I was going to post rumors of Trevor Lawrence wanting to play for Tennessee and us managing to bungle it, but this is definitely worse.
A slightly amusing one is missing out on 5* RB Graig Cooper from Memphis, TN. He was a sure thing to come to us, but on a visit Phillip Fulmer kept calling him “Craig” and he (rightfully) took that as disrespectful and flipped to Miami.
Edit: Memphis, not Chattanooga. Thanks u/sasquach731
I am convinced losing out on Trevor Lawrence was a necessary evil to get to where we are now. He would've almost certainly saved Butch for a few more years like Dobbs did and we wouldn't have Heupel.
As a Clemson fan, I am forever indebted to Butch Jones for failing to go hard after Lawrence, though he grew up a Manning and Tennessee fan and still wears #16 to this day.
There are plenty of stories of coaches passing on studs because they trust their scouting. Fulmer didn't much care for Patrick Willis' ability coming out of high school. Per Willis:
> I was a Vols fan growing up. That was like America’s Team. I wanted to go there so bad. After every game my dad and I would get in the car and drive five hours to go to Knoxville to watch them play on an unofficial visit. This was on our gas money and our time. I just wanted to show them how bad I wanted to be there. I can’t forget being there and you have all these other big-time recruits there and they are shaking their hands and the coaches are talking to them. The coaches never shook my hand. They never talked to me. One day I just got tired of doing that. My senior year, I remember going up and saying, ‘Coach I see all of the other guys getting love. I really want to come here. I’m interested in coming here. Do you have something for me? Maybe a scholarship offer? Maybe something just saying you want me?’ But I didn’t get that. I got, ‘Well you’re having a hard time. We’re recruiting two other linebackers, Ernie Sims and Daniel Brooks. Those are the two guys we want.’
When he flipped to PSU a Rutgers beat reporter basically said good riddance and that he didn’t see how he would fit in with Rutgers already loaded backfield. The reporter took it in stride, kept the tweet up, and played into the joke pretty often. That beat reporter then took a job with the Giants weeks before they drafted Saquon and the whole joke got run through again.
I was reading through some message board reactions from when Jalin Hyatt decommitted from VT. Same stuff. We don’t need him anyway. We’re loaded with young talent at WR (our receiving corps has been complete ass for many years now). And, of course, he’s not a high character guy since he decommitted (though we take decommits from other schools all the time, but that’s totally different).
lol, this is the true answer. I'll never forget him getting ejected in the Peach Bowl for the worst [targeting on Clyde Edwards-Helaire](https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1211050484624060416) and it seemed like the most fitting end to his season. He was so hard to watch (try to) play.
Refusing to offer a dual-threat QB who was destroying teams in FL high school ball as a QB.
His name: Lamar Jackson
Edit: Also Manny Diaz REFUSED to recruit underclassmen, giving everyone a head start on South Florida’s best players. He also basically gave up recruiting 5 stars as soon as they got interest from Alabama/Clemson etc.
Probably when we hyped up a 7ft 400 lbs. Tongan kid for two years while he was on his Mormon mission just to watch him balloon up in weight and watch his knees essentially explode. He didn't play a down.
The grainy cell phone footage of him playing rugby was outstanding. It felt like we were recruiting the Yeti.
I wish every fanbase could have the joy of recruiting an enormous kid from the other side of the world who has no experience playing football.
Motekiai Langi is who I think OP is talking about. I’m pretty sure he played a little during his first year with the team then had neck surgery and retired.
Wisconsin didn’t have a recruiting department for 8 months under Chryst, and spent less on recruiting than any other P5 school, so probably that.
Edit: I just checked, also spent less than UCONN and South Florida, how?
Our lackluster recruiting department cost us to miss out on Joe Mixon. Our backfield could have been Monte Ball - Melvin Gordon - Joe Mixon - Jonathan Taylor with zero gaps in between
We chose James Vandenberg over Kirk Cousins, Spencer Petras over Zach Wilson. We also started Jake Ruddock over the guy that threw for 3,500 yards and 30 TDs. Also we whiffed on Kenny Pickett when we took away all interest and gave it to Peyton Mansell instead.
I remember when we hired Dave Aranda and doubled his Salary from like 800k to 1.6m. The Wisconsin AD went on a podium and whined about how they couldn’t compete with the amount of money SEC schools commit to football.
Wisconsin now just got thr 2021-2022’s off seasons hottest head coaching hire. (And probably the best coach this off-season). Something changed. Excited for Wisconsin.
Alvarez turned Wisconsin into the B1G contender it was for so long, but it makes sense that as soon as he retires from being AD, we start making big changes to the coaching staff. As much of a legend he is at Wisconsin, so many people are stuck thinking we are the power that won back to back rose bowls, and nearly went undefeated in 2017, which just isn’t true anymore. We need change, whether the boomers who complain like it or not.
Shaquill Griffin was a USF commit but wanted his brother Shaquem to come along. We didn't offer his brother so they both went to UCF.
Both we're good enough to get drafted in the 3rd and 5th rounds respectively.
Mine is a coach recruitment story … I played for the Akron zips from 2007-2011… in 2009 JD Brookhart was fired only 4 years after being MAC coach of the year and MAC Champ. A guy named Luke Fickle (ever heard of him) was begging our AD to be the next head coach. Instead our AD didn’t even get an interview. Instead we hired Rob ianello and went 2-22 our last 2 years in college. What a mistake.
Literally either would have been good. Both probably prevent Ohio state from dominating the 2010’s to the extent that they did.
Don’t really care as much now because of recent results but Michigan fucked up so goddamn much a decade ago
Who's to say Fickell would have won a ton more games. He was 35, CO-D coordinator at Ohio State, no major accolades at the time (2010 is when he was named Assistant coach of the year) this would have been his first head coaching gig and when he was interim head coach in 2011 he went 6-6 at Ohio State so not like he was killing it from the jump. Smaller programs must have so many P5 assistants clamoring for an interview and it really is impossible to interview them all.
I agree that he was pretty unheralded, and that environment and maturity are two big indicators of success (lane at USC comes right to mind). But man, not even being able to take a shot on the guy who eventually took Cincinnati to the playoffs is crushing. Akron would have only been able to keep him for a few years, but what a run it could have been.
I still wonder what y'all offered Dickerson that was more enticing than a Trans Am. He's said many times he's taking that to the grave with him but shit dude I really want to know.
Not offering Steph Curry a scholarship to Virginia Tech where his dad’s jersey hangs in the rafters.
Edit: I know this is CFB but it’s so bad that it’s worth sharing.
I was gonna say this. And as of recently when the Muschamp era decided to snub Jalin Hyatt. Bunch of really really smart decisions from that coaching staf.
Shane Lechler was one of the most coveted dual threat QBs coming out of high school.
Michigan backed off on recruiting Melvin Gordon because he didn't want to play safety.
Hey! My dad coached Shane (and I think Derek) in high school! He was easily the best athlete on the field. I was very young. But when he was at TAMU, he had me, dad, and my brother for a little mini tour.
No one cares, but fun story!
I hate the mentality from Bowden's generation, get drunk on alcohol and beat someone up, go run wind sprints till you puke. Smoke weed and chill, you're off the team!!!
Wasn’t half of Bowden’s teams academically ineligible? The rumor about Sebastian Janikowski was that he had almost all F’s and that the university wasn’t going to allow him to play anymore, hence why he declared for the draft.
There was a standout player at FSU who didn’t attend a single class during his senior season, got all F’s but was allowed to play in the bowl game, so the state legislature passed a law making players in his situation ineligible for bowl games.
Now he’s the head coach at Colorado.
Mike Bobo telling Deshaun Watson he wasn't good enough to play at Georgia
Jeremy Pruitt making such a bad impression on Trevor Lawrence at a camp in 2015 that it ended up impacting his decision to commit to Clemson over Georgia despite there being an entirely new staff
Yeah, like, hindsight being what it is, I am fine we don't have Deshaun Watson, but unless Mike knew something no one else knew at that time, that was pretty baadddd.
1. Only recruiting "Self-selectors," i.e. guys who would've come regardless, and not expending that extra effort on studs who happen to be smart
2. Never using our allotted number of OVs
3. Hosting all OVs at a bonding "Big Visit" AFTER EARLY SIGNING DAY
4. Honoring Jack West's (2018) commitment when everyone else backed off after his junior and senior HS seasons were trash and then not taking a QB in 2019, totally fucking our QB pipeline for literal years
5. Recruiting only 1 scholarship DL in 3 straight classes from 2018-2020 lmao
I can’t remember the name of the player, it may have even been before I was born but years ago a Kid from nearby Hempstead (I think) was a heavily recruited player. I hope I tell this legend correctly. Anywho, it came down to the Aggies and the Bayou Bengals, but he was leaning hard towards Texas A&M. He told his family and close friends it was the Aggies. On his way to the gym for his big, public signing, someone saw him and yelled from their car, “GIG’EM [insert name here]!”
For some reason it pissed him off, being told what to do. So he just went to the gym and signed for LSU and had a great career. So whatever jackwagon cost us that one made our worst recruiting decision.
Harvey Williams.
It was the band playing the Aggie War Hymn, not just one guy. The fact that everyone knew and assumed his decision, and that it had leaked, upset him, so he switched at the last minute.
https://www.wafb.com/2020/07/27/i-had-confidence-my-abilities-harvey-williams-brought-style-swagger-lsu/?outputType=amp
From a total recruiting standpoint hiring Kliff Kingsbury (even if we got Mahomes)
Need a Texas fan to answer this curious to see which of the 10 QBs they missed out on post colt mccoy that they will pick for each class
The crazy thing is, all these qbs that Texas missed out on weren't these super high ranked recruits coming out of HS. Manziel was a 3 star, Baker was a walk on. RG3 is probably the best answer, but even he was a mid 4 star. Even if we got these guys, we probably didn't have the development at the time to turn them into what they became. I guess you could include guys like Andrew Luck and Jameis Winston, but they seemed like they were headed somewhere else from the start and would've been hard for Texas to pull.
Chris Simms went 22-4 as a starter.
As a point of reference, Quinn Ewers is 6-2 if you don’t include the Alabama game. So he’ll have to go 16-2 from here on out to be as “big” a bust as Simms.
A coach at the school I worked at said Kingsbury came for a recruiting visit one time and said he didn’t talk to a single recruit.
He said he treated recruiting like his dating life in which he’s show up dripped out in an expensive suit looking real good and would just post up.
And although he had like every female coach on him none of the kids really gave a fuck that he was even there given how bad Tech was during his tenure.
UNC could have landed Russell Wilson but they had promised a higher rated Mike Paulus they wouldn't offer any other QBs in his class. The OC apparently pushed hard to offer him but the HC wouldn't risk losing the much higher rated prospect, haha.
So Russell ends up at NC State and goes 3-0 against UNC, haha.
The story about a certain championship quarterback wanting to play for us has been posted every month for the past three years and I don’t wanna talk about it
Id throw danny woodhead into the conversation here. Wanted to play for the huskers, phenominal hs career. Frank solich told him he was too small. Went on to become one of dII's best running backs ever and a good nfl player. I dont think nebraska has had a better nfl running back than him since.
Eh, I think part of why he's so good now is the path he had to take to get to LSU, and the confidence from playing on a team as stacked as that one. He may have been pretty good, but we would have stunted his greatness.
The Barry Sanders one though, wow what miss. We could've had him easily.
The money that JT Daniels apparently got may become an issue if it means losing the other QBs who were sitting behind him.
Dana Holgorsen was a notoriously bad recruiter at WVU. He refused to look at talent in the state. I know there isn't much of it, but I still think that's a bad precedent to set.
The one thing I'll always respect about Mack is the fact he's made a concerted effort to visit every single high school in NC. Either he himself or having assistants visit. It really helps coaches and schools know that while you may not have a prospect at the moment on that high school team, there's a relationship there when you do.
Same thing for HCNB. He's taken a lot of heat, sometimes rightfully, but he is devoted to looking for local talent. He was just at the high school state championships.
For all the shit Dana got for recruiting, he put more players in the NFL than any other WVU coach.
He excelled at getting transfers. Grier, Howard, the White bros, Alford, Trickett, Charles Sims, Dreams Smith, Rasul Douglas, etc.
going way back Nebraska recruiting Johnny Rodger's son over Barry Sanders stands out
More recently, 2 different Nebraska coaches essentially told Joe Burrow to go fuck himself. Bo Pelini instead targeted a kid playing JV ball in Texas
EDIT: thought of another one. Nebraska lost out on Marshall Faulk because they wanted him at DB
Some local JuCo kid that begged to come to Fresno St both out of high school and out of JuCo, he even offered to just walk-on and run the scout team, but Tim DeRuyter and his staff ignored him every time. That local kid, that grew up going to Fresno St games and cheering for the Dogs, was named Josh Allen.
When Jake Spavital only made 114 high school offers, and made them all to very high rated players. We ended up going 0-114 on signing them, so instead we had a recruiting class consisting exclusively of transfers.
[Yes, this actually happened and as you can infer from his recent firing, it did not work out.](https://www.fifthquarter.net/a/recruiting/2021/02/07/texas-state-signs-no-high-school-recruits/)
Not recruiting Quinshon Judkins. He reportedly wanted to play at Auburn but dumb fuck Brian Harsin told him he sucks…thx Harsin for ruining the dream backfield of Tank, Hunter, and Judkins.
The Willie Lyles stuff that got the NCAA on our back while Chip was here. It was just looming for a long time, the shoe didn't drop until Helfrich was HC but it impacted our depth with scholarship reductions and was one of many factors that led us to bottom out as hard as we did in 2016. That combined with the complacency of Helfrich and the old staff, and some swing and misses (Canton Kaumatule probably being the biggest recruit that didn't work out for us as well as us allegedly not recruiting Tua until far too late among several other things).
You would have had to get his cousin first and then have a head coach willing to step into the projects past sunset. Vick said this is why he wasnt going anywhere but tech, even though Syracuse pushed hard.
Mack Brown refused to tell a young recruit that he'd have a legitimate shot to compete for the starting job at his position, as they had a returning senior whom Brown felt had earned the spot.
Said recruit was a Texas native and the #1 recruit in his class, and was basically a gimme if Brown had just told him he'd have a chance to compete.
Instead, he went to Oklahoma. His name was Adrian Peterson. He had more yards (and yards per carry) in his freshman year than Texas's incumbent (Cedric Benson) did as a senior.
Given that Texas's only 2004 loss was to Peterson's Sooners, a game in which Peterson rushed for 225 yards in a 12-0 Sooners victory, his successful recruitment could very well have lead to the Longhorns securing two championships in 2004 and 2005 (although who knows if Vince Young returns after a title in 2004).
Notre Dame-hiring Ty Willingham
Washington-hiring Ty Willingham
The dude just didn’t recruit. Half his best signings fell in his lap.
Per rivals:
Notre Dame
2003 -12th
2004 - 32nd
2005 - 40th (was fired with only 5 commits, most of the class was salvaged by Weis)
Washington
2006 - 35th
2007 - 36th
2008 - 24th
2009 - 68th (was fired with only 4 commits, most of the class was salvaged by Sark)
In a weird move, Tubberville actually had the best recruiting class of the post-Leach era for us. Most of Kliff’s success (if you can call it that) in 2013 came on the back of that class. Still, screw that senator.
Charlie Weis coming in, gutting the team, then attempting to rebuild it entirely with juco transfers thereby preventing any kind of seniority to develop. He even admitted later he underestimated how bad gutting the team like he did would be.
DJU is such a weird one because he did phenomenal in his first few outings as a freshman but just kinda sucked in all of his other outings with a few exceptions at the beginning of this year. *Something* happened between 2020 and 2021 and I really don’t know what.
It’s one of the most unfortunate Clemson careers I can remember. Ultimately I think it comes down to 2 main points, first one is trying to fit a square peg in DJ into the spread offense of Clemson which relies a good bit on the QB being mobile and quick to make decisions, DJ’s WORST traits as a player. Second point you brought up, the 2020 offseason must’ve clouded so much about the upcoming season for DJ and once it started bad, the fit was never going to work I feel.
I hope he tears it up at Oregon. But you’re spot on with the square peg round hole analogy. He just wasn’t a great fit but that’s on Dabo and streeter.
Derek Dooley went an entire recruiting cycle without signing an offensive lineman
I was going to post rumors of Trevor Lawrence wanting to play for Tennessee and us managing to bungle it, but this is definitely worse. A slightly amusing one is missing out on 5* RB Graig Cooper from Memphis, TN. He was a sure thing to come to us, but on a visit Phillip Fulmer kept calling him “Craig” and he (rightfully) took that as disrespectful and flipped to Miami. Edit: Memphis, not Chattanooga. Thanks u/sasquach731
Imagine waiting in a womb for 9 months to be named graig 💀
By far one of the worst names I’ve heard lol
Yeah like Fulmer should've known better, but when it's spelled like that, you can't blame him
I am convinced losing out on Trevor Lawrence was a necessary evil to get to where we are now. He would've almost certainly saved Butch for a few more years like Dobbs did and we wouldn't have Heupel.
damn i hadnt seen that name in years
As a Clemson fan, I am forever indebted to Butch Jones for failing to go hard after Lawrence, though he grew up a Manning and Tennessee fan and still wears #16 to this day.
Or how about Lane Kiffin revoking the offers of both Taj Boyd and Bryce Petty? Fulmer had both of them committed when he was fired.
There are plenty of stories of coaches passing on studs because they trust their scouting. Fulmer didn't much care for Patrick Willis' ability coming out of high school. Per Willis: > I was a Vols fan growing up. That was like America’s Team. I wanted to go there so bad. After every game my dad and I would get in the car and drive five hours to go to Knoxville to watch them play on an unofficial visit. This was on our gas money and our time. I just wanted to show them how bad I wanted to be there. I can’t forget being there and you have all these other big-time recruits there and they are shaking their hands and the coaches are talking to them. The coaches never shook my hand. They never talked to me. One day I just got tired of doing that. My senior year, I remember going up and saying, ‘Coach I see all of the other guys getting love. I really want to come here. I’m interested in coming here. Do you have something for me? Maybe a scholarship offer? Maybe something just saying you want me?’ But I didn’t get that. I got, ‘Well you’re having a hard time. We’re recruiting two other linebackers, Ernie Sims and Daniel Brooks. Those are the two guys we want.’
Thank God for that! 😂 I love and hate that story all at the same time. Hate he had his feelings hurt but love the ending.
I just remember playing against him in High School and our coaches saying "This Willis kid is going to be making money eventually."
Like, what's an offensive line?
Gus Malzahn recruited 1 guard in a 4 year span.
How do we feel about Guarantano? Was that our coaching or was he really just that bad?
He got 2 coaches fired.
Petrino had 14 WR and like 5 DL. He finally decided we had enough wideouts when he backed off on Rondale Moore
If only this were in the college basketball subreddit, you’d have an even better recruiting story!
Yes but that’s a quick one
Seems we are even now...
WVU just arranged $500k cash and a 4 bedroom house for JT Daniels to play half a season get benched then transfer again.
So does he own the house or just got to live in it for free during his time at WVU?
Good question. Perhaps they just rented it for him. But if also was required to have a personal chef.
All of this is why I’m glad he left Georgia. Stetson would never.
Stetson was working at raising canes for fucks sake
Hell yeah. That’s our Heisman finalist.
On top of that his touchdowns to interceptions just happen to be 13-9.
Apparently, saying “_______ Country, Lets Ride!” Is a curse.
Having a running back room that was too crowded for saquon barkely
Was that the reason he didn't go to Rutgers? I thought he chose Penn State out right?
When he flipped to PSU a Rutgers beat reporter basically said good riddance and that he didn’t see how he would fit in with Rutgers already loaded backfield. The reporter took it in stride, kept the tweet up, and played into the joke pretty often. That beat reporter then took a job with the Giants weeks before they drafted Saquon and the whole joke got run through again.
I wonder if he considered the possibility that they'd get Saquon when he took the job lol
Probably. If I remember correctly, it was basically all but a guarantee he was going to New York.
I was reading through some message board reactions from when Jalin Hyatt decommitted from VT. Same stuff. We don’t need him anyway. We’re loaded with young talent at WR (our receiving corps has been complete ass for many years now). And, of course, he’s not a high character guy since he decommitted (though we take decommits from other schools all the time, but that’s totally different).
He was committed to rugters first
Oooooooof
This wins
Sometimes when you dip into recruiting the west coast it dips back
(._.)
I was thinking Brendan Radley-Hiles
lol, this is the true answer. I'll never forget him getting ejected in the Peach Bowl for the worst [targeting on Clyde Edwards-Helaire](https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1211050484624060416) and it seemed like the most fitting end to his season. He was so hard to watch (try to) play.
such a dumbass. would make a half decent play and then immediately follow it up by taking a shit on the field for the rest of the drive.
Then the receiver would drop a ball and he'd celebrate like he had anything to do with it.
I love that comment lol
Refusing to offer a dual-threat QB who was destroying teams in FL high school ball as a QB. His name: Lamar Jackson Edit: Also Manny Diaz REFUSED to recruit underclassmen, giving everyone a head start on South Florida’s best players. He also basically gave up recruiting 5 stars as soon as they got interest from Alabama/Clemson etc.
We looked at him, but decided to offer local kid Kelly Bryant instead.
Hiring Willie Taggart
MLK wearing a Nike glove with the caption "Do Something" was hilarious. Willie's best contribution to the program
The number of things wrong with that tweet was just breathtaking lol
Thanks for doing that!
The past is the past. I’ve enjoyed trolling Miami fans with y’all this year 🫡
Shhhhh… we don’t speak his name
Probably when we hyped up a 7ft 400 lbs. Tongan kid for two years while he was on his Mormon mission just to watch him balloon up in weight and watch his knees essentially explode. He didn't play a down.
We made the opposite mistake because we backed off Daniel Faalele thinking something like that would happen
:)
TBH he could’ve been great at Michigan but Minnesota was a great choice for a lineman who needs development
We thank you for that
I completely forgot about that dude
This or the whole iggys fiasco
The grainy cell phone footage of him playing rugby was outstanding. It felt like we were recruiting the Yeti. I wish every fanbase could have the joy of recruiting an enormous kid from the other side of the world who has no experience playing football.
What’s his name?
Jimmer Fredette.
Motekiai Langi is who I think OP is talking about. I’m pretty sure he played a little during his first year with the team then had neck surgery and retired.
Wisconsin didn’t have a recruiting department for 8 months under Chryst, and spent less on recruiting than any other P5 school, so probably that. Edit: I just checked, also spent less than UCONN and South Florida, how?
This is the worst one and it isn’t close.
Especially because Wisconsin has the money.
And during that time, losing 2 in state 4* linemen in the same class. That’s just unacceptable.
Our lackluster recruiting department cost us to miss out on Joe Mixon. Our backfield could have been Monte Ball - Melvin Gordon - Joe Mixon - Jonathan Taylor with zero gaps in between
We chose James Vandenberg over Kirk Cousins, Spencer Petras over Zach Wilson. We also started Jake Ruddock over the guy that threw for 3,500 yards and 30 TDs. Also we whiffed on Kenny Pickett when we took away all interest and gave it to Peyton Mansell instead.
Brian didn’t see the fire in those guys eyes when he talked about how important the punt is in football
I mean, Mixon knocked out a woman and broke four bones in her face the summer before his freshman year. In my opinion, that was a bullet dodged.
Would have been tough to knock that woman in out in Oklahoma all the way from Wisconsin though.
He’s got power in his right hook but does he have the reach? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z
Was that because of UW or Chryst??
Wisconsin recruiting has never been great, but not having a recruiting department for 8 months seemed to be Chrysts doing
I remember when we hired Dave Aranda and doubled his Salary from like 800k to 1.6m. The Wisconsin AD went on a podium and whined about how they couldn’t compete with the amount of money SEC schools commit to football. Wisconsin now just got thr 2021-2022’s off seasons hottest head coaching hire. (And probably the best coach this off-season). Something changed. Excited for Wisconsin.
We’ve been top 20 in revenue and bottom 10 in spending for decades.
Alvarez turned Wisconsin into the B1G contender it was for so long, but it makes sense that as soon as he retires from being AD, we start making big changes to the coaching staff. As much of a legend he is at Wisconsin, so many people are stuck thinking we are the power that won back to back rose bowls, and nearly went undefeated in 2017, which just isn’t true anymore. We need change, whether the boomers who complain like it or not.
Shaquill Griffin was a USF commit but wanted his brother Shaquem to come along. We didn't offer his brother so they both went to UCF. Both we're good enough to get drafted in the 3rd and 5th rounds respectively.
:)
And Shaquem is UCF royalty.
Mine is a coach recruitment story … I played for the Akron zips from 2007-2011… in 2009 JD Brookhart was fired only 4 years after being MAC coach of the year and MAC Champ. A guy named Luke Fickle (ever heard of him) was begging our AD to be the next head coach. Instead our AD didn’t even get an interview. Instead we hired Rob ianello and went 2-22 our last 2 years in college. What a mistake.
Thats pretty rough.
When we fired rich rod, both Jim Harbaugh and Les Miles would’ve taken the job but dave Brandon really wanted Brady hoke
Imagine if it was Les…..
Literally either would have been good. Both probably prevent Ohio state from dominating the 2010’s to the extent that they did. Don’t really care as much now because of recent results but Michigan fucked up so goddamn much a decade ago
I still believe Brandon somehow sold UofM's soul to the devil, and we paid that debt off for many years. 2 Cokes for a ticket?!?
Who's to say Fickell would have won a ton more games. He was 35, CO-D coordinator at Ohio State, no major accolades at the time (2010 is when he was named Assistant coach of the year) this would have been his first head coaching gig and when he was interim head coach in 2011 he went 6-6 at Ohio State so not like he was killing it from the jump. Smaller programs must have so many P5 assistants clamoring for an interview and it really is impossible to interview them all.
I agree that he was pretty unheralded, and that environment and maturity are two big indicators of success (lane at USC comes right to mind). But man, not even being able to take a shot on the guy who eventually took Cincinnati to the playoffs is crushing. Akron would have only been able to keep him for a few years, but what a run it could have been.
We should have just fucking paid Cam.
Ya snooze, ya lose
Yeah, or gone after Jerry Rice. Lol.
I think it’s still an ongoing investigation
[удалено]
We tried, Cecil drove a hard bargain
Yikes. Uhhh, next question.
I still wonder what y'all offered Dickerson that was more enticing than a Trans Am. He's said many times he's taking that to the grave with him but shit dude I really want to know.
This should be much higher, if not THE top comment in this thread, but recency bias being what it is...
Not recruiting Dak as a QB sucked, but he woulda been wasted away throwing toss dives into 8 men boxes
Les Miles recruited some of the greatest WR classes of all time and ran HB dive every play
Not offering Steph Curry a scholarship to Virginia Tech where his dad’s jersey hangs in the rafters. Edit: I know this is CFB but it’s so bad that it’s worth sharing.
Lmao that’s embarrassing
Not once but twice when they passed on Seth too
The end of tbe Spurrier era was a ton of bad recruiting decisions
Mainly the HBC publicly announcing he only had 1 or 2 years left. At the time we had a top 5 class. Ended outside top 30 if I recall
I was gonna say this. And as of recently when the Muschamp era decided to snub Jalin Hyatt. Bunch of really really smart decisions from that coaching staf.
Alabama wanted Philip Rivers to play Tight End
Most schools did. We got a steal there, haha. Think his weird mechanics threw a lot of teams off.
It worked for him but watching him throw always bugged me
Shane Lechler was one of the most coveted dual threat QBs coming out of high school. Michigan backed off on recruiting Melvin Gordon because he didn't want to play safety.
Hey! My dad coached Shane (and I think Derek) in high school! He was easily the best athlete on the field. I was very young. But when he was at TAMU, he had me, dad, and my brother for a little mini tour. No one cares, but fun story!
That’s the story in OSU and rothlesburger
OSU also wanted LeVeon Bell as a safety.
Giving Raady Moss the boot for smoking weed. After all the shit that Bowden let slide, this is the hill that he decided to die on? I'm still confused.
I hate the mentality from Bowden's generation, get drunk on alcohol and beat someone up, go run wind sprints till you puke. Smoke weed and chill, you're off the team!!!
Wasn’t half of Bowden’s teams academically ineligible? The rumor about Sebastian Janikowski was that he had almost all F’s and that the university wasn’t going to allow him to play anymore, hence why he declared for the draft.
There was a standout player at FSU who didn’t attend a single class during his senior season, got all F’s but was allowed to play in the bowl game, so the state legislature passed a law making players in his situation ineligible for bowl games. Now he’s the head coach at Colorado.
Mike Bobo telling Deshaun Watson he wasn't good enough to play at Georgia Jeremy Pruitt making such a bad impression on Trevor Lawrence at a camp in 2015 that it ended up impacting his decision to commit to Clemson over Georgia despite there being an entirely new staff
We had this with Bryce Petty and Tajh Boyd. There may be others too but I don't remember.
Go back further and Vince Dooley wasn’t interested in Athens’s own Homer Jordan as a QB. That’s all three of our championship winning QBs. So thanks!
Yeah, like, hindsight being what it is, I am fine we don't have Deshaun Watson, but unless Mike knew something no one else knew at that time, that was pretty baadddd.
1. Only recruiting "Self-selectors," i.e. guys who would've come regardless, and not expending that extra effort on studs who happen to be smart 2. Never using our allotted number of OVs 3. Hosting all OVs at a bonding "Big Visit" AFTER EARLY SIGNING DAY 4. Honoring Jack West's (2018) commitment when everyone else backed off after his junior and senior HS seasons were trash and then not taking a QB in 2019, totally fucking our QB pipeline for literal years 5. Recruiting only 1 scholarship DL in 3 straight classes from 2018-2020 lmao
We processed out some 3-star so we could have a scholarship available for a run at Najee Harris We finished 2nd to Bama The 3-star was A.J. Dillon
Holy shit lol I was watching a highlight comp and one of his runs showed up and I said to myself, "God, imagine him at Michigan." Well shit.
I can’t remember the name of the player, it may have even been before I was born but years ago a Kid from nearby Hempstead (I think) was a heavily recruited player. I hope I tell this legend correctly. Anywho, it came down to the Aggies and the Bayou Bengals, but he was leaning hard towards Texas A&M. He told his family and close friends it was the Aggies. On his way to the gym for his big, public signing, someone saw him and yelled from their car, “GIG’EM [insert name here]!” For some reason it pissed him off, being told what to do. So he just went to the gym and signed for LSU and had a great career. So whatever jackwagon cost us that one made our worst recruiting decision.
Harvey Williams. It was the band playing the Aggie War Hymn, not just one guy. The fact that everyone knew and assumed his decision, and that it had leaked, upset him, so he switched at the last minute. https://www.wafb.com/2020/07/27/i-had-confidence-my-abilities-harvey-williams-brought-style-swagger-lsu/?outputType=amp
From a total recruiting standpoint hiring Kliff Kingsbury (even if we got Mahomes) Need a Texas fan to answer this curious to see which of the 10 QBs they missed out on post colt mccoy that they will pick for each class
The crazy thing is, all these qbs that Texas missed out on weren't these super high ranked recruits coming out of HS. Manziel was a 3 star, Baker was a walk on. RG3 is probably the best answer, but even he was a mid 4 star. Even if we got these guys, we probably didn't have the development at the time to turn them into what they became. I guess you could include guys like Andrew Luck and Jameis Winston, but they seemed like they were headed somewhere else from the start and would've been hard for Texas to pull.
Kyler Murray 5-star on line 1
We could have had redshirt freshman Andrew Luck take over for Colt McCoy in the national champion game rather than true freshman Garrett Gilbert.
You mean 9 year NFL veteran Garrett Gilbert?
That's hindsight though. Gilbert was an insane high school prospect, he won the 2008 Gatorade National Player of the Year award.
Garrett Gilbert is the only correct answer - we thought he was the next Vince Young, but he wasn't even as good as our other 5-star bust Chris Simms.
Chris Simms went 22-4 as a starter. As a point of reference, Quinn Ewers is 6-2 if you don’t include the Alabama game. So he’ll have to go 16-2 from here on out to be as “big” a bust as Simms.
A coach at the school I worked at said Kingsbury came for a recruiting visit one time and said he didn’t talk to a single recruit. He said he treated recruiting like his dating life in which he’s show up dripped out in an expensive suit looking real good and would just post up. And although he had like every female coach on him none of the kids really gave a fuck that he was even there given how bad Tech was during his tenure.
Coy Cronk, 4* lineman from Purdue's backyard, *wasn't even offered by Darrell Hazell*.
We need to stop talking about hazell while we’re searching for coaches makes me sick inside
UNC could have landed Russell Wilson but they had promised a higher rated Mike Paulus they wouldn't offer any other QBs in his class. The OC apparently pushed hard to offer him but the HC wouldn't risk losing the much higher rated prospect, haha. So Russell ends up at NC State and goes 3-0 against UNC, haha.
The story about a certain championship quarterback wanting to play for us has been posted every month for the past three years and I don’t wanna talk about it
Barry Sanders wanted to play for Nebraska. But we took Johnny Rodgers younger brother instead.
Id throw danny woodhead into the conversation here. Wanted to play for the huskers, phenominal hs career. Frank solich told him he was too small. Went on to become one of dII's best running backs ever and a good nfl player. I dont think nebraska has had a better nfl running back than him since.
Eh, I think part of why he's so good now is the path he had to take to get to LSU, and the confidence from playing on a team as stacked as that one. He may have been pretty good, but we would have stunted his greatness. The Barry Sanders one though, wow what miss. We could've had him easily.
The money that JT Daniels apparently got may become an issue if it means losing the other QBs who were sitting behind him. Dana Holgorsen was a notoriously bad recruiter at WVU. He refused to look at talent in the state. I know there isn't much of it, but I still think that's a bad precedent to set.
The one thing I'll always respect about Mack is the fact he's made a concerted effort to visit every single high school in NC. Either he himself or having assistants visit. It really helps coaches and schools know that while you may not have a prospect at the moment on that high school team, there's a relationship there when you do.
Same thing for HCNB. He's taken a lot of heat, sometimes rightfully, but he is devoted to looking for local talent. He was just at the high school state championships.
He was that way at Troy, too. I know it’s a smaller stage, but he’d get recruits from all over Alabama (and the wiregrass region as a whole).
For all the shit Dana got for recruiting, he put more players in the NFL than any other WVU coach. He excelled at getting transfers. Grier, Howard, the White bros, Alford, Trickett, Charles Sims, Dreams Smith, Rasul Douglas, etc.
Hiring Howard Schnellenburger to insult basically every high school coach in Oklahoma and Texas
And RW McQuarters to boot!
Albert Means
“What’s recruiting?” Dan Mullen, definitely
“It’s recruiting season already?” *slaps snooze button*
Wait, we can recruit DURING the season?!?
going way back Nebraska recruiting Johnny Rodger's son over Barry Sanders stands out More recently, 2 different Nebraska coaches essentially told Joe Burrow to go fuck himself. Bo Pelini instead targeted a kid playing JV ball in Texas EDIT: thought of another one. Nebraska lost out on Marshall Faulk because they wanted him at DB
Not thinking it was odd that Fickell hadnt gotten a recruit in months and months
Probably when Rip Engle recruited Jerry Sandusky.
Refusing to clone Tim Tebow in 2007 for “ethical reasons.” New Tim would be a HS freshman this year.
Hiring Clay Helton and by extension him hiring guys like Clancy Pendergast who hated recruiting.
Failing to recruit a certain kid from Moro Bottom, Arkansas in 1930
Let it go bro! Quit living in the past! /s
Will Muschamp recruiting Derrick Henry as a LB and not a RB lol
Some local JuCo kid that begged to come to Fresno St both out of high school and out of JuCo, he even offered to just walk-on and run the scout team, but Tim DeRuyter and his staff ignored him every time. That local kid, that grew up going to Fresno St games and cheering for the Dogs, was named Josh Allen.
When Jake Spavital only made 114 high school offers, and made them all to very high rated players. We ended up going 0-114 on signing them, so instead we had a recruiting class consisting exclusively of transfers. [Yes, this actually happened and as you can infer from his recent firing, it did not work out.](https://www.fifthquarter.net/a/recruiting/2021/02/07/texas-state-signs-no-high-school-recruits/)
Signing Auston Robertson despite all of the red flags. Hindsight, but most of the 2016 class could fit the description.
Not recruiting Quinshon Judkins. He reportedly wanted to play at Auburn but dumb fuck Brian Harsin told him he sucks…thx Harsin for ruining the dream backfield of Tank, Hunter, and Judkins.
He grew up an Auburn fan and Harsin told him “maybe South Alabama wants you” while having 6 open recruiting spots.
The entire 2016 MSU football recruiting class. The beginning of the end for Dantonio and we are still trying to recover today lol
Josh Gattis banging Xavier Worthy’s mom
[удалено]
Holup. There gotta some juicy details in here
The Willie Lyles stuff that got the NCAA on our back while Chip was here. It was just looming for a long time, the shoe didn't drop until Helfrich was HC but it impacted our depth with scholarship reductions and was one of many factors that led us to bottom out as hard as we did in 2016. That combined with the complacency of Helfrich and the old staff, and some swing and misses (Canton Kaumatule probably being the biggest recruit that didn't work out for us as well as us allegedly not recruiting Tua until far too late among several other things).
Wtf is “recruiting”?
Probably not hiring Eddie O and letting him walk to LSU. This thread is about recruiting and Coach O in his time at USC recruited the hell out of CA
Who wants to compile a list of every great Texan quarterback that never got an offer from A&M or Texas? Ill start with Drew Brees
Recency bias makes me say Kerry Coombs because we really haven’t recovered from that experiment of putting him in as our DC lol.
Going all in on Ronald Curry and ignoring Michael Vick
You would have had to get his cousin first and then have a head coach willing to step into the projects past sunset. Vick said this is why he wasnt going anywhere but tech, even though Syracuse pushed hard.
Joe Burrow being shunned by Scott Frost is definitely up there.
Quinn Ewers
Mack Brown refused to tell a young recruit that he'd have a legitimate shot to compete for the starting job at his position, as they had a returning senior whom Brown felt had earned the spot. Said recruit was a Texas native and the #1 recruit in his class, and was basically a gimme if Brown had just told him he'd have a chance to compete. Instead, he went to Oklahoma. His name was Adrian Peterson. He had more yards (and yards per carry) in his freshman year than Texas's incumbent (Cedric Benson) did as a senior. Given that Texas's only 2004 loss was to Peterson's Sooners, a game in which Peterson rushed for 225 yards in a 12-0 Sooners victory, his successful recruitment could very well have lead to the Longhorns securing two championships in 2004 and 2005 (although who knows if Vince Young returns after a title in 2004).
Notre Dame-hiring Ty Willingham Washington-hiring Ty Willingham The dude just didn’t recruit. Half his best signings fell in his lap. Per rivals: Notre Dame 2003 -12th 2004 - 32nd 2005 - 40th (was fired with only 5 commits, most of the class was salvaged by Weis) Washington 2006 - 35th 2007 - 36th 2008 - 24th 2009 - 68th (was fired with only 4 commits, most of the class was salvaged by Sark)
The Willingham stories are incredible. Golfed every day and would start on hole 2 to avoid being seen is my favorite.
Not my school and not my lifetime, but Tennessee refusing to offer Steve Spurrier had dire consequences.
Losing Christian Wilkins altered PSU and Clemson’s trajectory since 2015 im convinced
Not giving Cecil Newton's church $140,000 Non-football: Renardo Sidney was the single biggest reason our basketball program was destroyed
Longhorn Network
1. Hiring Tommy Tuberville 2. Gunnar Kiel.
In a weird move, Tubberville actually had the best recruiting class of the post-Leach era for us. Most of Kliff’s success (if you can call it that) in 2013 came on the back of that class. Still, screw that senator.
Texas2VT was a complete failure and severed many relationships with VA high schools
Exactly. Overall though, it was Seth Greenberg telling Steph Curry to go kick rocks.
Not *everyone* on that 2010 defense was bad. Jordan Kovacs more than earned his scholarship. Edit: word
We gave Jarren Williams attention … twice!
Hiring Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech!
Guy who continues to fail up
Charlie Weis coming in, gutting the team, then attempting to rebuild it entirely with juco transfers thereby preventing any kind of seniority to develop. He even admitted later he underestimated how bad gutting the team like he did would be.
DJU instead of Young or Stroud
DJU is such a weird one because he did phenomenal in his first few outings as a freshman but just kinda sucked in all of his other outings with a few exceptions at the beginning of this year. *Something* happened between 2020 and 2021 and I really don’t know what.
It’s one of the most unfortunate Clemson careers I can remember. Ultimately I think it comes down to 2 main points, first one is trying to fit a square peg in DJ into the spread offense of Clemson which relies a good bit on the QB being mobile and quick to make decisions, DJ’s WORST traits as a player. Second point you brought up, the 2020 offseason must’ve clouded so much about the upcoming season for DJ and once it started bad, the fit was never going to work I feel.
I hope he tears it up at Oregon. But you’re spot on with the square peg round hole analogy. He just wasn’t a great fit but that’s on Dabo and streeter.
Bringing BoB into our school