Strachan commits

Addazio picked up another commitment Friday. The newest member of the recruiting class is Mass LB Connor Strachan. The St. Sebastian's product is one of the top players in the state. He has offers from most of the programs in the Northeast and interest from bigger players outside the region.

Nine committments at this stage keeps BC high in the national rankings. The number of early commitments also leaves me to speculate that this will be a big recruiting class (close to 25 recruits). The scholarships aren't there yet, but I think you'll see more attrition of current players over the summer and next fall. I actually welcome attrition since Addazio has proven that he can close on the guys he wants.

Addazio gets a pass on this recruiting class

Steve Addazio made his reputation on recruiting. Given his big, fiery persona, you can see how he can connect with high school kids. While opinions varied on the Addazio hire, even the most pessimistic BC fans conceded that he would probably improve our talent base. Today he announced his first official BC recruiting class...and it was the worst in the conference and the worst BC class since national services started tracking these things. Once again the divided fan base agreed on one thing: this was a disappointing first effort from our new head coach. I understand how it could be a letdown, but I don't blame Addazio for this class. It is not his fault and not all bad news.

Transition classes are always a bit of a crapshoot. You have a mix of players from two staffs and a compressed timeline that usually involves rerecruiting your own players due to the coaching change. At a place like BC -- where we honor all prior commitments and have less natural attrition -- transition classes are even more unique  If a coach doesn't have a half a dozen aces up his sleeve, you just hope he can keep the class together. Addazio for the most part did that. He had four defectors, but all things considered, that is not terrible. The guys who left, either got better offers, followed a former BC assistant or felt they weren't going to fit in BC's new offense. No one left because they didn't like or trust Addazio. Most had good things to say about BC and the new staff. That won't improve our rankings but it is a good sign for the future.

Size matters too. Because this was a smaller class, Addazio couldn't go out and take a bunch of flyers on guys who might pan out. Instead he backfilled as needed. He was conservative in his roster management. He could have loaded up this class with at least four more guys and just bet on attrition. But he didn't. Once again, BC is better off keeping one of our current players in the program another season than trying to land a recruit no one feels strongly about. The payoff for this small class is that Addazio will have two large classes the next two seasons. If he is a great recruiter, then the 2014 and 2015 classes should be highly ranked.

Although Spaz&Daz didn't land elite players, there are still some things to appreciate about this class:

-- It is heavy on Ohio players. This is and will be a key territory for any BC coach

-- Despite our terrible season, we were still relevant in ACC territories like Florida and Georgia

-- Addazio landed fifth year transfer Matt Patchan. This is one of his former Florida players. Patchan is injury prone, but if healthy he will contribute. As I've written previously BC is a perfect school for fifth year players.  We are never going heavy on JUCOs, so it may be the only chance we can bring in mature players who can contribute immediately.

Addazio did his usual spiel at the press conference and Flynn Fund. He didn't distance himself from the new crop of kids but his comments confirmed his focus is on the 2014 class. He will need to strike it big because BC isn't going to get a big spark from this class. We can blame Spaz, but Addazio can't. These are his guys now. Let's hope he coaches them up.

Lessons from the Dillon Quinn departure

Dillon Quinn left the team and left BC for "personal reasons." While Spaz deserves his fair share of blame for problems with the team, Dillon Quinn's disappointing career is not one of them. In my opinion Quinn represents a different issue facing our fanbase and fanbases around college football: the expectations created by the recruiting ratings.

I am not opposed to the recruiting sites. I worked for one in the past and know good people at Rivals, Scout and 247. I do think there is some predictive value to the rankings. In football "bigger, stronger, faster" remains important and if you bring in multiple highly-recruited players, you are likely to succeed. But like any forecasting system, these things are not fool proof. Collectively the rankings work, but individual teams, individual recruiting classes and individual players can all be rise above or fall below expectations. There are outliers in any statistical model, but even more in college football where the volume of data and recruits cannot be captured by the ratings sites. That volume also forces shortcuts that lead to misjudgement and that is what happened with Quinn.

Dillon Quinn should never have been a four star recruit. He wasn't on many radars until he showed up at a Rivals camp with a friend of his prior to his senior season. The friend was the invitee. But upon seeing him, the Rivals Camp Directors invited him too. Quinn was a massive specimen and Rivals knows their customers. His strength and speed also impressed and a buzz started. Rivals slapped four stars on him and let the meteoric rise begin. What Rivals didn't account for in their ranking is why Quinn arrived on the scene so late and why his workouts were so impressive. I obviously have no proof, but even in the early days there were whispers and allegations about Quinn's use of performance enhancers. No one seemed to care about his lack of four star productivity prior to his "growth spurt" or his technique. But given his abilities, if he were truly four star, he should have been dominating his league. As a reference point Alex Amidon played in the same league and was even better, but no one ever considered giving him four stars.

Once Quinn arrived at BC and the whispers continued. Outside of the gossip, he also wasn't ready to be a ACC DT. He needed to learn more and get better. He played with mixed results in his second year on campus. From my perspective his efforts seemed mixed and he was never a special players. Certainly not four star. Now his career is over and BC has another player to add to the "four star" bust list. But at this point we should really be making a list of four star guys who were misjudged by the systems.

As for this season, Quinn's departure doesn't mean much. The positive aspect of the outcome is that it frees up one more scholarship for our new coach

Why Spaz's recruiting doesn't matter anymore

After BC picked up another below the radar recruit, Spaz's most vocal critics were out again disparaging his recruiting class. I don't trust the recruiting rankings, but it does concern me that our commitments aren't drawing more interest from BCS teams. There is a similar concern on the Penn State front. There's plenty of speculation, but BC is not a factor among the rumored PSU transfers. But really none of it matters. Spaz is going to wrap up most of the recruiting this summer and then focus on the games come fall. While not inspiring, the plan is practical. There are two outcomes:

1. Spaz has a losing season and gets fired. If this happens, our 2013 recruiting class will be a hodgepodge of current commits, a transfer or two and whatever our new coach can uncover. For a new guy Spaz's lower profile recruits might be an advantage. If they aren't valued, they are less likely to be poached by other programs. A new Head Coach can then exert a little effort in getting the Spaz commits to stay committed and spend more time on filling out the class.

2. Spaz has a winning season and keeps his job. In this scenario Spaz stays off the hot seat and has to finish filling out the 2013 recruiting class. With a little more job security he can use his last few scholarships on bigger names. He may even luck into a decent prospect who suddenly becomes available due to another school's coaching change (like he did with Rutgers last year). In this case Spaz doesn't waste time recruiting during the season and then picks up some low-hanging fruit.

Spaz is never going to recruit an elite class. There are many contributing factors as to why, but mostly it is because Spaz is not a salesmen. And we shouldn't care. He's not going to change. It is just a matter of who will finish out this class four months from now.

BC loses out on another local recruit

BC target and Xaverian standout Maurice Hurst Jr. verbally committed to Michigan Saturday. He's just the latest "would've, should've, could've" recruit to slip through BC's fingers. As I've said many times, I don't care about recruiting rankings. I do care about BC's ability to close on recruits who we want. Defensive Line is a position of need and a position where we have groomed guys for the next level. Hurst even favored BC at the start of the process. Yet he'll be playing elsewhere.

Checking in on Mass prospects

With the commitment of Mackay Lowrie and the Massachusetts High School FCA Combine over the weekend, I thought it might be a good time to check BC's status with the top players in Massachusetts. Spaz has found it increasingly difficult to keep the best local players in state. If he is going to turn things around, it will be with a foundation of Massachusetts talent. Rivals gave the following members of the 2013 recruiting class ratings and rankings.

1. Maurice Hurst Jr. He's at a BC friendly program and in a position of need. Yet he barely mentioned BC in the ESPN article. He's got offers from everyone. BC will have to really start selling to get among his finalists.

2. John Montelus. Already committed to Notre Dame. Maybe if Brian Kelly has a terrible season and Notre Dame makes another coaching change, we can poach him. For now I would assume he's solidly Irish.

3. Tevin Montgomery. Another DT from a local private school. The elite programs have not offered yet so I think BC has a real chance. Hopefully BC can close him before he attracts attention from other schools.

This list is short. I imagine that as Rivals ranks more Mass players BC will be on their lists. Keep track of where Rivals ranks Lowrie. The unheralded ISL prospect may get a boost now that he's headed to BC.

Measuring the impact of BC's last small class

Wednesday is National Signing Day. With numerous defections and the ability to close on a few kids late, Spaz's class remains in flux. The only certainty is that this will be BC's smallest class in years. Scouting service projections predict BC will sign 15 kids. The last time BC received just 15 commitments was 2005. Later this week I will get into some of the macro issues of a small class, but for now let's look at what 15 players can mean to BC.

These are the players who signed Letters of Intent in 2005:

Paul Anderson
Marcellus Bowman
Brendan Deska
Austin Giles
Rich Gunnell
Andre Jones
Mike McLaughlin
Clarence Megwa
Jim Ramella
Nick Rossi
Pat Sheil
Allan Smith
Brady Smith
Razzie Smith
Matt Tennant

This class was not ranked in the Top 50 nationally. Among ACC teams, it was considered the 10th best. The class contained two 4-star commitments, nine 3-star commitments and four 2-stars. Of course the highest ranked players -- Andre Jones and Pat Sheil -- had the least impact. While 2-stars Marcellus Bowman, Nick Rossi and Jim Ramella all became important contributors.

Players who never played for BC: Andre Smith. Smith committed to BC over multiple seasons but never cleared admissions hurdles. He eventually played at Akron to mixed results.

Players who did not use all the eligibility: Allan Smith, Brady Smith, Razzie Smith, and Pat Sheil. Allan dealt with injuries. Brady Smith ran into trouble and was kicked out of school. Razzie was a servicable backup but was not given a 5th year. Instead he finished up at South Carolina State. Sheil had injuries and never lived up to the hype. He did not use his fifth year.

Played as true freshman: Paul Anderson and Jim Ramella. Anderson was overshadowed by some of his DB contemporaries, but was still solid. Ramella played as a true freshman and then dealt with a series of injuries. He did play after a medical redshirt but never became an elite player.

NFL Draft Picks: Matt Tennant.

All Conference: Matt Tennant.

Five Year W-L record: 47-19

Bottom Line: This small group of guys were part of one of the most successful runs in BC history. They also reinforced the idea that BC might be better at evaluating under the radar guys as opposed to four star talent. The biggest concern as it pertains to this year's small class is the attrition rate. 1/3 of the signees did not use all their eligibility (for various reasons). Also, only two guys played as true freshmen. If those two trends recur, Spaz and/or another BC coach is going to have holes to fill with future recruits.

Talent/Recruiting narrative is pretty hollow

Monday on my drive home, I heard Mike Mayock tell the guys on 790 The Zone that BC's problems are because of Jags's disinterest in recruiting. We've heard this in the past and will hear it again, but it just doesn't hold up on many levels. I am not trying to be a Jags apologist again but I can't let another Spaz excuse slide. I won't even get into if talent was the reason we lost to Duke, Northwestern and UCF. Instead just look at recruiting. If we are losing because of talent, the current staff needs to only look in the mirror.

1. The current roster.
Any way you slice it, the majority of the current roster is comprised of Spaz guys. There are 77 active players currently on scholarship who went through the recruiting process (I am including Hampton Hughes as a Jags recruit). 28 of them committed to BC under Jags. Four committed to BC under TOB. That leaves 45 of the active players as Spaz recruits. If you want to get even more technical and go by the coach who signed them, only 19 of the current the current 77 players signed under Jags. The remaining 58 players signed with Spaz.

2. Mike Siravo
The role of a recruiting coordinator differs from staff to staff. On some teams the Recruiting Coordinator is the lead talent evaluator and lead salesman. On other staffs, the RC serves as more of an administrator who coordinates the process and other assistants' moves and decisions. BC has never spelled out Mike Siravo's job, but given how it appears in the media, he is our primary salesman and frontline recruiter. Every player on this current roster signed with BC under Mike Siravo. Does the head coach influence approach, what BC sells, who we offer and who we don't? Sure, but Siravo is the common link between every player on the field. If recruiting was a problem under Jags, why has his recruiting coordinator stayed on for an additional three years?

3. The rest of the staff
Frank Spaziani is in his 15th season at Boston College. Bill McGovern is in his 11th season at Boston College. Ryan Day, Mike Siravo, Ben Sirmans, and Jeff Comissiong are in their fifth seasons at Boston College. If Siravo and Spaz can only do so much, where do you want to assign blame with this crew? Every player signed by BC was evaluated and recruited by 60% of the current coaching staff. These are the staffers who put together this team. They didn't inherit anything. Everything that has happened as far as players leaving or underperforming or not buying into Spaz, happened on their watch too.

4. The recruiting rankings
I am not a big believer in the recruiting rankings, but they serve as an objective, generally accepted industry benchmark. Using Rivals.com (which has followed the BC program more closely), this is how our last ten classes stacked up nationally.

2012: Not trending in the top 50 -- Spaz
2011: outside Top 50 -- Spaz
2010: 47 -- Spaz
2009: outside Top 50 -- Spaz
2008: 33 -- Jags
2007: 46 -- Jags
2006: 37 -- TOB
2005: 49 -- TOB
2004: 24 -- TOB
2003: 24 -- TOB

If you want to point to declines, it started before Jags ever returned to college. He maintained the historical BC talent level. The ratings on Spaz's recruiting are not as strong.

I don't think talent is our current issue. It's coaching. But I find the excuse making even worse. The season is far from over, but given how our coach is quick to point out flaws without taking any blame himself, I have real concerns about how this season and Spaz's tenure will end.

ESPN raises the wrong questions

This article on ESPNBoston is generating a bit of buzz for all the wrong reason. BC guy Brad Zak used the Haden situation to ask "is BC not the place to develop top talent?" I hate to be so blunt -- especially towards a BC guy -- but this is beyond stupid. If you want to measure BC's ability to develop top talent, you should probably use Wins and NFL Draft picks as a measurement, not how some teenage recruit panned out. In fact, Haden's situation should be more of an indictment against the flawed and foolish recruiting rating system so many fans are slaves to. It has been a while since I stated my case about recruiting, so let's use this article and Haden's issues to take another look.

First let me say that recruiting is important. You need good players to win and you need to sell potential recruits on your school. But overlooked in recruiting is eyeing talent. We give too much credit to the evaluators at Rivals, Scout and ESPN. They don't know anything. Sure they have some measurables and if all the big powers are going after a kid, it is probably safe to say he is good. But there are so many other factors in play, that using the recruiting systems as anything definitive is dumb. I always fall back to the NFL. Look how many top picks become total busts even though the NFL teams are able to make more informed decisions when they select their players. You also need to look no further than your real life experiences. If you've ever hired someone or worked in recruiting, you know how challenging it can be. Someone who looks great on paper or was great in job A doesn't always fit with job B. It happens.


Then there is just the unplanned. Who knows what would have become of Toal or Haden if not for injuries? You can't plan on a guy like Montel Harris stepping up and exceeding his recruiting rankings. That is not BC's fault. If Haden transfers and becomes a star at his next stop, I won't use that as an indictment against the staff either. Sometime players develop at different rates. Take Andre Callendar. After his second season, few would have predicted the dominant performance of his senior season.

But don't use my theories or anecdotes to judge the process. Use the recruiting services themselves. Below are the four and five star recruits from Rivals' database going back to 2002.

2002 -- Josh Beekman, Will Blackmon, Shadu Moore, Jeremy Simpson, Jim Unis
2003 -- Dorien Bryant, Andre Callender, Ryan Poles
2004 -- Brandon Robinson, Brian Toal (five star)
2005 -- Andre Jones, Pat Sheil
2006 -- Richard Lapham, Jordon McMichael
2007 -- Corey Eason, John Elliott
2008 -- Mike Goodman, Josh Haden, Okechuckwu Okoroha
2009 -- Dillon Quinn

If you look at this group and their careers, how can you put much weight into the star system producing stars? Some never stepped on campus or left shortly thereafter. Some had unfortunate injury situations and others just weren't that good. What's more interesting are the names that aren't on the list. Where's Matt Ryan, Herzlich, Silva, Tennant, Castanzo, Kuechly, etc?

I am glad ESPNBoston is covering BC but this effort missed the boat. Maybe as a follow up, Zak should ask who is evaluating the evaluators?

Another glimpse into the crazy world of recruiting...

I've tried to explain my opinion on recruiting many times on this blog and offline with others. Let me clarify things a bit since recruiting will be a hot topic for the next three weeks.

1. I think recruiting is very important. Talent is the life blood of a program. The team with more talent will win more often.

2. I don't trust the recruiting rankings. Others have successfully argued both sides elsewhere on the internet. You can find those debates if you are interested. I think the stats are misleading and as anyone who has a good BC education knows, there is a difference between correlation and causation.

3. I think talent development and nurturing your players is underrated. Projecting a player from one level to another is very difficult (high school to college, college to NFL). I think seeing something in a kid and then working with him and keeping him in your program for four or five years is an undervalued and hard to measure aspect of winning.

Why restate that now? Because of the growing interest around Nick Klemm. Klemm is an Atlanta-area kid that committed to BC in December. To say he is a under the radar, late bloomer, project would be an understatement. Supposedly a good kid, he played on a team in one of the most heavily recruited high school football leagues in the South. I would safely assume that at least one coach from every SEC team and half the ACC has been to at one of his games this year too see other players. Yet he generated very little interest. When BC started recruiting him, recruitniks who follow the stuff more closely than I do panned the offer and said Jags and Co. were scrambling and terrible recruiters. Now -- seven weeks later -- Maryland has interest and we might lose this kid that no one wanted! If he was so terrible why does he have other options now? If some BC fans didn't want him last fall, why the concern now? Funny how things play out.

Rambling on recruiting

Recruiting is vital in college football. But I think the way it is covered and measured is often misguided. With the quiet period approaching, BC and every other program is trying to do some last minute recruiting before a mandated silence that lasts until January. With that in mind, allow me to ramble a bit here on the subject of recruiting and BC.

Tidewater QBs
Two of the highest ranked uncommitted QBs in this year’s class are Kevin Newsome and Tajh Boyd. They both hail from the talent-rich area of southeast Virginia. Both list BC among their finalists but those who follow this process closely doubt that either will end up on the Heights. (In fact, it looks like Newsome will commit to Penn State on Tuesday.) Newsome has already verballed and reneged on Michigan. Boyd verballed to West Virginia and then took his commitment back. He followed that by verballing to Tennessee only to see their new staff give him the kiss off. Kids change their minds all the time and BC has benefited from those changes (for example, Herzy originally committed to UVA), but the process for these two guys has been a little disheartening. Do we really want guys who are just shopping themselves around like this? I think to succeed anywhere, you need to be there for the right reasons.

The national perception of this class will ride on if we land one of these two guys. It shouldn’t. The only true measurement of a class is after five years...

BC’s ranking history
But even five years later doesn’t tell the whole story. Take a look at BC’s class of 2004. BC was ranked 24th. If we beat Vanderbilt, we will probably finish inline with our rankings. System works, right? Nope. Only seven of the guys from the class of 2004 played in the ACC Championship Game. And many of the best players from that class were under ranked. Some who never contributed (or even showed up at BC) drove the ranking into the 20s. And if you look at the other highly ranked classes of 2004, you’ll see plenty of mediocre programs.

After the season the recruiting sites will pat themselves on the back for foreseeing how good USC or Florida would be now. They probably won’t mention the misses that their system produced (like Michigan, Kansas State, Auburn, Washington). But we shouldn’t really be surprised at this point. Look how the NFL struggles in IDing talent...

Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell likes to dip his toes into the sports world on occasion. Recently he’s turned his focus to football. In this New Yorker article he parallels the challenges of school teachers and NFL quarterbacks. It’s a good read, but the point I want to underline and apply to recruiting is that the NFL -- given the hundreds of hours of data and expertise it has on players -- still cannot predict with certainty how a player will adapt at the next level. Yet we expect college coaches to be accurate when forecasting younger, less developed players and using less data? I believe in an eye for talent and good coaching, but there is no way any of these guys are certain or right all the time. The key, like most of sports, is being right more than you are wrong.

In this Q&A, Gladwell also mentions the importance of nurture in the “nurture vs nature” argument. He believes that the nurture aspect is more important to the development of the player. Nurture is one area where BC continues to thrive. Heavily redshirting, making sure kids make it through four or five years, making them go to class are the foundation for BC’s football success. Although you cannot measure this, I believe there are guys who have come through BC and contributed who would have washed out if they had been part of a football factory. That development is more important than just raw talent and the reason why we continue to outperform our recruiting rankings.

Even when you are nuturing players, there is also a bit of luck in how one guy matures vs another...

Montel Harris
Do you know the name Jamie Harper? He was a four star recruit out of Jacksonville last year. Rivals rated him as the No.1 running back in the whole 2008 class. Scout gave him five stars and said he was the fifth best running back in the country. Harper committed to Clemson last year with much fanfare.

Did you see the guy sitting next to him at the press conference? That’s Montel Harris, his high school teammate.

Harper's 2008 stats
Harris's 2008 stats

Now Harper may become a fine player. But no one, including their own high school coach, thought Harris was better. This is just another anecdotal example of the difficulty of predicting how players transition from one level to the next.

The 2009 Recruiting Class
In a few weeks we will know more about the next batch of BC guys. Unless there is a very strong finish the class will be ranked in the bottom portion of the ACC and probably not pick up many accolades. I am not concerned. Instead I’ll focus on what happens on the field. By the time we know how good this class actually is there will be more than 40 games played and approximately another 60 BC guys signed. How all of that comes together will have a little more meaning than what happens before Signing Day 2009.

Flaws with the recruiting rankings

Skeptics and believers alike should read SMQ’s deep dive on recruiting rankings. [Relevant BC note -- we continue to outperform our recruiting rankings.] He concludes that "the rankings are a serviceable baseline for expectation." I am still in the nonbeliever club.

Although I think there is some value to following recruiting, I remain unemotional about the process. The payoffs are just too far away and there are too many outside factors that impact a program from signing day to the time a player hits the field.

As a public skeptic of the recruiting rankings, let me explain myself a bit. Talent matters. The team with the better talent will win the majority of the time. But I don’t think the rankings are a perfect (or even a very good) measure of talent or a good forecast for on the field results. The pillars of my arguments undermining the rankings follow. As always, let me know what you think in the comments section.


Recent history
The major sites use their consistently high rankings of programs like USC, Oklahoma and LSU as examples of how their system works. This boast ignores the actual timelines of these programs accents. UCS, Oklahoma and LSU all won championships and moved into or returned to elite status with respective coaching changes. Carroll, Stoops and Saban all won early in their tenures with less regarded talent. Once the programs established themselves their recruiting took on positive momentum and the recruiting sites followed. Now, nearly a decade later, it is easy to say “we [Rivals, Scout, Lemming] had USC class of 2003 ranked highly and it produced XX Pac 10 titles and XX first round draft picks.” These same sites never wipe the egg of their face when they could have said “our rankings of the late 90s USC classes never would have forecasted their first Championship under Carroll.” Florida provides another example of coaching versus recruiting rankings and how these sites can luck into their forecasts. Ron Zook was hailed by the recruiting sites for the classes he brought to Florida. His performance on the field left the Gator fans disappointed. Enter Urban Meyer. He wins a national championship in his second season. Recruiting sites boast: “see we knew Florida had talent!” Yet how do they explain Urban Meyer going undefeated at Utah with a bunch of two stars recruits? Or turning around a lightly-regarded Bowling Green earlier in his career? Coaching is the easy explanation. Unfortunately for Rivals and Scout, it doesn’t sell subscriptions. Recruiting news does.

Real life
This is something I didn’t appreciate until I had to make and witness personnel decisions in the business world. Although athletic evaluation is less subjective, when trying to fill roles or hire companies determine criteria for a position and then go and find people for those roles…just like sports (the subjectivity comes when placing a greater weight on personality versus tangible things like size and strength). Even the best companies make mistakes. I am sure anyone reading this who has hired someone has seen the perfect candidate not live up to expectations, while the guy or girl you had doubts about rises to the occasion. Heck, there is even something to be said of coaching someone into his or her role. I am sure readers have seen or developed people to become better than they were or outperform their peers who had better degrees or more experience, etc. Why should we expect things do be different in college sports? Bringing in the people with the best resumes in the business world is a start but doesn’t assure success. Bringing in the most sought after recruits in college football is a start but doesn’t assure success. It is about making them better and fitting the pieces together.

NFL
The NFL has a much more qualified applicant pool from which to draft. They have hundreds of hours of footage of likely draftees playing at a very high level. Collectively they are the best talent evaluators in the sport – yet they get things wrong too. It’s the nature of the process. If the best miss when identifying prospects 30% of the time, why should I expect talent evaluators from the national sites to get it right even 50% of the time. They are dealing with a much wider sample size and trying to forecast a process that has many more variables.

I think the rankings become a self-fulfilling process not a baseline. The sites try to stay ahead of the curve with the supposed measurable but there is a lot of luck, hot air and betting on the right programs and coaches. Any evaluation process is going to be filled with with hits and misses. What Tom Lemming or Mike Farrell thinks doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the coaching staff has a good eye for talent, knows how to sell kids on the school and style of play, makes them better once they get on campus and then gives them the plays to beat the guys across the line of scrimmage.