[BostonCard]

Not convincingly. I don't know why it is so hard for posters here to acknowledge a mistake. Stanford coaches had inside information (from SHP coaching staff) on this player and failed to act. Even to my untrained eye, having watched Peninsula football for 40 years, this guy was special.
Same with Ben Humphreys an all ACC LB (2016) who was in this same class and did not get an offer.

Instead Stanford ends up with 79 players on scholarship and no returning lettermen ILBs for 2019, assuming Barton is gone.

I'm not sure how BBK would have helped our ILB gap in 2019, as he graduates this year.  The problem is not what we did in the 2015 recruiting class; it's what we did in the 2016/2017 entering classes; or more specifically what we didn't do -- recruit inside linebackers.

So, obviously with the benefit of hindsight BBK would have helped us.  The guy we did get that recruiting cycle (ironically enough, from UW's back yard), Mustafa Branch, has been a career back-up, and BBK is one of them (Barton was also returning from a mission).  But there are always going to be recruiting mis-evaluations; guys we pass on who later turn out to be stars, guys we offer who don't pan out, guys we hold off on in the hope of landing a higher rated player who never comes, making us miss out on both plan A and plan A-.

But here's the thing, we never talk about the guys we passed on correctly, and there are dozens of those.  So this sort of analysis will always have hindsight bias, and that's what gets tendentious.

I think it's better to focus on process than on individual cases, as slide has.  Perhaps relying on camps is a bad idea, but that is the obvious response to the fact that Stanford has to recruit nationally, and unlike a school where most of their recruits are going to be concentrated in a couple geographic areas, "going out hustling for recruits" frequently involves flights several time zones away.  There's an opportunity cost to everything.

That being said, this doesn't have to be an either/or situation, and I agree with slide that the staff could do more to improve recruiting effectiveness; a couple extra in-home visits a year may be enough to flip one key recruit; a few more offers might find a Plan B who nonetheless becomes an important contributor and helps prevent big recruiting gaps (and may occasionally unearth a Ben Gardner or other diamond in the rough kind of player) without running the risk of running out of scholarships.  Identifying areas of incremental improvements in process is how you go from good to great.  Discussing individual cases in excruciating detail is a good way to learn the wrong lessons and fighting the last war.

BC

[BostonCard]

Not convincingly. I don't know why it is so hard for posters here to acknowledge a mistake. Stanford coaches had inside information (from SHP coaching staff) on this player and failed to act. Even to my untrained eye, having watched Peninsula football for 40 years, this guy was special.
Same with Ben Humphreys an all ACC LB (2016) who was in this same class and did not get an offer.

Instead Stanford ends up with 79 players on scholarship and no returning lettermen ILBs for 2019, assuming Barton is gone.

I'm not sure how BBK would have helped our ILB gap in 2019, as he graduates this year.  The problem is not what we did in the 2015 recruiting class; it's what we did in the 2016/2017 entering classes; or more specifically what we didn't do -- recruit inside linebackers.

So, obviously with the benefit of hindsight BBK would have helped us.  The guy we did get that recruiting cycle (ironically enough, from UW's back yard), Mustafa Branch, has been a career back-up, and BBK is one of them (Barton was also returning from a mission).  But there are always going to be recruiting mis-evaluations; guys we pass on who later turn out to be stars, guys we offer who don't pan out, guys we hold off on in the hope of landing a higher rated player who never comes, making us miss out on both plan A and plan A-.

But here's the thing, we never talk about the guys we passed on correctly, and there are dozens of those.  So this sort of analysis will always have hindsight bias, and that's what gets tendentious.

I think it's better to focus on process than on individual cases, as slide has.  Perhaps relying on camps is a bad idea, but that is the obvious response to the fact that Stanford has to recruit nationally, and unlike a school where most of their recruits are going to be concentrated in a couple geographic areas, "going out hustling for recruits" frequently involves flights several time zones away.  There's an opportunity cost to everything.

That being said, this doesn't have to be an either/or situation, and I agree with slide that the staff could do more to improve recruiting effectiveness; a couple extra in-home visits a year may be enough to flip one key recruit; a few more offers might find a Plan B who nonetheless becomes an important contributor and helps prevent big recruiting gaps (and may occasionally unearth a Ben Gardner or other diamond in the rough kind of player) without running the risk of running out of scholarships.  Identifying areas of incremental improvements in process is how you go from good to great.  Discussing individual cases in excruciating detail is a good way to learn the wrong lessons and fighting the last war.

BC