Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - Printable Version
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RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - BostonCard - 11-07-2022
(11-07-2022, 09:00 AM)gailtate Wrote: Northwestern figured out a way to not suck. "Mildcats no more!" Not tOSU or Michigan, maybe, but respectable.
Are you talking about the Northwestern team that is 1-5 in conference, 1-8 overall, and has lost 8 straight after their win over a Nebraska team that fired its coach midseason?
https://www.espn.com/college-football/team/_/id/77/northwestern-wildcats
Maybe you are referring to Illinois (7-2/4-2 and first in their division), Kansas, Tulane, or Duke? Those are some long-suffering teams that seem to have done better. But Northwestern is not the answer.
BC
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - cardcrimson - 11-07-2022
(11-07-2022, 02:48 PM)81alum Wrote: I can't prove that one factor is the dominant one, but I do think that when USC came to town with 26 transfers and we had 1, it was a major factor in outclassing our football talent on the field. I think I remembered that Washington had 17. I stopped keeping track after that.
What am I missing? USC brought in 26 transfers but they are still limited to 85 total scholarships, correct? Assuming they kept the incoming freshman class of recruits, doesn't that mean that USC jettisoned 40% of its rising sophomore, junior and senior recruiting classes? Speaks a lot about their loyalty and commitment to recruits, doesn't it? Similar for Washington, but they only jettisoned the equivalent of one recruiting class, give or take.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - BostonCard - 11-07-2022
(11-07-2022, 09:35 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:(11-07-2022, 02:48 PM)81alum Wrote: I can't prove that one factor is the dominant one, but I do think that when USC came to town with 26 transfers and we had 1, it was a major factor in outclassing our football talent on the field. I think I remembered that Washington had 17. I stopped keeping track after that.
What am I missing? USC brought in 26 transfers but they are still limited to 85 total scholarships, correct? Assuming they kept the incoming freshman class of recruits, doesn't that mean that USC jettisoned 40% of its rising sophomore, junior and senior recruiting classes? Speaks a lot about their loyalty and commitment to recruits, doesn't it? Similar for Washington, but they only jettisoned the equivalent of one recruiting class, give or take.
Remember, USC brought in a new coach, so some "jetisonning" seems to be expected in this day and age, especially if the new coach wants to bring in players ready to run his offense. If you were to design a system from scratch, unencumbered by academic or transfer limitations, parting ways with players who aren't cracking the two-deep by their junior year or who are over-recruited can be framed as a win-win; the team gets a scholarship spot back that they can use on a younger player with more potential or an incoming transfer at a position of need, while the player might get a better chance to start at another team. After all, they aren't there for academics /*sarcasm*/
And to be fair, everyone (including Stanford) has always done this with redshirt seniors. That fifth year was not guaranteed, and was only offered to players who could contribute.
BC
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - OutsiderFan - 11-08-2022
Here's some observations from the Cal board on Stanford Football, in a thread lamenting the Stojakovic commitment...
Quote:I don't know as much about the basketball side, but I've begun to formulate a theory on Stanford recruiting, at least as it pertains to football.
I watched their game on Saturday, and I've watched most of their games this season. And look, both Cal and Stanford are bad football teams. But Cal plays hard. Stanford does not. They have a ton more talent than we do and more than most teams in the league, but their players just do not care. They loaf, they don't run on defense. It would be very frustrating to watch if I didn't enjoy it so much.
There is the saying, made famous by Cardale Jones "I aint come to play school", but all of these Stanford kids are literally going to play school. I think Stanford has cornered the market on recruits who are academically motivated and very good at HS sports but don't actually care that much about athletics. I am no longer super concerned about Stanford having good recruiting classes because basically if a kid can choose between going to Stanford or USC or Alabama or whatever to play football and they choose Stanford, I know they don't really care about football and probably won't be that good. I think this is David Shaw being an elitist douche who went to the school I wish I had gotten into and can't smell his own shit. Harbaugh knew how to recruit tough kids. Shaw welcomes them to the country club.
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - Austroturf - 11-08-2022
(11-08-2022, 06:28 AM)OutsiderFan Wrote: Here's some observations from the Cal board on Stanford Football, in a thread lamenting the Stojakovic commitment...
Quote:I don't know as much about the basketball side, but I've begun to formulate a theory on Stanford recruiting, at least as it pertains to football.
I watched their game on Saturday, and I've watched most of their games this season. And look, both Cal and Stanford are bad football teams. But Cal plays hard. Stanford does not. They have a ton more talent than we do and more than most teams in the league, but their players just do not care. They loaf, they don't run on defense. It would be very frustrating to watch if I didn't enjoy it so much.
There is the saying, made famous by Cardale Jones "I aint come to play school", but all of these Stanford kids are literally going to play school. I think Stanford has cornered the market on recruits who are academically motivated and very good at HS sports but don't actually care that much about athletics. I am no longer super concerned about Stanford having good recruiting classes because basically if a kid can choose between going to Stanford or USC or Alabama or whatever to play football and they choose Stanford, I know they don't really care about football and probably won't be that good. I think this is David Shaw being an elitist douche who went to the school I wish I had gotten into and can't smell his own shit. Harbaugh knew how to recruit tough kids. Shaw welcomes them to the country club.
This is a distant observation from an outsider and is certainly overblown. But perhaps there are a few morsels of truth embedded in the contents.
Recruiting has certainly suffered a decline in recent years, not so much in the overall rating of the individual classes, but in the type of player recruited and how each player fits the team as a whole. This is not optimal, but the real problem, in my view, starts when the players enter the "country club" (as the Bear fan termed it). Poor player development, poor S&C, lack of toughness/grittiness (read: intellectual brutality), total absence of EUTM. And if you add to this Shaw's refusal to hold anybody on his staff accountable for results, well, this translates to a lack of accountability with respect to the players and their weekly performance. With such standards, the result is apathy. The result is going through the motions. There is no fight.
To an outsider, it might appear as if Shaw is recruiting that kind of athlete. I don't agree with that. But if a Berkeley Bear sees it that way, future top recruits may draw the same conclusion and choose to go elsewhere even if they have the academic credentials to get into Stanford (the 22 tough, smart guys that Harbaugh was convinced he could recruit). I maintain that Austin Jones transferred to USC because he still harbors hopes of playing in the NFL someday and figured Stanford was not going to get him there. Being a Trojan may not get him there, either, but he concluded that being a Cardinal definitely would not. If more 4- and 5 -star recruits draw the same conclusion, then we will really only get the players who want to play a bit of football while earning an academic degree at a prestigious institution of higher education. (Sidebar: that's actually the old ideal of the student athlete, but you can't win with that formula today.)
RE: Sunday morning thoughts - Washington State - msqueri - 11-08-2022
I think there's more truth than fiction in the Cal fan analysis, by far. It's a hurtful sentiment to our players and I imagine it doesn't resonate with them, but at this point, approaching David Shaw's 12th recruiting class at Stanford, the Stanford Men we recruit wouldn't know real commitment and all-in football mentality if they saw it. It's foreign to them. They ARE here to play school. I don't know how anybody could doubt that. If you read the interviews with our recruits, they're picking Stanford for the school and are orienting their lives around things other than football. That may be good/admirable, and I know most here find that a big part of the attraction, but it creates a non-football-focused culture. I don't think there's any use denying it.
This has impacts on the field. Our players don't need/want to win as much as others. Sorry, they don't. David Shaw is ultimately reasonable for everything in the program and IMHO bears responsibility for shaping a roster in his image, which is not conducive to winning football. So this is on him. But that doesn't make the Cal fan analysis wrong. Shaw isn't the one in between the lines on Saturdays, our players are. And they're losers in the football sense. They may be winners in life but the mentality they bring isn't a winning one for college football.
With critiques like this it always must be said that of course there are exceptions. Stanford obviously has individual winners and guys whose mentalities would play at all manner of winning programs. Of course. So the Cal fan post is a broad brush generalization. But is the generalization wrong? No.