Recruiting in 2025 and Beyond Discussion

[LeMoyneCuse]

Not to mention, if you think I dwell on this stuff then i don’t know what to tell you?

You certainly dwell on it here. What are you hoping to get out of it?

 

[baggerbob]

I would completely agree we have raised the floor. I am not a big fan of the recruiting sites but they are used as the standard metric.
Yes we did not get any 5 stars or top 250 players in 25 but if you look at the overall class it’s way above our past classes. If you go back and look in most years we would be lucky to get one .87, a couple .86 and few .85 and the rest below .85. This class most of the players are .88, .87 and .86. If you want to use the star rating as the metric our the 25 class is vastly improved from past years and more in line with the middle or higher to other acc schools.
Now people may continue to criticize because we are not landing multiple 4 stars or top 250 players but the overall class is far better then past classes going back 10 years or more.

And according to ESPN we are 36th ahead of Clemson for this year and their writeup applauds Fran for turning recruiting around at syracuse the last 2 years.

 

[cusefan88]

I agree with the takes here that after you get outside the top 150-200 players nationally it's a bit of a crapshoot. "3 stars" covers a wide array of talent.

What I do think is that Fran Brown is signing players that have more P5 offers compared to Dino and those players are bigger, heavier, and faster.

 

[svennyi]

Interesting thread from David Hale on impact of House Settlement on recruiting and portal. A really interesting nugget was the general consensus that portal talent is down vs 2 years ago, but the money being paid is way higher. The implication being you could have a lot of "bad deals" on your roster, low impact players making a lot of $. Interesting to see that compared with Fran's focus on high school recruiting vs portal.

(can't embed bluesky, so here is the copy paste)


David Hale
‪@adavidhalejoint.bsky.social‬

A lot of coaches are viewing prices as a : Is it wise to spend $1M on a decent-but-not-great OL w/experience or $50K on your backup who hasn't really played but has some upside? You might be better overall with option A, but the margin in $ isn't worth the incremental increase in production.

It also has driven a real understanding of something that's been obvious in NFL circles for a long time: Dead money is very dangerous. "You don't want to pay guys to be watching from the sideline," as 1 coach told me. Yes, landing big names is great -- but the key will be minimizing your mistakes.

Opinions on the portal have shifted a lot, too. Now that more teams can ante up to retain their own players, the consensus among coaches I've spoken to is talent in the portal is a lot than it was 2 years ago, while the $ for transfers has gone way . There aren't a lot of smart investments there.

Note the word "smart." This is CFB, and much of the spending is irrational. I've had coaches tell me guys they had heard awful reports on or guys who got 75 snaps last year on a good team are now getting $900K in the portal. The drive to win mixed with lots of cash = an overheated market.

 

[wfschrec]

Interesting thread from David Hale on impact of House Settlement on recruiting and portal. A really interesting nugget was the general consensus that portal talent is down vs 2 years ago, but the money being paid is way higher. The implication being you could have a lot of "bad deals" on your roster, low impact players making a lot of $. Interesting to see that compared with Fran's focus on high school recruiting vs portal.

(can't embed bluesky, so here is the copy paste)

David Hale
‪@adavidhalejoint.bsky.social‬

A lot of coaches are viewing prices as a : Is it wise to spend $1M on a decent-but-not-great OL w/experience or $50K on your backup who hasn't really played but has some upside? You might be better overall with option A, but the margin in $ isn't worth the incremental increase in production.

It also has driven a real understanding of something that's been obvious in NFL circles for a long time: Dead money is very dangerous. "You don't want to pay guys to be watching from the sideline," as 1 coach told me. Yes, landing big names is great -- but the key will be minimizing your mistakes.

Opinions on the portal have shifted a lot, too. Now that more teams can ante up to retain their own players, the consensus among coaches I've spoken to is talent in the portal is a lot than it was 2 years ago, while the $ for transfers has gone way . There aren't a lot of smart investments there.

Note the word "smart." This is CFB, and much of the spending is irrational. I've had coaches tell me guys they had heard awful reports on or guys who got 75 snaps last year on a good team are now getting $900K in the portal. The drive to win mixed with lots of cash = an overheated market.

It’s common sense … well for most anyway.

 

[richmondcuse03]

Interesting thread from David Hale on impact of House Settlement on recruiting and portal. A really interesting nugget was the general consensus that portal talent is down vs 2 years ago, but the money being paid is way higher. The implication being you could have a lot of "bad deals" on your roster, low impact players making a lot of $. Interesting to see that compared with Fran's focus on high school recruiting vs portal.

(can't embed bluesky, so here is the copy paste)

David Hale
‪@adavidhalejoint.bsky.social‬

A lot of coaches are viewing prices as a : Is it wise to spend $1M on a decent-but-not-great OL w/experience or $50K on your backup who hasn't really played but has some upside? You might be better overall with option A, but the margin in $ isn't worth the incremental increase in production.

It also has driven a real understanding of something that's been obvious in NFL circles for a long time: Dead money is very dangerous. "You don't want to pay guys to be watching from the sideline," as 1 coach told me. Yes, landing big names is great -- but the key will be minimizing your mistakes.

Opinions on the portal have shifted a lot, too. Now that more teams can ante up to retain their own players, the consensus among coaches I've spoken to is talent in the portal is a lot than it was 2 years ago, while the $ for transfers has gone way . There aren't a lot of smart investments there.

Note the word "smart." This is CFB, and much of the spending is irrational. I've had coaches tell me guys they had heard awful reports on or guys who got 75 snaps last year on a good team are now getting $900K in the portal. The drive to win mixed with lots of cash = an overheated market.

This jives with what I've heard from folks around the team too. I mean, the OL that went to Maryland is a great example. Could he be amazing? Sure? But betting almost a million on an unproven p4 linemen is a bold strategy.

 

[bnoro]

Texas? Ummm. yea give me Texas every single year. They were just in the playoffs and will be even better next year.

Even more so show me the schools that recruit like us that are consistently successful.

You keep asking me to do the work while I continue to give you great examples to answer your questions.

Texas was a massive underachiever while landing top 5 classes for almost 10-15 years before this season. Texas A&M had the #1 class in the country in 2022, how did that translate to this season? Kentucky was #14 in 2022, how did that translate this season?

From this year's Final CFP rankings: #9 Boise was #62 in 2022. #10 SMU was #82 in 2022. #12 Arizona State was #103 in 2022. #17 BYU was 56 in 2022. Shall I go on?

There are always outliers and what matters the most will always be coaching, development, retaining your top talents, and bringing in the right guys from the portal.

 

[007]

This jives with what I've heard from folks around the team too. I mean, the OL that went to Maryland is a great example. Could he be amazing? Sure? But betting almost a million on an unproven p4 linemen is a bold strategy.

The same. And for a change, SU has been ahead of the curve when it comes to analyzing how to best spend the available NIL.

The same approach was used for basketball NIL last season. That's why we passed on Lefew when his cost went up. Of course, we also opted to pay up for Lampkin which obviously was a mistake. The margin for error is far smaller relative to football NIL. The program cannot afford to miss on high level NIL offers.