to make informed decisions.  It’s getting to the point where it seems like the schools don’t even care if the kid gets a decent high school education or not.  They keep wanting to move the recruiting process earlier and earlier into the kids’ personal lives.

Back to the main questions.

6.  How do recruiters know what the recruit will be like, and what position he’ll play, in college?

This is also a timely question given the two recruits, George Hill and Kaezeon Pugh, who we have been talking about shifting around to other positions.

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.

“Some guys are going to be 300 pounds if they work,” Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said. “Other guys are going to be 300 pounds and it ain’t their choice. Them and God had a meeting, and they’re going to be 300 pounds.” Learning to differentiate between the two can separate a successful coach from a fired one.

So that’s about growth a player can, and hopefully will, experience once he gets into a programs weight room and training table.  The latter can’t be over-emphasized as a lot of recruits come from families where having three square meals a day is only but a dream.

So, recruits shouldn’t be offended when a college coach’s handshake lingers. He is probably trying to see if a player’s wrist size offers any clue as to how many pounds he’ll pack on in college. Coaches will also ask family members and high school coaches about a player’s diet. Sadly, many can’t afford regular meals. College coaches must take into account how three steady meals could affect a player’s physique.

 We touched on this subject the other day but it is important enough to repeat:

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.

Good luck with that. Along with all the socio-academic issues a new college freshman student/athlete faces, and the staff has to deal with, the coaches also have to figure out when those little puppies in the recruit’s scrotum are going to drop in earnest.

The next major milestone for recruits is Junior Day. It’s essentially an unofficial visit for all of the junior class prospects the school is courting in one way or another. These are players ranging from the elite “you can commit anytime” players to the guy that is merely the high school teammate of a player the school wants next year.

Either way, Junior Days are becoming an increasingly a big deal. Schools are even hosting multiple Junior Days as a way to get all of the elite players together on one trip, separate from the less fawned-over talents.

And of course there are the camps… many, many camps.

These are easily the misunderstood aspects of recruiting when it comes to the fans I believe.  There are a bunch of different types of football camps.  I’ll try to separate them and discuss them so that you can see how these are used as a tool by both the players and the college staffs.  This is from the for-profit site Fullridenation.com”

One Day Camps are by far the most popular for college football programs. These camps are used almost exclusively for prospect evaluation.  If you are attending one of these camps you can expect to spend the day participating in drills that will help coaches evaluate your potential as a college football player. Different variations of the one day camps may include a Big Man Camp or a Skills Camp.

Elite Football Camps are often promoted with personal invites from coaches to their higher rated prospects and generally have a smaller number of participants than the typical one day camp.  However, they are open to anybody that is willing to pay the fee and are usually not much different than any other individual camp.  To amp up the excitement level these camps often held under the lights.

Satellite Camps are really just a one day camp held at an off campus location.  They allow college coaches the opportunity to travel and work as guest coaches at other institutions.  These often take place at other colleges or even high schools.

This gives coaches the advantage of seeing more prospects in a region or around the country while giving prospective student athletes greater a greater opportunity to be evaluated or discovered.  They are particularly beneficial for athletes and families that may not have the financial means to travel all over the country attending camps at different college campuses.

Satellite camps have been in the news a lot lately because the NCAA in an ill-advised move recently banned the practice, but quickly reversed the decision when there was an overwhelming public outcry to such an outright ban.  A least for now these camps remain an important piece of the recruiting process.

Note – this is what we just saw Narduzzi doing down in Georgia this weekend.  From the ESPN Pitt Team site:

“It might be a new concept to the Pitt fan base, but Narduzzi has had some success recruiting in the state of Georgia.

“In the past, where I’ve been, we’ve always gotten guys from Georgia,” Narduzzi sai. “Darqueze Dennard was a great one that we had that came up to Michigan State and they are out there. He was a two-star guy that we evaluated and said we liked him and maybe not a lot of people did, but he was a first-rounder with the Bengals. So I know they are out there, it’s just a matter of finding them.”

Coaching at different satellite camps will certainly allow Narduzzi to evaluate talent, but the Pitt head coach also wants to spread the Panthers’ brand in the talent-rich area.

“Obviously you get the opportunity to get the University of Pittsburgh’s (Note: It’s “Pitt” coach, try to remember!) name out there in a different state, a different city, whenever you have that opportunity,” Narduzzi said. “There’s a lot of great players out here, a lot of great coaches out here and it’s just good to give your time and to show we are out here looking at kids.”

Multi-Day Camps have seen a decline in popularity over the past few years. While coaches will also use these camps for evaluation, they are more focused on improving your skills and fundamentals. However, it is not unusual for a prospect to attend just one day of a multi-day camp in order to get evaluated.  If a school only offers a multi-day camp or if you have been invited to one of these camps, we recommend contacting the camp coordinator, recruiting coordinator or a coach to see if they will prorate the cost of attending the camp for just one day.

7 on 7 Camps and Team Camps. These team camps are not typically associated with the recruiting process. However, it is becoming more common for coaches to invite a number of elite prospects to participate in a 7 on 7 camp, in order to get a further evaluation of the skill players and it is not unusual to hear of an athlete receiving a scholarship offer after participation in a team camp.

One important point – while this article may state that 7 on 7s ‘are not typically associated’ the fact is that the recruiting sites themselves put an awful lot of stock in them – with limitations.

Remember one thing about these camps – unless they are part of an ‘official visit’ the school or boosters can’t give the player (and his parents most likely) a penny in camp fees, travel or food costs.  So when these recruits show up at these camps it is for a reason – especially if traveling from NY State.  However as we learned yesterday recruits and their families are looking at the risk/reward, or Return On Investment (ROI) if you want to get clinical about it, and spending the money to get the kids presence out there. Hell – even a D2 or D3 scholarship is going to be more than an initial outlay for camps.

Here is a secret – recruiting sites are very rarely going to give a kid 4*s right off the bat unless there has been some self advertising on the recruit’s part. If there is a possible 4* player in a small HS school division that may not get seen by scouting services then hiring a recruiting publicity service to get his name in front of those scouts awarding the stars is a good idea.

To help in this Rivals.com runs their own series of camps across the nation.  This year they are doing it in partnership with Under Armour.  But here is the huge difference – these camp are for the elite and are invitation only – and are free in almost all respects to the recruits.

Who attends Rivals Camp Series events (including the Quarterback Challenge)?

Rivals Camps Presented by Under Armour are a series of regional camps for elite athletes. Invitations are sent to college football prospects with FBS offers, or players who are the cusp of receiving one. Rivals Camps are geared toward current juniors but sophomores and freshmen are eligible.

What is the cost to attend a Rivals Camp Series event?

All Rivals events are free to participants. There is no registration or participation fee. However, prospects will have to provide their own transportation to and from camps. All player costs (airfare, hotel, food and beverage) are covered at the Rivals Five-Star Challenge Presented by Under Armour.

So you just know every school in the world has reps attending those elite camps and  salivating over the kids.  Remember the piece above about Narduzzi going into a camp at Georgia?  Here is the key phrase with that:

Coaching at different satellite camps will certainly allow Narduzzi to evaluate talent, but the Pitt head coach also wants to spread the Panthers’ brand in the talent-rich area.

Ahhh, it all makes more sense now.  I wonder if any money changes hands to get a school’s coaches to be invited on these satellite camp’s coaching staffs.  It gets you and your school right smack in these kids faces.  I’ll bet that happens in the Elite Camps.  It will be interesting to find out if that is true or not…if I’m wrong I’m sure someone will correct me.

All of this has spawned a huge surge in the “Get Yourself Recruited” industry over the last 20 years.  It is necessary to keep up with the recruiting Jones’s now and not just on the football program’s end.

In the days before the Internet and YouTube a high school coach would film the games and maybe have a recruit run some drills and film them too.  Then he’d send the film to a college’s football staff with a cover letter stating why school X should choose Recruit Y as soon as possible, dammit!

But if the high school coach knew any of the university scouts, alumni or ex-players he’d get on the phone earlier in the player’s HS career and say:

“Joe – come over Friday night and watch this Irish kid, Pitt O’ Dreams,  play QB for us.  He’s fantastic, especially given that horrendous head injury he had in the silo accident last summer… he can’t remember the snap count much but he damn sure can spin the ball.”

The mantra you snooze you lose is constant with the recruiting help sites now.  But the reality is that there is a progression to recruiting.  First the staff identifies the young prospects – either with a scout or hiring a scouting service, looking at names and info on recruiting sites info or by word of mouth.

Then they make contact with the kid and his coach and ask for film and for specific benefit the kid would bring the school’s team.  Well, let’s backtrack a bit – even before all that a lot of schools have detailed questionnaires for the kids to fill out.

Here is Pitt’s football questionnaire website. Just for a laugh I’m going to fill it in and submit it.  Maybe I’ll get a form letter or something telling me thanks but no thanks.  But I think I could hang with the punters maybe.

Once that gets filled out there is a solid link between school and recruit… and some underpaid admin staffer has to go through all those entries and present something reasonable to the staff I’d think.

Here is a good and complete article that lays out what both coaches and recruits have to do to get that match made in heaven. The opening of the piece says it all about how recruiting has evolved and morphed from that simpler time when the verbal meant everything – and what the articles talks about here doesn’t even really get into the recruiting services part in this whole kabuki play (kabuki can be interpreted as “avant-garde” or “bizarre” theater… referred originally to those who were bizarrely dressed and swaggered on a street – I’d say that fits recruiting dramas pretty well..)

Everyone is so wrapped up in the end of the dance that the process often gets ignored. Recruiting is a long ordeal for these kids, and understanding how it works is a plus for fans looking for insight beyond the “will he or won’t he commit to my team” point.

Those commitments go from verbals to members of the signing class with each Letter of Intent coaches receive. As previously committed kids flip and uncommitted players finally decide where they want to play football, the drama only heightens across the nation’s top programs. 

For fans, this is the beginning of that player’s life with their program. For the players, however, this is the conclusion of a long and interesting chapter of a major transitional period. While they are months from beginning their collegiate career, National Signing Day is the end of a process that starts early and runs hot from the moment they are targeted.

Since we talk about recruiting evaluations and recruiting stars all the time we fans should review just how each of the four main recruiting site evaluates the players.  Here is a good article that lays it all out in easy to understand terms.

I reference Rivals.com when writing about Pitt players for a few reasons.  I think we need to have a consistent recruiting discussion baseline, at least I need to when I’m writing on here.  Yesterday I put out the example of how the recruiting sites were all over the map on Mark Myers.  I don’t want to have to list four different evaluations each time I discuss a player’s ratings or projections.

Also I think Chris Peak is the most knowledgeable beat writer around and he’s dead on with Pitt football issues. While I don’t know how much direct recruit rating input he has with Rivals’ National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell, I believe he is one of their regional analysts mentioned below for the WPA area and Pitt football.

Here is how Rivals.com does their initial evaluations of players:

Mike Farrell, National Recruiting Director

“It’s subjective. It really comes down to what you as an individual evaluator like and look for in a particular football player.”

After film assessment and in-game observations, Rivals.com next looks at camps to see how performances and information stacks up.

Composed of seven full-time analysts and a group of regional analysts, Farrell said Rivals.com does put significant weight in camps and 7-on-7 drills.

“People always point to, especially the spring evaluation where there is no football being played and the summer when it’s mostly 7 on 7, they say ‘Oh, that’s underwear football. It doesn’t count,'” Farrell said. “Scholarship offers have been handed out at camps for years and years and years.

And this is how they evaluate and award rating points and stars for the individual players:

Rivals

Not everyone does it that way. Rivals rates players based on the impact they are expected to have at their new school and their stars are a little more flexible — and more generous — than Scout:

A five-star prospect is considered to be one of the nation’s top 25-30 players, four star is a top 250-300 or so player, three-stars is a top 750 level player, two stars means the player is a mid-major prospect and one star means the player is not ranked.

Rivals also assigns each player a number in their evaluation. Here’s what they mean.

6.1 Franchise Player; considered one of the elite prospects in the country, generally among the nation’s top 25 players overall; deemed to have excellent pro potential; high-major prospect

6.0 – 5.8 All-American Candidate; high-major prospect; considered one of the nation’s top 300 prospects; deemed to have pro potential and ability to make an impact on college team

5.7 – 5.5 All-Region Selection; considered among the region’s top prospects and among the top 750 or so prospects in the country; high-to-mid-major prospect; deemed to have pro potential and ability to make an impact on college team

 5.4 – 5.0 Division I prospect; considered a mid-major prospect; deemed to have limited pro potential but definite Division I prospect; may be more of a role player

 4.9 Sleeper; no Rivals.com expert knew much, if anything, about this player; a prospect that only a college coach really knew about

OK – so what does that mean for Pitt’s recruits?

As a current example look at two players in this ’16 class. You’ll see that DT Amir Watts is a 4* with a 5.8 rating… and only one rating point less is DB Therran Coleman who has a 5.7.  A lot of these ‘points’ are also based on scholarship offer quality I believe.  So according to Farrell’s explanation above Coleman could be the #301 recruit in the nation – yet only have three stars.  BTW – DB Damar Hamlin came in with a 5.9.

Those camps and combines talked about above? Here is how Rivals themselves get all the prospective highly rated players into one place to examine them and start classifying them. Take a look for yourself at this Rivals.com webpage detailing all the action from the camps held last year.

Here is just a small sampling of the minutia they throw up for the fans.  I don’t think it is behind a sub pay wall:

Rivals 100 Five-Star Challenge

Postcard | Notes | Player Updates: I and II | Tweets | Time Capsule | Roster

Video: Recap | Skill 1-on-1s I | Skill 1-on-1s II | OL vs. DL I | OL vs. DL II

Best of Five-Star Challenge: QB | RB | WR | TE | OL | DL | LB | DB

Top Performers by Region: West | Midwest | Southeast | Mid-Atlantic

And this is how Rivals computes the team recruiting points for their national rankings… which is how we got that nice #32 spot for the 2016 class.

But most fans tend to not look farther than the stars awarded and the scholarship offers that a kid pulls in from FBS programs, and since 2014 an even narrower classification of designated Power 5 conference schools.

I’ve written articles on here about the normal attrition Pitt goes though season to season but sometimes really dramatic stuff happens to some recruiting classes just a few years down the road from when the class lands on campus.

For example, let’s look at Pitt’s 2006 recruiting class.  On paper it was a good one and Rivals had it ranked 24^th in the nation – the best Pitt had had in a long time (and since also).  It had 27 recruits in it and 13 weren’t on the roster in their 4^th year in the program.

Taking into account that the scholarship limit is 85 it means an average of 21.25 scholarships are awarded each year. With that there are always a couple of kids who may declare for the draft and a few who transfer out to greener pastures.

But that recruiting class, with the same HC all four years mind you, lost 48% of its members.  That is horrid and one of the reason I can’t put too much stock in what is happening with recruiting year to year.

Those transfers (or a head coach’s boot kicking the player out the door… Elijah we hardl’y knew ye) were for the reason we addressed earlier in these articles.  They weren’t all because of lack of playing time, some might have been, but the majority reason for departure were the players not meeting their responsibilities off the field.  And of course just plain quitting football altogether as some have done.

Those who departed the program from that ’06 class were one 4*, twelve 3*s and a 2*. So they weren’t players who were recruiting dregs but ones we Pitt fans were pretty excited about when they signed their LOIs.

It is the prime example of the uncertainty of the recruiting game.  It is one thing to get these high school players to sign on the dotted line – it is a whole other thing to get them between the lines on the football field and contributing.

It can be framed by the Chicken and the Egg argument I suppose but more to my understanding the football adage “It ain’t the Jimmies and the Joes but the Xs and Os” applies.

But not in the way that reads on the surface. “Jimmies and Joes” is all about recruiting.  Over the last two days we have talked about what it takes, on both ends of the equation, to get the better players interested in your program then captured by the football staff to become part of the football team.  That’s the nutshell of recruiting.

The “Xs and Os” are field level concerns – taking the recruit’s talents and abilities and presenting them within a fabric with other recruited players to get successful task completions on each and every play.  That’s very important of course because the goal is to win football games.  Were this the NFL we were talking about that statement is absolute.

But we are talking about college football where the mission is different.  At this level the university must concern itself with the 360 degrees of the recruit’s student and athletic life while enrolled. To not do so is first a disservice to the player and his family and it goes against the recruitment pact made earlier on.  It is also a disservice to the university itself when there is a conscious setting aside of the player’s human concerns.

But the real test is what the coaching staff (and all the player’s administrative support systems) has the ability to do in taking that player and making him a productive student/athlete. That isn’t as easy as it seems. It has to be important to the school that once the recruits signs with us he succeeds in every way off the field as it is that we win football games week in and week out.

When a school gets that proper mindset and really works toward that end then recruiting gets all that much easier because all of the player’s primary needs are being met.  Then they talk to other recruits and their families and it makes it easier and easier…

We can look at Pitt’s recruiting as a whole and try to label it ‘successful’ or not based on a myriad of standards.  I know I have a certain and personal way of looking at it that may not jibe with the way others do.  It is fun for me to watch it all unfold but I don’t lose a minute of sleep if we don’t get this kid or that player because, again, too many things can happen down the road to make or break his time at Pitt.

But we fans do love to talk about and compare players from the minute we first hear their names until they have or haven’t proven themselves on the field, don’t we? It is the beauty and fun of college ball – the cast of characters is always changing and what is true this season may not be next year… depending on who we have suited up and who we have coaching them.

On a different note – your author is now a member of the Football Writers Association of America. Not that it makes any difference, but keep that in mind when you’re telling me what an ass I am in your comments.