Recruiting Links

So, like me, you're all probably frantically checking your team's blogs, message boards, and debating whether to pay for services like Rivals to get daily updates on your team's 2009 recruiting class. Coaches are making their final pitches before National Signing Day, which with verbal committments, decommittments, and RichRod's "snake oil," is slowly turning into a day with as much drama as the first round of the NFL Draft. While I am not one of those people who is going to take off work to watching signing day on ESPNU (cough cough, Hoogs' employers), I am following closely to see if Michigan holds onto DT Pearlie Graves, or can pick up "atheletic" QB Denard Robinson or speedy WR Je'Ron Stokes.

This also leads to the annual debate amongst the media of how important National Signing Day really is. What matters more at the college level, coaching or talent? And just how reliable is high school/all star game film and analysis in judging who will translate into a great player at the D1 level? Personally, I'm very conflicted on NSD, so I will spare you from most of the columns on the merits of NSD, at least for now. Instead, Scout did a great piece on looking back at the 5 star "Can't Miss" recruits of the class of 2005. Out of the top 50, there were a lot of sucesses. Naturally, there were also even more misses. Stewart Mandel did a similar piece on just the Top 25 QB recruits of 2005. Interesting stuff, and puts NSD in perspective both in its importance (how did LSU fare this year without a stud QB?) and its insignificance (FSU did not exactly light it up with all those prospects).

Another interesting development coming through is that new Washington coach Steve Sarkisian has been caught committing his second recruiting violation by the UW Athletic Department. This is just impressive if it's true. He's only been on the job, what, three months? And already he's broken the rules twice at a school that is still bitter about that whole Rick Nehuisal fiasco? While it is certainly too early to make any real judgements, my immediate reaction is that this draws a fair amount of light onto the recruiting tactics at USC. There have been rumors for years, bascially since Reggie Bush emerged as an elite player and Matt Leinhart moved in with Nick Lachey to help him recover from "Newlyweds" getting cancelled by MTV, that USC has been invovled in shady recruiting strategies. If one of your top recruiters is already cheating at his new job, what does that say about the way he was taught to recruit at his previous job? Personally, this just adds more smoke surrounding USC and makes me think much less of Sarkisian as a coach and a person.