I gotta admit, it’s pretty crazy to see the teams ahead of us in the rankings. Kentucky? Arizona? There are a lot of teams that must be a less attractive destination than Utah that are somehow out recruiting us.
while I’m fine with where we are, on paper we should be able to attract better recruits than we are currently attracting.
*shrug*
average stars is more important than the size of the class
And? There are terrible teams out there getting 5 star recruits and or many 4 stars.
I was listening to Ron McBride tell a story about losing a recruit that he was sure he had locked up but lost him. His high school coach said “Sorry. The bag man came and visited.” And this was the 90s. Imagine the $ these days.
There ARE two sides to this coin though. While our ranking is lower, we are CLEARLY better than at least half the teams above us. Are we truly recruiting worse if our players end up better than theirs? Maybe we are just way better at player development. Or… our coaches are better at talent evaluation than the recruiting experts.
It makes a bit more sense when you sort the list by average rating. That removes “number of recruits” from skewing the rankings.
Still, I see what you mean. Seems illogical that Rutgers has a slightly higher recruit average than Utah. But, of course, there are teams behind Utah that probably think the same thing. lol
The Top 20 in recruiting are averaging around .90/commit or above. The next tier which is where we are goes down to around .85/commit. It’s just been the last 3 years where we’ve improved our avg/commit to the level of .87.
Our improvement in recruiting also shows the correlation to the success we’ve achieved on the field the past 3 years. Continued winning at this level will enable us to climb upwards towards the next tier in recruiting.
Whitt recruits kids that fit the system. Coaches are spending time evaluating and getting kids they want. After Daniels, and Tuttle I doubt Whitt ever chases rankings again.
He never chased rankings. Especially since the portal, I bet he could give a damn about rankings. Totally different ballgame than 2-4 years ago.
With the transfer portal, these rankings will.mean less than ever. Still huge for the top teams, but everyone else doesn’t really matter. I am not worried in the least about the Utes in coming seasons.
Two advantages Utah has that is elite that doesn’t always show:
1) Recognizing diamonds in the rough (recruiting based on athletic numbers/physical traits)
2) Recruiting for fit – Utah clearly has a type for each position.
As others have mentioned – focus more on average recruiting stars…Utah at 0.87 is almost top 30 good…Unlikely we’ll ever hit top 10, but if we can hit top 25 with a few top 20 finishes, we can have special seasons every now and then. Have already knocked on door during pac12 era with a shot at the CFP – and that was with top 50 classes. 0.87 is new territory for us (this yr, last yr).
It’s a process, we all want it to move faster, but honestly we have hit faster than I thought we would – you are still recruiting for SLC.
I love out trajectory.
I understand everything you said. However, it still doesn’t explain why teams that are clearly worse, and have been for a long time, are getting better recruits than us.
If Kentucky can get a 5* player there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to do so. Yes we have a type, but our coaches are clearly not great recruiters in regards to rankings. That’s fine, we are trending up, but our recruiting is lagging behind player development.
It’s really not debatable at all.
Lol you are right, living in Lexington or Nebraska is much much worse than SLC…but I’ll take a stab at explaining why.
There is a ton of football talent in the midwest and south/south east. These kids grew up in the region – they actually want to live there, so they stay home or near home. Plus even KY has the SEC brand to fall on and Nebraska has the B10 brand.
Utah is really becoming fertile recruiting ground. The reason why so many talented kids leave is…they can try something different in a more desirous state like Ca, Or, Wa, Tx.
I can use an analogy in my world…I tell med students all the time to prioritize choosing a residency place based on location – you’ll be stuck there for 4 years. I don’t care how prestigious a program is…living in a place like Lexington or Tucsan would be miserable – just my own personal preference. Prestige of a residency spot stands behind location. This is why progeams ‘below Utah’ sometimes get 4*/5* recruits. Oh and the bagman of course.
One of the most important recruiting changes: we are now regularly getting 4* QB’s. How cool is that? Areas we have to improve on…recruiting better at WR. It’a our biggest recreuting weakness.
Great posts Doc! For me, I’d love to see us bring in more 4* talent to the Oline. Garrett Bolles was a game changer when he played. Same with Bam this year after he got the development needed to perform to the level of his God given talent.
With the style of offense we run, the most important position(s) after QB are the Oline IMO. We dominate upfront, we dominate all game long.
But are they all “out-recruiting” us?
It’s not just about the stars as this staff continues to prove time and time again!
True but what is our ultimate goal? To finish towards the top of the PAC each year and occasionally win the conference in a “special” season? Or do we want to consistently win conference championships striving to break into the CFP and compete for a national championship?
Not taking anything away from the accomplishment of this year because it’s AWESOME and something we’ve never done before and have always dreamed of. But if we are satisfied with this accomplishment then I’d say we don’t need to strive to improve recruiting or anything in the program. Our coaches have proven the status quo is by all means good enough.
But I’ll give you an example. In 2019 we played in the CCG, not only for a conference title, but for a spot in the CFP. In that game we got dominated at the line of scrimmage, particularly by 1 player…Kayvon Thibodeaux. Even though the score that game was a blowout, I’d argue if we had won just 1 big recruiting battle the previous year it would’ve been the difference in winning that game and playing in the CFP. That was the recruiting cycle where we were unable to keep Penei Sewell home and off to Oregon he went. Now we all saw this year what Bam, a 4* OT, did against KT in both our blowout wins…KT was a non factor. If we had Penei back in 2019, all of those stalled drives on 4th and 1 would’ve had a favorable outcomes and the game would’ve had an entirely different result.
IMO, that’s why increasing our high end talent (as much as we can) is so important. We consistently get the solid high 3* players that our coaches develop to their highest potential. And these guys will continue to lead us to competitive seasons and results YoY. But it’s the high end talent that puts us over the top to win championships. I’m sure you’re thinking, what about this year’s star Devin Lloyd? And you’d be correct. Lloyd was rated low coming out of high school and has developed into the best LB in the country and likely the 1st or 2nd LB off the board in the coming NFL draft. I’d only say that it’s far more likely to produce similar results if you’re starting with 4* kids than going after diamonds in the rough each year and expecting to turn them into Devin Lloyds.
This is really the first breakthrough year for Utah on the national level. 2019 some regard as one of Utah’s best years was a local success, but somewhat of failure from a national perspective the way Oregon and Texas blew them out.
Comparing Oregon as a reference closest to Utah in the same conference and relatively new to the national spotlight in recent history, Oregon built national recognition in the Chip Kelly era with some short carry over to Helfrich. Some success during the end of Belotti’s coaching career. Point is, Oregon has had consistent years of being competitive at the national level, Utah is no where near that level. If Utah can sustain, stringing consistent years winning the P12 Championship recruiting will continue climbing.
There are a handful of solid high three star players signing today likely not coming to Utah this year without the recent success. Overall, Utes are heading in the right direction, it’s going to take time and Utes need to be a consistent winner.
Development > Recruiting
Yes, development can take a 2 star kid and make them an all pro NFL player. I know this. Utah is great at that. Can you imagine what they could do with a 5 star kid?
I don’t believe for one second that Utah isn’t getting more for stars, and the occasional 5 star because they are only looking for a certain type of player. If a 5 star player wanted to come to Utah, Whitt would do anything within the rules to make it happen.
Utah doesn’t get those kids because, for whatever stupid reason, they’d rather go somewhere else, even if that somewhere else is objectively a worse place to live, with a worse football coach, a worse program, and less fan support.
The only explanation is that there is something about Utah’s coaches, or their recruiting approach (or the recruiting approaches of competing coaches) that deters top level athletes from coming to the UofU.
Yes, our recruiting is improving gradually. Yes, that is a good thing. Yes, I am more than happy with where our team is at the moment. We have great coaches, and I don’t want to change any of them… but if we are going to take the next step as a program, we HAVE to get elite players regularly, and I don’t just mean low end 4 star recruits.
I believe the biggest key in taking that step, outside of our own program improving on the field (as we have been consistently) is the improved level of football at the high school level in the state of Utah… and the increased level of recognition that recruits in Utah are getting. There will come a day in the future when there is a minimum of 1 5 star player every year in the state of Utah, and a horde of 4 stars just behind them. We’ve already seen the number of 4 star and 3 star recruits in the state increase rather dramatically (it at least seems that way to me).
If we can maintain our position as the #1 program in the state, we’ll get to the playoff in the next decade.
As above – it has less to do with coaches, playcalling, etc and everything to do with SLC. It is so hard to attract marquee NBA FA’s to SLC.
Sadly we see the same thing with AA candidates in medicine. My med school classmate interviewed for residency at the U – she flat out asked them why there wasn’t more diversity (more african americans) in SLC. My specific residency program has yet to match an african american candidate – and this is a priority for us every year.
It sucks but it is what it is. SLC just needs to keep growing, get more diverse, get more bars/clubs/attractions…that would help with recruiting.
If what you say is true (I don’t see why it wouldn’t be), and at least part of the issue is a lack of diversity in SLC, then the recruiting approach needs to change. I would suggest a conversation along the lines of, yes, we know SLC lacks diversity, and we would love to change that. Virtually every city in America at one point or another lacked diversity until someone decided to take it upon themselves to diversify that city. It takes a brave person moving into a new area to start wave of changes toward a more diverse population. Invite these recruits to come to SLC and be the change they believe SLC needs.
That approach probably applies more to your residency candidates than college football players (since the football players are less likely to bring families with them, and less likely to stay when their time is up)… but some variation of that seems like the thing to say, though it would admitedly be a hard thing to sell to a young kid moving pretty far from home. It would take a special kind of kid to agree to that, someone like Nick Ford who clearly wants to have an impact on communities.
Speaking purely from matching candidates from a residency perspective – we def say similar things to AA/other race candidates during interviews. My classmate told me she was basically offered a position at the interview (which is not how these things are done, it’s a centralized computer process that involves rank lists bt program and candidates and her situation would be deemed ‘illegal’ under these rules). I have no reason to not believe her. I only say this to illustrate how hard our program has been pushing/recruiting for an AA candidate. And she is dang qualified and she did an away rotation at the U so they got a firsthand look at her – she ended up matching at an Ivy League program despite my best efforts to convince her otherwise. It wasn’t a situation at all of Utah wanting her because she is black.
Bottom line: She told me she could tell Utah was a great training program and would easily get her to the next level. BUT the lack of other AA’s in SLC was a big deal to her, so she chose an Ivy League school at a lest desirous location (to me anyways). I think you can use what she says to parallel football players. The difference is, as I mentioned above, lots of stud players grow up in Utah so they are fine with SLC – but it’s hard to turn down a USC or a U of OR when they come sniffing for obvious reasons. Ditto Alabama, U of Mich, TX…but we are getting there – we won some big recruiting battles with some premier programs. It’s a process – and will continue to be a slow burn type process IMO.
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