Just confirms the impression that I have had for a while: this staff is happy recruiting a very specific kind of under the radar/under rated player. I continue to just dream about how good we could be if we got MORE and BETTER players to Campus (50% 3-star guys every year) like Western, Toledo and now Buffalo are doing. Until that happens, we are what we are. A nice Top 4-5-6 MAC program.

I guess depending on where you come from you are happy because that is a big improvement over the 70s and 80 and early 90s. OR you are frustrated because we just continue to be the Cubs of the MAC with no MACC since god knows when (1968) and none anywhere in the near future...

A few things. BG WR Lewis nearly came to Ohio. Why did he wind up at BG? Now which of these were/are not worthy of being a Bobcat? Carrie, Herman, Crutcher, Sayles, Basham, Wells, Poling, Pruehs, Donte Foster, TT, Papi White, .... need to go, would someone please continue this list?

Certainly CMU had the players to win a MACC during the 2006-2009 time period, and NIU had the players since then. Mixed in are a few other MAC wins and losses, some of them had the talent, others caught some breaks along the way. Sometimes you need both.

L.C. the dominate teams mentioned, CMU & NIU, were the players that put them over the top highly rated out of high school?

Thx Paul.

No in both cases. Recruiting coverage has changed a lot over the last 20 years, and it's much more consistent these days. In the CMU years there was very little coverage of recruiting in Michigan, so most all of the CMU recruits were unknown. Today there is better coverage of Michigan, but there is still lesser coverage of the Illinois/Wisconsin/Iowa area that NIU draws from, so many of the NIU recruits have also been under the radar.

Then, of course, there is also the factor you are talking about, the lesser correlation between performance and evaluation at the 2-star/3-star level compared to the 4-star/5-star level. I check the correlation between how Ohio recruits are rated and how they perform regularly, and there is very rarely much correlation. You see unrated players come in and start, and highly players come in and never make it up the depth chart.

To me Ohio doesn't need to have top-of-the-mac rated classes to win the MAC. The coaches get a lot more out of the players than most coaches. Ohio got to the MACC three times, and was competitive the last time, using recruiting classes that were usually ranked near the bottom of the MAC. The last few classes have been rated much higher, and more significantly, Solich commented after seeing them report to camp, that they were the best classes he's seen yet. Given what they accomplished with the lower-rated classes, I can only expect more from these recent ones. They are going to win a lot of games.


I don't think you're bashing the program any more that I'm bashing it. I generally agree with you, though I don't think they need to have the absolute best talent to win it, so long as they have pretty good talent, plus some coaching, and some luck. I do agree with Bcat2 that the 2012 team did have enough talent to win the MACC, until they lost 19 players for the season due to injury. That's where the luck factor comes in - they had the players that year, but no luck at all.

The stars seem to be aligning themselves to where I believe Ohio will have the players for the next few years, too, where they could win the MAC. Will they have "some LUCK", too? I don't know.

Seriously?

Facts is facts. No MACC.

If there was MACC, then there'd be MACC and you could assert that we have MACC talent.

But no MACC is 100% clear proof that we don't have MACC talent.



Or, are you asserting that we do and that the coaching is inferior?

OK, I did exactly that. I used to recruiting rankings from 2012-2015 to predict what the ranking "should" be for all FBS teams, and then compared it to what they actually are, and posted it over on the main forum.

Purdue has made the mistake of taking 3 star "athletes" over two star and less football players. That's why they would lose to most MAC teams. I've watched several 4 star recruits this season committed to P5 programs who look like beasts but stop playing in the second quarter when their teams were down by a couple scores. Stars don't measure character or drive or fight or instinct, etc. And I am pretty sure one of them may never see the field at the next level because of academic/character issues. Purdue and Rutgers both lost highly rated players to arrests over the last few weeks.

That's the kind of football I enjoy watching. Coming to see them play it home for the first time next weekend against WMU. Lookng forward to it! Go Bobcats!

Yes, Jeff, the data in the first post is based entirely on the 2016 recruiting class, which is of course incomplete. It may change a bit before it's done, but the classes are half full, or better, for most schools. I agree that Ohio's class for 2016 so far has less than usual 3-star players, or at least less than the 2013-2015 classes. My gut tells me that is a normal pattern. The classes start with solid players that the coaches have seen in camps, then towards the end they add a few more players to the class that tend to be the ones in the class with the highest ratings. They also seem to be the ones that are most apt to have academic issues, and to not show up.

As for the data that I posted on the main page, that was based on the recruiting years of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, which are the recruiting classes that make up the bulk of the teams at most schools. I applied a little more weight to the 2012 class than others, and less weight to the 2015 class. I debated including the 2011 class as well, but decided against it. That class would contribute fifth year seniors to this year's team, but I excluded it on the basis that the best players from the 2011 class may have already used up their eligibility.

In any cases, I noticed that the recruiting rankings are fairly stable from year to year for most schools, so changing my method to include 2011, or changing the weights of the various years wouldn't really change things very much.

Well, Leipold didn't fare any better against CMU than Ohio did against WMU.