T Greenstein Trashing NU recruiting on Twitter
- Thread starter SciCat
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Here are the actual quotes:
"Just filed a column for Trib that asks: Why are so few top Chicago-area football prospects committing to #Illinois or #Northwestern?"
And, when someone asks "Is it because Illinois and Northwestern suck?" he replies:
"If only I could get "suck" in the paper. No, that's not really it."
Not seeing where he "trashed" anything...
"Just filed a column for Trib that asks: Why are so few top Chicago-area football prospects committing to #Illinois or #Northwestern?"
And, when someone asks "Is it because Illinois and Northwestern suck?" he replies:
"If only I could get "suck" in the paper. No, that's not really it."
Not seeing where he "trashed" anything...
Ilinois is a primarily a BASKETBALL state, and that is especially so of Chicago, although the Catholic leagues do have some good programs.. I've said for years that the Chicago area needs to be the focus of our basketball recruiting but our football recruiting has always been more national. Many of our best players thru history have been from out of state, esp. Ohio!
Does a Teddy write for that other site?
Btw, their writeup on Gooden is quite a departure from previous commitment profiles.
Btw, their writeup on Gooden is quite a departure from previous commitment profiles.
Don't see his column online yet. I'll be interested to see his complaints. We're 17th in the country right now, though that will fall closer to signing day. Why does Northwestern -- a school that admits less than half of its undergraduates from Illinois -- have to take its top recruits from here?
We'll see what the article says, but nobody said that NU has to get its recruits from Illinois. It's a simple question: why don't the best players from Illinois play for the two Power Five schools in Illinois more often? I'm interested to see what he suggests the answers are.
Well, for one thing, the two Power 5 schools aren't even the best program in Illinois: MAC power NIU has been the strongest program over the last 5 years.
And Illinois isn't exactly a football hotbed. Using last year as a proxy, Rivals only rated 5 Illinois high school players as 4*s. Two of them were from East St. Louis high and committed to Missouri. I'd be very surprised if either had the academics to attend Illinois, let alone NU. Illinois got the top OL recruit. ND and MSU got the other two 4*s. NIU got 2 of the highest rated 3*s. Minnesota recruits well in Illinois, probably because of Kill's NIU connection. Bottom line, if NU had to rely on Illinois for its recruits, it would be in trouble given the lack of quality.
Where he might have a point is when IA would come into the Chicago area and sign top OL prospects but last year was not such a case. THe guy that is going to UofI is from southern IL.
Just a thought - why don't we wait and read the article before complaining? 140 characters may belie the content.
I am not sure 4 stars are the measuring stick here. We got no 4 star recruits last year and 1 so far this year. Who cares, there are plenty of high 3 stars that turn out much better. I also think there is decent not great talent in Illinois. The top 10 recruits this year all landed in the B1G or at Notre Dame. 4 going to Michigan State. Pretty good program so I would expect would be potential impact players at NU. To my knowledge, we have only recruited 3 players in the top 30. Borland, Love, and Skanes. I would say Borland and Love were two of our top targets. Ended up in second for both of them. We have a couple Illinois kids and neither are in the top 30. Doesn't mean they won't be better than top 30( I personally think they will) .
I am sure many of the top talents just aren't admission candidates. Having said that, we got to do better on the ones like Borland, Love, Swenson, that can get in. We did it a few years back with Jackson, Thorson, and Westphal. Like it or not, the kids playing in the Chicago area get a lot of press in high school and this continues in College if they are at NU. This helps build the brand and gets us in on the Borlands and Loves.
Illinois is important to us just like Ohio, Texas, or New Jersey. We have kids that can help us.
Teddy's piece is out and while I won't get into it too much because I think it's behind the paywall, it's really not too bad at all for NU with UI catching the brunt of the negative press.
That guy is a complete tool who never saw the field once in his life. Our recruiting isn't what a lot of big schools is, but then we actually have standards. So the number of student athletes obviously is dramatically reduced.
Why would anybody halfway intelligent be interested in anything Teddy thinks? He's mediocre as a reporter. His ego is utterly unwarranted. And he's a proven falsifier of facts in his stories. Teddy's stories are, simply put, a waste of time. I don't bother to read them anymore. They're just not worth reading.
Agree. The worst thing I can say about the column is it opens with a negative premise regarding NU recruiting (top Illinois recruits are committing elsewhere) and then expressly admits the evidence actually undermines the premise.
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t was actually a good factual article that painted Nu in a much better light than Illinios. IMO
It barely negative at all, and hugely negative toward IL. It does sound like Teddy set out to make a story out of IL recruits not staying in IL but then found the premise was silly.
Illini, not Northwestern, really need to recruit the state better because Illinois has much less national attraction to it than Northwestern does as a school. That's not to say Illinois is not a good school, but it doesn't have the national reputation Northwestern does.
I'll buy the NIU Kool-Aid when they own more than one lifetime win against NU, a narrow win in one of the worst games we played last year. No way would they have beat our 10-3 team of a couple of years back.
