All-Time Recruits...

[dawgstudent]

https://247sports.com/college/mississippi-state/Sport/Football/AllTimeRecruits/

 

[dawgstudent]

I remember I got confused one time if it was Sylvester Croom or Donovan Davis in the red cross jersey.

 

[OliveBranchDAWG]

https://247sports.com/college/mississippi-state/Sport/Football/AllTimeRecruits/

I was looking through the all time recruits list awhile back, and was amazed by the overall talent gap from bottom tier SEC schools to other power 5 programs.

Mississippi State has 85 five and four star recruits- Wake Forest has 3, Iowa State has 11, Duke has 12, Wash St 15, Oregon State 16. So if you combine those five P5 Schools, they still have 30(!) less 4 & 5 star recruits than MSU since 2000.

 

[patdog]

Part of that is SEC bias by the recruiting sites. There is a gap, but it's not that big.

 

[CookieMonster.sixpack]

#186 & #209 turned out to be pretty good.

It's Sweat & Dak. Saving you the scrolling.

 

[Seinfeld]

And this is not to say that the state of Texas isn’t talent rich, but if it was as rich as their recruiting sites say, Texas and A&M would’ve basically been trading titles back and forth for the 50 or so years

 

[drumrcraig]

Just looking on the all-time top 50, I think I counted 3 guys who went on to all-pro type NFL careers. We've had a few pretty decent college players come out of that as well, but a lot of busts as well. This list just shows again why I don't all get all worked up on signing day. There are quite a few guys that were considered the highlight of a signing class that didn't do much once on campus.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

And this is not to say that the state of Texas isn’t talent rich, but if it was as rich as their recruiting sites say, Texas and A&M would’ve basically been trading titles back and forth for the 50 or so years

Texas talent (particularly in the Triangle urban areas) is over-scrutinized and many of them are peaked out in high school, and they never get better relative to their rating. And it also seems they play a soft brand of football in many of the high schools.

Texas schools would be better served to go find themselves some project-able athletes in the small towns, in my opinion.

 

[Go Budaw]

Just looking on the all-time top 50, I think I counted 3 guys who went on to all-pro type NFL careers. We've had a few pretty decent college players come out of that as well, but a lot of busts as well. This list just shows again why I don't all get all worked up on signing day. There are quite a few guys that were considered the highlight of a signing class that didn't do much once on campus.

Hell, I counted 2 in the Top 26 (Damien Robinson, Whop) that didn’t even have another committable Power 5 offer by the time signing day rolled around. It’s always interesting to see how the opinions of the schools themselves are much different from the recruiting services in many cases.

 

[aTotal360]

Imagine having 2 5-star kids in MS in the same year, and Bama or LSU taking not one of them. Landing Dapoo and JRock was amazing.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

Just looking on the all-time top 50, I think I counted 3 guys who went on to all-pro type NFL careers. We've had a few pretty decent college players come out of that as well, but a lot of busts as well. This list just shows again why I don't all get all worked up on signing day. There are quite a few guys that were considered the highlight of a signing class that didn't do much once on campus.

It’s relative. It’s very obvious who the top 10-15 classes are each year. That talent is easy to judge, and those are the teams competing for playoff berths.

But once you are past about 15, it gets much more subjective and is basically a mixed bag. There’s not a big difference in finishing 23rd or 31st. It becomes all about evaluation, development, and fit from there.

South Carolina finishes ahead of Wisconsin in the crootin rankings ever year, but Wisconsin is clearly better. Oklahoma State, Utah, Baylor, and Iowa get “destroyed” by Miami every February, but is Miami better than any of those programs? There are tons of examples just like that.

 

[Dawgg]

Man, looking at those names with 'Class of 2001' through 'Class of 2007', it makes me think Croom was maybe a worse coach than I thought (and I already thought pretty frickin' lowly).

That's a LOT of talent to have 1 winning season and a Liberty Bowl in 5 years.

 

[johnson86-1]

It’s relative. It’s very obvious who the top 10-15 classes are each year. That talent is easy to judge, and those are the teams competing for playoff berths.

But once you are past about 15, it gets much more subjective and is basically a mixed bag. There’s not a big difference in finishing 23rd or 31st. It becomes all about evaluation, development, and fit from there.

South Carolina finishes ahead of Wisconsin in the crootin rankings ever year, but Wisconsin is clearly better. Oklahoma State, Utah, Baylor, and Iowa get “destroyed” by Miami every February, but is Miami better than any of those programs? There are tons of examples just like that.

I don't even think it's obvious to the top 15. I think if recruiting analysts didn't get to judge based on who offers people, they could identify some 5 star athletes from big schools and that's about it. I think to the extent the rankings predict anything outside of the top 5-8 classes, it's because you can do alright just assuming the teams that have been good will continue to be good. You'll have some highly ranked classes prove to be terrible and some lowly ranked classes prove to be good, but the movement from great to good to pretty good to mediocre and back is gradual enough for most programs that you can just base your recruiting rankings off how people have recruited in the past and do ok.

 

[johnson86-1]

Just looking on the all-time top 50, I think I counted 3 guys who went on to all-pro type NFL careers. We've had a few pretty decent college players come out of that as well, but a lot of busts as well. This list just shows again why I don't all get all worked up on signing day. There are quite a few guys that were considered the highlight of a signing class that didn't do much once on campus.

That's true, but all the same, it was a little discouraging to me seeing a lot of young guys that we are really counting to be solid well down that list. Lot's of really good players down the list, but certainly the hit rate does get worse in the 100's.

 

[drumrcraig]

It’s relative. It’s very obvious who the top 10-15 classes are each year. That talent is easy to judge, and those are the teams competing for playoff berths.

But once you are past about 15, it gets much more subjective and is basically a mixed bag. There’s not a big difference in finishing 23rd or 31st. It becomes all about evaluation, development, and fit from there.

South Carolina finishes ahead of Wisconsin in the crootin rankings ever year, but Wisconsin is clearly better. Oklahoma State, Utah, Baylor, and Iowa get “destroyed” by Miami every February, but is Miami better than any of those programs? There are tons of examples just like that.

What did this have to do with my post? I wasn't arguing about the quality of team recruiting rankings and top 10 versus top 25. I'm talking about individual players that were ranked very highly and didn't amount to much. Most of our players that are making noise in the NFL right now aren't in the top 50 (or even the top 100 in some cases) of our all-time signees. I'm just commenting about the obsession over us having to sign player X each year because they are the top kid in MS or something, when our history shows that a lot of those players were not impact players for us.

 

[jack daniels dog]

Jeffrey Simmons not being #1 on that list is criminal. That dude was a beast

 

[philduckworth]

4 star kicker, lol.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

I don't even think it's obvious to the top 15. I think if recruiting analysts didn't get to judge based on who offers people, they could identify some 5 star athletes from big schools and that's about it. I think to the extent the rankings predict anything outside of the top 5-8 classes, it's because you can do alright just assuming the teams that have been good will continue to be good. You'll have some highly ranked classes prove to be terrible and some lowly ranked classes prove to be good, but the movement from great to good to pretty good to mediocre and back is gradual enough for most programs that you can just base your recruiting rankings off how people have recruited in the past and do ok.

Anybody know how many high school football players there are in MS? If you are the MS recruiting guru for some media outlet it is literally impossible to know about all the talent out there. I'd be interested to know how they decide what schools/talent to focus on. Maybe just follow the hype train wherever it leads? I can tell you from years of being married to an 8th grade math teacher, she can tell me when somebody special is on the middle school team and she isn't really into it.

 

[horshack.sixpack]

That's a rabbit hole. Fun to remember all those names from the past.

 

[OliveBranchDAWG]

Part of that is SEC bias by the recruiting sites. There is a gap, but it's not that big.

Only MSU fans can find a negative spin on having 30 more 4&5 star recruits than five P5 schools combined

 

[ezsoil]

Texas talent (particularly in the Triangle urban areas) is over-scrutinized and many of them are peaked out in high school, and they never get better relative to their rating. And it also seems they play a soft brand of football in many of the high schools.

Texas schools would be better served to go find themselves some project-able athletes in the small towns, in my opinion.

this is the correct answer...1. Texas football is SOFT....2. Texas football is all about offense there is very little emphasis on defense. They do produce QB's ...Look at how many QBs Texas A&M Has had on campus .....Kyle Allen and Kyler Murray transferred out and Tannehill was Wide receiver until his senior year.... so at one point last year, A&M had 3 former QBs starting in the league.

The smaller towns have produced so solid RB's Tyler produced Ricky Williams, tiny Groveton produced Rodney Thomas

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

I wonder where David Fair would have ranked on that list?

 

[InTheIttaBenaHotSun]

4 star kicker, lol.

Anybody know where he is? Dr.?

 

[InTheIttaBenaHotSun]

Where is Dontae what's his name from Clinton - RB? Did I over look him? Thought he was in the class with McDougal and was a 4 or 5 star.

 

[patdog]

Surprised he's not on the list. McDougal was a beast. If he hadn't had those knee injuries, he would have been one of the all time greats. Saw him play against Madison Central his sr season. Madison had 5 future NFL players on the field, Clinton had him, Dontae and another Dandy Dozen player. McDougal was a man among boys. Easily the best player on the field.

 

[paindonthurt_]

Where you get into the mid 20s and on it’s much more abt “needs” than anything else.

Managing a roster for depth is crucial.

 

[Go Budaw]

Where is Dontae what's his name from Clinton - RB? Did I over look him? Thought he was in the class with McDougal and was a 4 or 5 star.

Dontae Walker....signed in the class of 99, I think that was before they had a good recruiting database to actually rank the players. All the ranked recruits don’t really start until 2001 or 2002.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

Man, looking at those names with 'Class of 2001' through 'Class of 2007', it makes me think Croom was maybe a worse coach than I thought (and I already thought pretty frickin' lowly).

That's a LOT of talent to have 1 winning season and a Liberty Bowl in 5 years.

Croom was horrific. He had only one system he knew, and he couldn't run that. He had zero idea how to put players in the best position to win. And for all the talk about discipline, we constantly had problems and the players were all out of shape. Very similar to Moorhead. Then on top of that the uniforms were awful.

It was a bad, bad time. And yes, he had plenty of talent to go 6-6 every year. He just flat out sucked.

I will say he was a decent recruiter.

 

[HotMop]

I wonder where David Fair would have ranked on that list?

I'd go ahead and put him in the top spot.