Recruiting questions

#1
stephenk24

stephenk24

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#1
Hey guys,

This is my first time on the recruiting forum... Recruiting is one part of football I still know almost nothing about. If you don't mind I have a few questions about recruiting and the process, in order to get me started on learning about it.

- How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star?

- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit?

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance?

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion?

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts?

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round?

- do players have to be of a certain academic standard to play for us? Or is it just normal students who have to meet requirements?

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here. :hi:
 
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#2
#2
Recruiting services like Rivals, Scout, etc evaluate hundreds of high school players very year and are responsible for giving these players their star ranking. It is their own subjective ranking, however, which is why it is such a popular phenomenon and hot topic year in year out. Is a 4* recruit that much better than a 3*? The law of averages says yes which is why schools recruit higher rated players. Are their 5* busts? Absolutely because it is not an exact science and a player's potential may or may not translate to play on the field. High school football and college football are worlds apart in the speed and complexity of the game, so sometimes it's very difficult to take high school stats and apply them to the college game.
Every recruit offered a scholly will get a visit from UT, either Butch himself and/or position coaches. Most high rated kids get multiple visits from alot of schools. Also, Butch will go to as many games of recruits that he can, but the logistics of it are really hard to catch many. Usually only happens during bye weeks. Most of their evaluations come from high school game tape and camp performances. And yes, players have to meet minimum academic standards to be eligible to play. We've had plenty of players over the years be declared academically ineligible for poor performance in the classroom.
 
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#3
#3
Thanks man! So are high school games a bit like the NFL combine, with scouts sitting with clip boards on the sideline all the time?
 
#6
#6
Hi..Im not by all means an expert but its fun to help out someone from the UK where real football is king..lol

How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star? Star ratings is all based on what potential ratings people think. the difference between the stars can be seen in their number rating...3.8 versus a 3.0 might be the difference in 3 or 4 stars. Not much but a 4.0 and a 3.0 could be huge for a WR versus a quarterback

- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit?Yes. Not always the head coach though.

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance?Several 5 star busts

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion? no. Schools do have their own way of rating. Mostly on what position needs they have. However, the schools rating is close to all the rating services

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts? most freshman do not play if the school alrady is stocked with good players. SOme 5 stars who live up to their rating do.

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round? Butch has a recruiting coordinator to handle alt of what he wants

- do players have to be of a certain academic standard to play for us? Or is it just normal students who have to meet requirements? All players meet the same standards

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here
 
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#7
#7
That explains a lot! Thanks. Oh, and "real football"? Give me a break, we wouldn't know football if it slapped us in the face...
 
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#8
#8
I'll take a stab at it. Answers and best guesses are in bold.

stephenk24 said:
Hey guys,

This is my first time on the recruiting forum... Recruiting is one part of football I still know almost nothing about. If you don't mind I have a few questions about recruiting and the process, in order to get me started on learning about it.

- How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star? Stars/rankings give you general odds on how successful players will be at the next level. There are people who say stars don't matter, but the percentages say otherwise. 5 star guys have a greater likelihood of making it to the NFL than 3 star guys. To answer your question, stars/rankings CAN be a good indicator of all-SEC talent versus quality backup.

- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit? There are in-home visits, but I'm less certain what the restrictions are on this (someone else help me here). The biggest factor is "official visits" of the players and their family to the university.

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance? There are busts at every star level. With factors like personality, early development, and other outside forces, it makes recruiting a game of odds.

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion? No, but there are several recruiting services. The coaches don't use those rankings to evaluate their players, however. They rely mostly on evaluating a player's film and their performance in camps.

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts? You can guess that all of the JUCO's will play, barring injury. I would guess about half the freshmen will see playing time. The most likely positions to have players redshirted are on the lines and LB's. I'd guess we'll see 5-10 redshirts out of this next class.

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round? Yes, the entire staff visits high school games when they can (which is not often). Everyone went out to watch games in the bye week, for instance.

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here. :hi:
Click to expand...
 
#9
#9
What's a JUCO? Thanks a ton by the way. I would love to be in the room with scouts breaking down players.
 
#10
#10
stephenk24 said:
Hey guys,

This is my first time on the recruiting forum... Recruiting is one part of football I still know almost nothing about. If you don't mind I have a few questions about recruiting and the process, in order to get me started on learning about it.

- How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star?

When we get a star player all of Vol nation turn into star gazers and when we don't get one, we found diamond in the rough. Stars would mean the potential is high. How they turn out depends on how they develop / coaching etc.


- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit?

Coaches do have in-house visits. Some recruits your head coach visits, some recruits your co-ords / position coaches visit. This will be based on need / who else is pursuing harder.

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance?

Even though we fight to prove that wrong, predominantly (statistically) higher rated players fare better. Since the pool of 5* and 4* is much lesser than the number of 3* and 2*, the % of busts will be higher.

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion?

Schools usually depend on their own eyes via film and camps but there are services like scout, rival, ESPN etc.

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts?

Redshirt is not a must. It is just that some players take more time to develop (weight room, play system) and they can use a red shirt where they don't lose a year of eligibility, meaning they can play 5 years instead of 4 in which 1 is a red shirt year. It also depends on how the team depth is and if they can afford to have them not play that year. So all of Butch Jones can play next year if needed. Burning red shirt means, they played a little football and so it is counted as 1 year against their available 4 years.

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round?

All coaches go and watch certain games based on recruiting areas. the coaches have regions assigned for them. They also invite a bunch of players for camps to visit UT and do an eye test and see if there are players who needs to offered.

- do players have to be of a certain academic standard to play for us? Or is it just normal students who have to meet requirements?

Yes. It varies and there is always a debate that UT has relatively higher standards. Not sure exactly what.

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here. :hi:
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Disclaimer: These are based on volnation guru across various threads over the years. Apologize if anything is wring.
 
#11
#11
stephenk24 said:
Right. Do we send scouts all over the country or just to nearby states? Are you allowed to scout anywhere?
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We recruit nationally because the state of Tennessee does not produce a lot of Division 1 talent like the states of Florida, Texas, Georgia, and California. Ideally, we would like to get as many recruits from neighboring states as possible because kids still get homesick and many want their families to be able to travel a reasonable distance to see them play.
 
#12
#12
stephenk24 said:
What's a JUCO? Thanks a ton by the way. I would love to be in the room with scouts breaking down players.
Click to expand...


Junior college player. When a talented player can't meet the academic standards to get admitted to a 4 year university, they usually go JUCO for 2 years and get their academics in order, then transfer to a university and have 2 or 3 years left to play.
 
#13
#13
stephenk24 said:
What's a JUCO? Thanks a ton by the way. I would love to be in the room with scouts breaking down players.
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Juco is junior college, usually reserved for academically ineligible players who can play there, improve grades and get recruited again.

Pearson, Lambert, Weatherd are some Juco we are recruiting this year.
 
#16
#16
stephenk24 said:
What's a JUCO? Thanks a ton by the way. I would love to be in the room with scouts breaking down players.
Click to expand...

A JUCO is a player that didnt have the academic scores coming out of high school to qualify. So they go to a small community college or military school to play football and to get their grades in order. After a couple years they are academically eligible to now play at the bigger schools.
 
#17
#17
stephenk24 said:
What's a JUCO? Thanks a ton by the way. I would love to be in the room with scouts breaking down players.
Click to expand...

A JUCO is a community college where the player goes for a year or two to get his grades in order. They are obviously older and we look for them to come in and be ready to play. When they come in, they usually have 2 or 3 years to play two.

....or what the guys above me said...lol
 
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#19
#19
stephenk24 said:
Hey guys,

This is my first time on the recruiting forum... Recruiting is one part of football I still know almost nothing about. If you don't mind I have a few questions about recruiting and the process, in order to get me started on learning about it.

- How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star?

- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit?

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance?

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion?

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts?

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round?

- do players have to be of a certain academic standard to play for us? Or is it just normal students who have to meet requirements?

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here. :hi:
Click to expand...

Hey Stephen, just out of curiosity, how did you become a Vol fan? I love that you're a fan, just curious as to what made you choose us.

And I see where you've been on these boards since 2011, but just in case no one has welcomed you yet...Welcome to Volnation! Happy to have you.
 
#20
#20
ChattanoogaVols said:
Hey Stephen, just out of curiosity, how did you become a Vol fan? I love that you're a fan, just curious as to what made you choose us.

And I see where you've been on these boards since 2011, but just in case no one has welcomed you yet...Welcome to Volnation! Happy to have you.
Click to expand...

Lol. I get asked so much, I thought everyone on here would know by now lol. I pasted it here:http://www.volnation.com/forum/tennessee-vols-football/206398-i-have-never-been-so-excited-9.html
 
#23
#23
Great thread. It's good to see people trying to inform themselves rather than just dive in. Recruiting is a weird process, but most of us are on here not only for recruiting, but we post in the gsmeday thread (on the recruiting forum). Most of us don't venture to the football forum for various reasons. Feel free to stop in any time.

If you want to get your feet wet in recruiting, watch our highest rated commitment's film from last year (he was hurt this year). Here ya go.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfsP9fFfzv4[/youtube]
 
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#24
#24
stephenk24 said:
Hey guys,

This is my first time on the recruiting forum... Recruiting is one part of football I still know almost nothing about. If you don't mind I have a few questions about recruiting and the process, in order to get me started on learning about it.

- How big of a difference is there between the stars? How much better is a four star supposed to be than a three star? Try looking at it this way. Lets say you have 100 players to evaluate. Depending on the position there will be different considerations, size, speed, strength, agility, technique, skills, etc. The evaluation is going to rank the players in order 1-100. Different evaluators will come to different conclusions because at the core the evaluations are subjective but another reason is the various evaluators are not necessarily seeing the players on the same day so one evaluator may see the player on a good day and another may see him on an off day. There is much consistency between evaluators but a significant amount of misalignment as well. Once all 100 players have been evaluated a precious few if any will be awarded the coveted 5 star label. There is generally only one rank that is 5 star. Some years there will be no players at given positions that evaluators think meet the exclusivity of being named a 5 star. A 5 star player is anticipated to have an immediate and demonstrable impact on which ever team he goes to. There will only be at most a few 5 stars at each position each year, the best among the lot. The next level, the 4 stars are also high impact prospects. This level is usually broken down into high 4 star, mid 4 star, low 4 star. As you can imagine high 4 stars are very coveted, mid 4 stars next and then the low 4 stars. There are often only a few high 4 stars but generally more than the number of 5 stars, a few more mid 4 stars than high 4 stars, and a lot of low 4 stars. There will be more high 3 stars than low 4 stars, and so on until you've ranked every player in a database of around 5,000 according to position and potential to make an impact and immediacy of that impact.

- do coaches actually visit players like in the blindside? Or is that a movie thing? Do coaches have to visit every player they want to recruit? See other's answers

- are the star ratings usually correct for players? Or are there a lot of five star busts for instance? I think you can consider that the evaluations are generally correct perhaps 70-80% of the time depending on the service. Human development and human behavior is often unpredictable, more so when the humans are 17 & 18 year old males. The evaluation is no guarantee that the kid will achieve his perceived potential.

- is there an official body for rating the young players? Or is it down to the school's opinion? Each coaching staff does their own internal evaluations. The public services that rank players do so as a commercial enterprise and their only customers are fans who are preoccupied by all things related to their sport/team.

- how many recruits from Butch Jones' class this year will play next year? Will it take a year or two for them to burn their redshirts? Some positions are more offering of early playing time than others depending on the talent and development level of incoming players. Linemen typically need a minimum of 2 years beyond high school before they are physically developed enough to face the competition in our league. A highly rated player is that because it is anticipated that he will be able to contribute well before his class peers are ready. Another factor determining early playing time is the needs of the team. One of our selling points this year is we need highly talented freshmen to come play for us and if you come this year you have a good shot at getting on the field right away. Next year and the year after our present predicament will no longer exist and the availability of early playing time for incoming recruits will diminish markedly.

- does Butch Jones go and watch high school games to give scouts an idea of who he wants? Or is it the over way round? See other's answers

- do players have to be of a certain academic standard to play for us? Or is it just normal students who have to meet requirements? See other's answers

Thanks guys, apologies, but recruiting is very different than any of the scouting processes over here. :hi:
Click to expand...
.
 
#25
#25
Welcome! Pretty sweet avatar! Random question: If London ever gets an NFL team, will you become a fan of that team or remain a Packers fan?
 
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