ESPN Recruiting Rank | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

ESPN Recruiting Rank

The players that are in your class on signing day is what matters in recruiting. When all of these guys are signed to SU in December I'll be happy. I do not care what ESPN has us at on May 4th.

There's a ton of hypocrites on here that used to go at Rutgers fans for celebrating their recruiting class in May, but that's what they're doing doing now for SU.
I do agree with you that the overall class grade doesn't mean all that much right now. It has some meaning, but a large portion of that is the calculation is weighted on the sheer size of your class, and if you pick up kids early and others don't you will have a much higher class ranking early on in comparison to what you will end up with. And we have seen that Fran seems to get commits early. This is definitely a good thing for us though. What matters more than that is the average star rating of our recruiting class as a whole. That would be a better thing to compare. But I guess having a high class ranking early could build excitement by fans as well as other recruits and may help to improve the talent level you get.

Many SU fans have said in the past that star ratings don't matter which is obviously not true at all as a whole. For some individual instances we know it could be inaccurate and not matter much. Like when SU gets a commit early that may not have a lot of offers yet. That kid will likely end up with a low rating as SU is not high profile enough to get get any benefit of the doubt. The rankings systems do have their bias and are only so accurate.

SU's class certainly won't finish at #9 in the country but lets just keep bringing in solid kids and see where it ends up.
 
We are in on a lot of talented kids that have yet to commit. Russel is just one. We may get some or maybe none. Time will tell. What is fact is that the recruiting classes are way better than anything under Dino, Shaffer, marrone or robbinson. Also, the fact so many high end players have Syracuse in their top choices is a big improvement.
The biggest improvement is Fran has a plan. Similar to Marrone, he’s organized on the recruiting trail. He knows the physical traits he’s looking for in players and he knows the territories he wants to prioritize. He’s not bouncing around and not trying to build relationships all over the country. He’s putting our resources consistently where we are plan to recruit and playing the long game where you sometimes take a flier on a kid to help get a push for a bigger prospect down the road.

Remember when Shafer was pounding Illinois? Since when has Syracuse been successful in Illinois and don’t say McNabb who was a one off. Then we had Dino who seemingly changed his strategy every year or so. Getting 2 Hawaiians in a single year was a waste of scholarships.
 
Some of our home games are very possible losses. BC and Pitt beat us last year. Duke and UNC are trying at football. Even UConn is not a gimme. They are well coached
True. If we win 4 of those 5 and then Colgate we only need to win 1 against the absolutely brutal 6 game away schedule (Includes Tenn in ATL) to get to 6 W's. But if we only win 3 of those 5 and Colgate we need to pick up 2 more games in that very tough road stretch. Both of those options seem fairly possible and even likely to me.

I'd say 5 W's at the end of the year is possible but i would guess 6 W's right now is most likely. 7 games is definitely possible but more than that seems difficult to me in a new unknown QB year. I guess we may have some shot at 8 W's but more is very unlikely to me. Lot of this depends on what we got out of the QB position.
 
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I do agree with you that the overall class grade doesn't mean all that much right now. It has some meaning, but a large portion of that is the calculation is weighted on the sheer size of your class, and if you pick up kids early and others don't you will have a much higher class ranking early on in comparison to what you will end up with. And we have seen that Fran seems to get commits early. This is definitely a good thing for us though. What matters more than that is the average star rating of our recruiting class as a whole. That would be a better thing to compare. But I guess having a high class ranking early could build excitement by fans as well as other recruits and may help to improve the talent level you get.

Many SU fans have said in the past that star ratings don't matter which is obviously not true at all as a whole. For some individual instances we know it could be inaccurate and not matter much. Like when SU gets a commit early that may not have a lot of offers yet. That kid will likely end up with a low rating as SU is not high profile enough to get get any benefit of the doubt. The rankings systems do have their bias and are only so accurate.

SU's class certainly won't finish at #9 in the country but let’s just keep bringing in solid kids and see where it ends up.
I totally agree. We have some nice commits but they’re all seemingly actively communicating and visiting schools, which will happen when you’re recruiting talented kids. I’d rather have SEC schools trying to get into the mix than not. On the other end we do have some less recruited kids who bring our average down. We may be in the top 10 but the other schools average about 6 points higher per player. I think our goal should be top 30-35.

Also, anyone who says recruiting rankings don’t matter can they please explain why the same 10-15 schools who hoard all the best players are always the ones in the top 25? A few outliers aside , recruiting rankings have been accurate over the long run. I don’t even see how that’s debatable?
 
I do agree with you that the overall class grade doesn't mean all that much right now. It has some meaning, but a large portion of that is the calculation is weighted on the sheer size of your class, and if you pick up kids early and others don't you will have a much higher class ranking early on in comparison to what you will end up with. And we have seen that Fran seems to get commits early. This is definitely a good thing for us though. What matters more than that is the average star rating of our recruiting class as a whole. That would be a better thing to compare. But I guess having a high class ranking early could build excitement by fans as well as other recruits and may help to improve the talent level you get.

Many SU fans have said in the past that star ratings don't matter which is obviously not true at all as a whole. For some individual instances we know it could be inaccurate and not matter much. Like when SU gets a commit early that may not have a lot of offers yet. That kid will likely end up with a low rating as SU is not high profile enough to get get any benefit of the doubt. The rankings systems do have their bias and are only so accurate.

SU's class certainly won't finish at #9 in the country but lets just keep bringing in solid kids and see where it ends up.
Correct. I agree with the general sense of what you're saying here.

It's good to have early commits. A highly rated class will help other highly rated kids come in. And it puts you in a great position with the kids already committed if they blow up.

I'm excited about this class a lot. The offer lists are great and the measurables are also impressive. I also hope we can keep all these kids committed and keep adding better kids to the class!
 
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The biggest improvement is Fran has a plan. Similar to Marrone, he’s organized on the recruiting trail. He knows the physical traits he’s looking for in players and he knows the territories he wants to prioritize. He’s not bouncing around and not trying to build relationships all over the country. He’s putting our resources consistently where we are plan to recruit and playing the long game where you sometimes take a flier on a kid to help get a push for a bigger prospect down the road.

Remember when Shafer was pounding Illinois? Since when has Syracuse been successful in Illinois and don’t say McNabb who was a one off. Then we had Dino who seemingly changed his strategy every year or so. Getting 2 Hawaiians in a single year was a waste of scholarships.
For some reason this post makes me think of Lone Watie.
 
The players that are in your class on signing day is what matters in recruiting. When all of these guys are signed to SU in December I'll be happy. I do not care what ESPN has us at on May 4th.

There's a ton of hypocrites on here that used to go at Rutgers fans for celebrating their recruiting class in May, but that's what they're doing doing now for SU.
Everything you're saying is right, but I have a feeling a lot of that laughing at Rutgers was cope.
 
Everything you're saying is right, but I have a feeling a lot of that laughing at Rutgers was cope.
I think the "going at Rutgers recruiting rankings in May" was less to do about getting more recruits early and more about we will see where the Rutgers recruiting class ranking really ends up after they stumble out of the gate and then proceed to look horrible on the football field all season... and then lose their recruits when they decommit. That was just a valid, well deserved projection of what was going to take place. :)
 
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I think the going at Rutgers recruiting rankings in May was less to do about getting more recruits early and more about we will see where the Rutgers recruiting class ranking really ends up after they stumble out of the gate and then proceed to look horrible on the football field all season... and then lose their recruits when they decommit. That was just a valid, well deserved projection of what was going to take place. :)
Agreed. But it's still nice to see us up there when historically we have not been sniffing these rankings.
 
Fran didn't have to weather anything last season, we went 10-3.

Our schedule is much tougher this year and we do not have a proven QB. I'd love to think it's all sunshine and rainbows, but if we go 5-7, do we keep all these kids committed?

I am thrilled with what Fran has been able to do, and have complete faith in him right now. He's elevated our ceiling. We're playing big boy football and competing at the highest level, especially in recruiting.

But again, it's May 4th.
Fair point. My take isn’t that it’s 100% wins that retain players (it’s obviously important) but the strength of Frans ability to build culture and relationships. We’ll see
 
I'd rather be on the list than not.

All the schools in the top 10 have 10 or more commits. We have 15. Penn State also has 15. The average of the schools in front of us (removing usc who has 27 kids), the average is 12.5 recruits. So this isn't a case where we have 15 and everyone else has 7.

People laugh at Rutgers because they get 4 star and high 3 star kids with offers from Monmouth. I'll bet they have the highest washout rate of the highest rated kids.
 
For sure Its a good list to be on. For comparison sake, If you resort the ranking based on average star rating we sit at #44 currently. I'd say its likely we probably end up better than that in the end though as I feel like some coaches are a bit more picky or selective early on and only take consensusly good players. Where as I feel like Fran says I like him. Lets take him now, why wait?
 
The players that are in your class on signing day is what matters in recruiting. When all of these guys are signed to SU in December I'll be happy. I do not care what ESPN has us at on May 4th.
There's a ton of hypocrites on here that used to go at Rutgers fans for celebrating their recruiting class in May, but that's what they're doing doing now for SU.
The only thing that matters right now (before December) is perception. Recruits and the media certainly pay attention to this kind of thing. So while these rankings mean nothing in the grand scheme of things (especially in May), the publicity and momentum can only help.
 

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