Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
Frank tried that route and it failed. The 757 simply isn't producing the skill position talent to compete at a national level, and we've also lost our stranglehold on the top-10 talent coming out of the VHSL every year. We used to own the top ten recruits in-state, but the 757 isn't the best-kept secret in football recruiting anymore. Now we have to compete with all the major programs in our own backyard. To stay competitive, now we have to go out and compete with them in theirs.
It's also just simply not true that the majority of every school's roster is produced with their own in-state talent. This is probably true in the recruiting hotbeds of California, Texas, Florida and Virginia. But look at Tennessee's roster. It's pretty much nationwide.
Recruiting has changed, and one of the reasons the program is rebuilding right now is because Frank refused to change with it for too long. He held fast to the mindset you're espousing. It's a seductive argument, but it sinks programs these days. Aaron Moorehead, Torrian Gray, Cornell Brown and Shane Beamer are the picture of what modern recruiting is all about: coaches repping their program to young talent that might not otherwise consider us.
We'll go after the recruits motivated to work their asses off. It's our job to motivate them to come to VT.
An attractive but myopic view, IMO. It's also the view that drove our recruiting for years, and eventually contributed to running it into the ground. Of course we want every recruit to be 100% gung-ho Hokie from the crib to the practice field. But that's unrealistic. There are over 125 FBS programs and some of the players who wind up committing to VT are going to have grown up as fans of one of the other ones.
Our recruiters' job is to sell our program to kids who aren't sold on us. We'll always get the kids who grew up idolizing VT, like we always have. But our national footprint is not big enough or deep enough to be able to rely on program prestige to draw recruits from Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, etc. Your mindset is a recipe for VT to remain a moderate regional power in perpetuity. To become a national power, we have to recruit like one and that means recruiting against national powers. When that happens, you get into a level of recruits who approach their commitment as a business decision. They're looking for a program that will prepare them for the NFL. Emotion and childhood nostalgia don't factor into their decision as much as a kid whose ultimate football ambition is to play football at VT. We need those recruits if we want to become what we have the potential to become.
Aren't Durkin and Cardale about the same size?
Literally everything Gaines has publicly put out since giving his verbal to us has been enthusiastically pro-VT and he's tweeted several times about how excited he is to play with the other recruits in this cycle. Yes, that one quote is bad and yes he'd rather be at Florida than VT. But VT is just some kids' second choice school, both athletes and non-athletes alike. It doesn't mean they won't love their years there.
By official NCAA guidelines, there is no such thing as a verbal commitment. They don't recognize it and have no rules regarding it. As far as the NCAA is concerned, a commitment happens when a signature gets placed on a LOI (or a recruit enrolls early). Everything that transpired prior to that happening is irrelevant in the NCAA's eyes.
Verbals are a creation of the recruiting process itself, as programs need to be able to project who will actually commit on signing day. But they are nonbinding, and every program in college football has to accept that. The only other option is to lobby the NCAA to alter the rules to allow binding commitments to be made earlier in the process, and it doesn't look like the NCAA has any flexibility on this issue.
There's also built-in motivation for recruits to verbal early in the process: fear of losing an offer if another player at the same position with a comparable rating commits before you do. Recruits don't want to be left out in the cold. While this will never affect the Josh Sweats of the world, the majority of recruits don't have so easy a time of distinguishing themselves from the crowd.
I agree, people should keep their word. And I'm sure if we ran the statistics, a large majority of recruits probably sign LOIs to the school they originally verbal to. But there's no enforcement provision for verbal commitments, so there's going to be some attrition just from working the system. Programs ask recruits to grayshirt, so it's not like it's not a two way street to some degree.
As for taking officials avert verbaling, I expressed my thoughts on that above. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. If you can, do. Vandy knows Hoshun is verbally committed to us. Are they going to try to flip him? Sure. But if they're willing to expend the resources to host him, I can't begrudge him for going. If he flips, he was never a Hokie to begin with.
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11 years 5 months
# | Hokies Offer a Trio of Talented 2016 Athletes Thanks to Efforts of Aaron Moorehead Cornell has a ring too, right? I wonder how many programs have two assistants who have won a Superbowl.
To be fair, Johnson listed McChicken, da U, the Criminoles and the Good Guys. It's the coach who is saying the Wolfpack isn't out of it.
#sources or #conjecture?
Either way, yeah, I think that's what probably happened too, but I'm definitely living in the latter hashtag.
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11 years 5 months
# | Deadspin: Ohio State's loss to Virginia Tech the worst ever by a National Champion I think that season illustrates the dichotomy of Hokie fans vs Joe Sportsfan. We were proud of going undefeated in conference play, beating a good FSU team and making the Orange Bowl, while people not following the program remember us losing late to Boise State, getting beaten by a 1AA and being dismantled by Stanford.
In general, VT was being thought of in the same vein as Oklahoma: win all the games but the big ones. Signature wins like OSU in the Shoe will help us rewrite that as we rebuild the program.
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11 years 5 months
# | Deadspin: Ohio State's loss to Virginia Tech the worst ever by a National Champion My guess, which is admittedly just conjecture, is that although the designer didn't use the square root of one logo that's trademarked, there is no way the designer could effectively argue that the letters "VT" stand for anything other than Virginia Tech. The school has licensing rights for any commercial product that references it, even if the product doesn't use one of the school's registered trademarks.
I also think the designer could legally challenge this, but is just chosing not to.
Yes, please.
Nashville is a hell of a city. And if I were a D1 prospect I would take every official I could get. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to be directly wined and dined by a program. Not even free agents in the NFL get that kind of red carpet treatment.
Slightly off topic but related, didn't Mook take his officials? Or just us and Clemson? Either way, the fact that he's taking them doesn't concern me. He's been publicly 100% pro-Hokies since his verbal.
You put 2010 Auburn's total twice.
Damn that 2011 Alabama team was an image of symmetry.
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11 years 5 months
# | Hokies Offer a Trio of Talented 2016 Athletes Thanks to Efforts of Aaron Moorehead Vince occasionally hits the recruiting trail to pay him back.
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11 years 5 months
# | Hokies Offer a Trio of Talented 2016 Athletes Thanks to Efforts of Aaron Moorehead Andy Bitter wrote a piece on it. Gray and Moorehead were both singled out for higher raises because they were recruiting so well. At this rate Moorehead will be over $200K in no time.
Really nice work. I wonder how the proportion of run:pass plays stacks up against the yardage proportions. Typically you have to run the ball more times than you have to pass it to get equivalent yardage.
Your yardage numbers for 2011 Alabama don't add up and definitely don't fit the percentages you listed.
I would have agreed with you right up until the day Stacy Searels was hired. VT has been a failed experiment in trying to run power behind a line suited for spread since 2006. But after watching our line inflate like Violet Beauregard over the course of Searels' first season, I think we finally have an OL coach to design a power running game around.
LT actually did announce his decision to return for his senior season on national TV, through an interview by phone on ESPN. Not technically a press conference but close enough that we're splitting hairs. Some of the negative comments about high profile players and coaches of any other program strike me as hypocritical at worst and sour grapes at best.
Sometimes the choice not to act is the one that changes the course of your life the most.
To actually answer the question, I'd be really surprised if anyone other than Brewer starts for us, and also very excited because it would mean someone outplayed him by a mile in spring, summer and fall practice. But my money is on Brewdog.
As for OSU, I got no freaking clue. Talk about an embarrassment of riches.
I will say, the QB that I foresee giving Bud's defense some issues is Cardale Jones. He's got a damn hand cannon and can run, and he trucks defensive tackles. I'm worrworried about Bud's various disguised blitzes working against him because, could Kendall Fuller bring him down on a corner blitz?
We've beaten Barrett, and Miller facing the lunch pail in his first game in over a year makes me smile. But Cardale worries me a little bit.
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11 years 5 months
# | Bitter blog - 2014 in review: Sluggish ground game showed signs of life by end of the year Logan basically was our offense last season, both passing and rushing. The fact that we actually gained 28 more yards a game after losing him and starting a pocket passer who got sacked almost three dozen times is really encouraging.
Best of luck. See you in Bristol.
Has there been an official announcement in any capacity regarding the QB situation for us? All I've heard is Lefty's offhand quote in an interview that he was excited to have a quarterback returning for the first time in three years.
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11 years 5 months
# | Bitter blog - 2014 in review: Sluggish ground game showed signs of life by end of the year Andy, really good article. One thing I wanted to mention that fellow TKPer daveinop pointed out to me: when you factor out Michael Brewer's -5 yards on 80 carries (mostly sacks and scrambles), VT averaged 4.5 yards per per carry in 2014. Compare that to 2013, when the Hokies averaged 3.6 ypc when Logan's rushing was factored out.
You kind of brushed on that topic when you when through game by game and showed how the running backs did, but the season average is kind of striking.
The running backs made some major improvements from 2013 to 2014, even being decimated by injury. Now if the line can protect Brewer and keep him from getting sacked 34 times, the overall rushing stats might reflect what the running backs are doing.
I should clarify. It EVENTUALLY failed. Recruiting failures put us in the down cycle we find ourselves in. Granted, we will always have a heavy focus on in-state talent, but we're also situated with access to a recruiting hotbed. We can afford that luxury.
But it doesn't change the fact that we've lost our ability to sign five of the top ten players in Virginia. We're reestablishing inroads to the 757, but we have really been hurting lately by missing out on critical recruits who grew up watching us.
It was successful for a while, but the narrow focus on Virginia + a little Florida has failed. That's why we're seeing more offers to recruits who have never been anywhere near Blacksburg. We're finally expanding our recruiting footprint, like we should have circa 2009. And it is working. We recruit differently now than we ever have, and we're bringing in legit talent again. Including some honest to God O linemen again.
My point wasn't that they shouldn't have done it then, it's that they can't do it now. The world's best buggy whip manufacturer had to change their business model when Henry Ford debuted the Model T.