Whenever I get excited about a particular potential recruit, they ALWAYS commit elsewhere. I'll stop paying attention for the sake of the squad! 
Brooks to PSU
- Thread starter Indy Cat93
- Start date
I think that choosing a college is a very significant and extremely personal decision. It is often the first major decision made in one's life and has a great influence over so much that comes later. I can never challenge anyone's decision - any more than I could challenge a person's decision on a spouse. What is right for one is not necessarily right for another. Yet, even given all of that, I fail to understand why anyone would choose to play for Franklin over Fitz. That decision is hard for me to wrap my mind around. Yet, I wish Brooks well at PSU; from what I hear and read, he seems like a good young man.Whenever I get excited about a particular potential recruit, they ALWAYS commit elsewhere. I'll stop paying attention for the sake of the squad!
Hope he enjoys......except you know when,,,,on that Saturday hope he is rethinking his decision
Taking an official somewhere doesn't mean a kid is interested. Many recruits take all three officials to reap the benefits of being a recruit. I knew recruits who had no intention of going to schools they visited, they just wanted the trip and the meals.Not all schools that offer a recruit will give them an official. Not all offers listed by recruits are actually true offers. Many coaches offer scholarships that a recruit can't commit to. The school will use it for hype, and the kid is more than happy to list it as an offer. Jango had 2 such offers I never listed, because they aren't offers and I wasn't letting coaches use him ..What you read about recruits and what recruits say is basically garbage.
Last edited:
Your best not to follow the recruiting . The recruits are hyped up by the recruiting media to sell subscriptions. Remember , Vitale was a two star recruit, would you have rather had a 4 star or 2 star Vitale ? What about 2 star JJ Watt ? Luke Kuechly was a 3 star. John Connor unranked walk on who started at Kentucky and then went to the NFL with the Jets. My son( 3 star) started over two 4 star recruits at IMG. Do the writers and so called recruiting services know more than the coaching staff at IMG ? I watched kids my son was ranked over move up above him in rankings after they committed to a more fan rich school. Don't get caught up in the recruiting hype, kids like mine will always prove the recruiting services wrong. Recruiting services can't know a kids desire to be good, his work ethic, or his partying habits,.How do judge a kid who plays weak competition to a kid who plays against the best competition in the country ? Naturally a kid playing crap competitions film should look better than a kid playing top competition. Trust the staff here at NU, they know what they are doing. They don't lose any sleep when they don't get a recruit, they find another one.Whenever I get excited about a particular potential recruit, they ALWAYS commit elsewhere. I'll stop paying attention for the sake of the squad!
Last edited:
On your premise Mr J. I agree. On this particular recruit I am on the other side of the coin. Brooks had visited NU on his own before the official. More importantly he had the opportunity to take an official to a dozen or more schools. Some of which I am fairly certain would provide an incredibly lavish experience compared to NU. Didn't Franklin have the "pretty girls" as escorts at Vandy? So no offense, but I doubt NU is a destination spot to burn an official when you have little interest in attending.
I said very early that I thought Brooks would end up somewhere other than NU. I was surprised we got an official, but it may have been more for the parents. Franklin recruits him for less than a month as sells PSU as linebacker U. I commend Brooks for at least giving NU a serious look. iMO, you have two very different Head Coaches and campus experiences. Fitz thought our chances were enough to host an official AND do a home visit last week. I am pretty sure Fitz, doesn't waste his time on prospects that he feels are not legitimately interested. Don't think we hosted any other officials this year for prospects that didn't verbal to us.
It seems like most players that want to do a hat dance, surprise announcement aren't likely to choose NU. I get the sense that NU recruits either get and appreciate the sense of family + academics at NU or they don't. If they do, they post a joyous and earnest twitter announcement thanking everyone who helped them along the way and all the programs that showed interest in them. They don't try to create an event that tells everyone to "look at me."
I like our recruits and our recruiting priorities.
I like our recruits and our recruiting priorities.
If NU wants to be at the top of the conference, NU has to get some of those 'hat dance" kids.
I think Ifeadi had a subdued hat dance at his house when he announced his selection of NU over Stanford. And my favorite, Jordan Thompson with a huge grin announcing "the University of Northwestern." But yeah, as hat dances go, our guys are very low key.
I totally agree. The recruits we get aren't about ME, they are about WE.
Kids visit to get offers They collect them. I would guess he knew he wasn't coming to NU before he took his official.
I would agree that we get a certain type of kid at Northwestern. When there is a recruit who likes to "talk up" his offers, I generally figure he won't be coming to Northwestern. Some recruits pay lip service to Northwestern's academic rigor but are more impressed with the 100,000-seat stadium schools.
When you see recruits playing the recruiting game, most likely the things attractive about NU won't be what they are looking for. They want the fan support and all the bells and whistles. When my son went through recruiting I told him to keep his eye on what was important, don't get sucked in by the recruiting circus, fans are fans while they benefit from your play but the next 40 years they could careless about you, look at the type of kid a school recruits, those are the kids you will be around and living with,you are an excellent student, go to the best school otherwise why did you get great grades. Many recruits start believing their own hype only to learn when they get to their University that the work has just begun. Northwestern is not for everyone, we don't want everyone. The academics are brutal as is the football. Our coaches expect to win and to continually get better, and they train our players as such.. There is very little free time for a Northwestern athlete. It is not a destination if you are looking to party and aren't disciplined . Northwestern is a WE team , not a ME team. WE are going to be a very good team this year and continue to get better each season. Trust your coaches, they know what we need to be a successful program. Finally we are going to be a B1G team who is always in the hunt for a West Championship and a B1G title. I am genuinely excited for this coming season. I see the recruits we have this 2017 class and how the 2016 class is developing. I see what the coaches demand and expect from our players. And I see the will to be great in our kids and the parents of these kids. We are not here for just the academics, we are here to be a legit contender in the B1G.. I will honestly be shocked if we don't win at least 9 games.. Don't worry about recruiting my friends, we have player who will be great and we are getting players who will be great. I am proud to wear Northwestern purple and excited for the future of Northwestern football. Go Cats . PS. How about our basketball team ?
Kids just wanna have some fun. JR Pace (or was it Jace James) did a video announcing his commitment. I'm glad he's a Cat. I don't care if they do hat dances or videos or not. But, I'd love to get more kids that have Bama and dOSU offers. And still fit NU because they pick us over them. We aren't going to go to where we want to be with only kids that current playoff caliber teams don't want. Our coaches may be good at picking talent, but they aren't as good as Saban or Meyer at picking and getting them, and we'd be better off if we were.
Saban and Urban don't have any academic standards they have to meet . And they have no code . I prefer what we have . We lost to OSU by 4 points with many starters out. We will beat them in 2019. MSU had a great recruiting class, we spanked them
Sure, they don't have any academic standards, but they still bring in better players. Could they do the same at NU? I'm betting they would. Just like Chris Collins is surely and slowly doing it on the basketball side of things and not letting academics be a crutch.
Yes, we have academic standards, but so does Stanford. In fact, they have higher standards than NU. Harbaugh went in and flipped Stanford from a school that we beat out usually for recruits (under the Willingham, Teevins, and Harris eras, we crushed Stanford in recruiting) to one that competes with the best in the country and is realizing conference titles and top 10 rankings regularly. And they are continuing to recruit to that level even after Harbaugh left. So it isn't just the magic of Jim Harbaugh. That's where we want to be, and we're gonna have to recruit like Stanford if we wanna get there. We were there for a brief moment in time when Gary Barnett was at NU. And as discussed, I think we would have gotten there had he stayed. He didn't, so it's moot and I guess we'll never know, but that's what I think.
Didn't we beat Stanford last time we played them ? Stanford was definitely recruiting my son , we told them he would not go to West Coast . OSU had him on their board too and was recruiting him heavily . NU gets great players , we just don't have great players at every position and we don't have depth.
Last edited:
I think it has been confirmed here that the academic standard for atheletes at Stanford is less than it is at NU. Either way, head to head in recent play we have owned academic peers.
And the academic rigor for stanford athletes is significantly less than at NU as the school has many ways of coddling their athletes - including the option to pass/fail a class up until the last day of class. Nice academic parachute (which is also available to all students) - and very consistent with new parenting paradigm and safe to fail doctrines in the world.
And though it renders GPA largely irrelevant (at least more irrelevant than it is today's grade inflation world), i certainly wish NU had this policy in place when i was a tired and beaten down student... LMAO
Stanford is assembling a monster class for 2017, including 2 of the top 3 OT prospects in the nation. Cue my OT rant.
Keep in mind that SU has a very deep local pool from which to recruit. Granted, there is significant in state competition from Cal, USC, UCLA, but SU is able to build very deep classes by staying local, and then skimming top talent nationally. The two OTs are from Tx and Wa, and they yanked Davis Mills (#1 QB) out of GA. I'm envious.
Illinois just does not afford a deep pool of talent for our classes. Our best classes will be stocked by top players in state (see 2014), and include depth and quality from Tx, Oh, NJ, etc. Our recent work in GA is important given this reality.
Keep in mind that SU has a very deep local pool from which to recruit. Granted, there is significant in state competition from Cal, USC, UCLA, but SU is able to build very deep classes by staying local, and then skimming top talent nationally. The two OTs are from Tx and Wa, and they yanked Davis Mills (#1 QB) out of GA. I'm envious.
Illinois just does not afford a deep pool of talent for our classes. Our best classes will be stocked by top players in state (see 2014), and include depth and quality from Tx, Oh, NJ, etc. Our recent work in GA is important given this reality.
I have never been to Stanford, but they do have that local deep talent pool, better weather and what looks exactly like the stadium I wish we had ( see previous stadium rant). Add in a few marquee Pro players to show recruits they can be Pro Bowl level players and we have an uphill battle.
Yeah, we beat them. I'm glad we beat them. And I hope we beat them the next time we play them, and believe we can. But, there's no question that their program has accomplished far more under Harbaugh and Shaw than we have under Fitz. Their program is still ranked in the top 10 or 20 regularly, contending for the PAC-12 most years. And bringing in top 20 recruiting classes.
And to your point. We do have great players. But, we don't have great players at every position and we don't have depth. Not as much as Stanford (our win last year against them notwithstanding). I hope that changes.
I'm glad that your son chose NU. I hope we can beat Stanford for recruits a lot more than we do today, and as much as we used to.
Stanford recruits nationally, as we should and do. We have the great benefit of being an elite academic institution towards that end. Yes, Stanford is in CA, but the entire country recruits CA and most of the Pac-12 is heavily dependent on CA, not just Cal, UCLA, and USC. The whole notion of in-state talent pools is an excuse. ND doesn't recruit from just Indiana either. Look at who Jim Harbaugh is getting his talent. Illinois is no TX, CA, or FL, but it's better than Michigan. Oregon wasn't recruiting from in-State. Clemson doesn't recruit from just South Carolina.
Again, we used to beat Stanford more often than not. It's not impossible.
I could careless about the recruiting services rankings. They are garbage to sell subscriptions. Look at MSU. They use to recruit 2 and 3 stars that they evaluated their talent. Now they have started recruiting higher ranked players and have gotten away from evaluating like they use to do. I suspect they will go back to recruiting and evaluating like they use to. It seems to be hard for us to really recruit OL . That is what the difference is between us and a B1G Championship team. If we can strengthen our WR and Ol groups, we can compete and beat anyone.
You and many others.
I actually care less than you might believe. I do care that we can beat out top schools for talent, i.e. we get players that could play for anyone else in the nation, regardless of star ratings.
This is a topic for another debate, but the recruiting rankings are indicative in larger sample sizes. I could care less regarding individual recruits (and care more about who else we are beating for their services - as good as our coaches are in evaluating talent, I don't think they are that much better than other coaches, and if everyone in the world wants a kid, you know you probably got something, at least probability wise). ESPN just did an article on the Playoff teams and show that every national champion in the last X number of years have had 5 star starters playing for them, and generally a dozen or more ESPN 300 players starting.
Part of the rankings comes from where a kid commits to. If you commit to OSU you get a bump in your rankings, as with other schools. I watched Landers commit to WVU and was a 3 star all the way up to the day after he flipped from WVU to OSU. Miraculously he became one star more talented. Pretty easy to have a top ranked recruiting class when every recruit that is offered by or commits to a certain school gets a bump. Jango was a top 2 linebacker in Ohio and a top 20 in the nation until he committed to NU. If he would have committed to Wisky instead he would of stayed highly ranked. I think he still was a top 50 backer, but backers he was ahead of until he committed passed him when they committed to more fan rich schools. Again, how do these recruiting services actually judge talent ? I see 4 star ranked kids that couldn't carry water at IMG Academy, but they go to a school who plays very poor competition and they look good on film. Every recruit we take is talented enough to play for any team. The problem is recruits get to school and are happy they made it to their destination. Or they just want to party and enjoy the college life. I think it is more of a desire thing than a talent thing.
Fair enough. Like I said though, I'm more interested in who else wants a kid and who we beat out for him than star ratings. If a kid has 40 offers including from Bama and dOSU, they probably aren't all wrong. I know we have kids like Sherrick McManus who no one else wanted and may have been our best DB ever or Austin Carr who was a PWO, but you can't build a championship team on these diamonds in the rough. You gotta consistently be beating out other top calibre programs for kids. Pretty much the gist of the ESPN article I mentioned.
Well , we just had a recruit give up a full ride to MSU to walk on . We have Brown who chose us over powerhouse schools. It will start happening more and more.
I do hope so and I agree. But, we aren't quite where we need to be yet.
Brown doesn't really count as a grad transfer. We've been bringing in transfers from power programs who could have transferred to other power programs for years (Kustok, Cerasani, Roehl, Prater just to name a few). If all recruits could benefit from a couple years of maturity and college experience to begin to understand what's really important, we'd could have top 10 classes every year is my guess.
Can someone confirm that Spivak turned down an MSU scholarship offer (along with 16 other schools) to be a PWO at NU?
Right. Yeah, Earnest Brown is the type of recruit we need to get a lot more of. More please.
