Grandma Talent

[SOWEGA Jacket]

I think the complaint was people bitching about us only winning X games.

Who cares what the topic is. It’s May/June so any GT football talk is better than no football talk. Nothing posted here means anything anyway. I guess deep down I get a kick out of folks who get so emotional about internet message board posts. I’ve never understood it from when the internet started and I still don’t decades later. All I care about is getting thru the next 3 months until the greatest season of all sports returns!

 

[slugboy]

For what it’s worth, Athlon looked at the ACC, and based on aggregate recruiting has us just behind Louisville, just barely below average in the conference. I think we were 8th out of 15 teams. They did “excuse” last year’s class ranking, because Collins “made heavy use of the transfer portal to fill positions of immediate need”.

We fared worse in the “rankings by position group”. Athlon stack ranked seven position groups (article on 247 sports), and we came out third from the bottom. Only Syracuse and Duke ranked worse. If you had the best QB, you’d get a “1”, and if they thought you had the worst, you’d get a “14”. I don’t have a direct link to the article, but last year’s groups were 1. QB 2. RB 3. WR/TE 4. OL 5. DL 6. LB 7. DB are the position groups. Last year, we were dead last, so this is an improvement.

Knowing that we’re solid at RB, we’d have near the bottom in the rest of their position groups.

Also, I think our fan base doesn’t buy a ton of Athlon, and it shows in their coverage.

There’s plenty of reason to give Athlon’s analysis the stink eye, but it’s a fair interpretation that we’re not close to the college preview trade rag perspective of “Grandma Talent”, and we have to leapfrog Pitt and VT before taking a shot at the Miami’s and UNC’s, much less Clemson.

However, a combo of improved recruiting and a Pastner-like “get old, stay old” model could help us look a lot better.

 

[YJMD]

For what it’s worth, Athlon looked at the ACC, and based on aggregate recruiting has us just behind Louisville, just barely below average in the conference. I think we were 8th out of 15 teams. They did “excuse” last year’s class ranking, because Collins “made heavy use of the transfer portal to fill positions of immediate need”.

We fared worse in the “rankings by position group”. Athlon stack ranked seven position groups (article on 247 sports), and we came out third from the bottom. Only Syracuse and Duke ranked worse. If you had the best QB, you’d get a “1”, and if they thought you had the worst, you’d get a “14”. I don’t have a direct link to the article, but last year’s groups were 1. QB 2. RB 3. WR/TE 4. OL 5. DL 6. LB 7. DB are the position groups. Last year, we were dead last, so this is an improvement.

Knowing that we’re solid at RB, we’d have near the bottom in the rest of their position groups.

Also, I think our fan base doesn’t buy a ton of Athlon, and it shows in their coverage.

There’s plenty of reason to give Athlon’s analysis the stink eye, but it’s a fair interpretation that we’re not close to the college preview trade rag perspective of “Grandma Talent”, and we have to leapfrog Pitt and VT before taking a shot at the Miami’s and UNC’s, much less Clemson.

However, a combo of improved recruiting and a Pastner-like “get old, stay old” model could help us look a lot better.

We are not in the first or second group for sure. Where we stand in the middle is highly dependent on methodology. Class recruiting ranking across 4 years is a good method, but it will miss out when comparing ratings of people actually on the roster. Looking at the recruiting rating of actual roster members would be much more accurate. That would account for attrition and transfers. That analysis would certainly go in our favor relative to the other (easier) method.

Of course, recruiting rating does not tell whether a player is actually any good. For that, you need subjectivity. But that's a lot more likely to reflect bias than actual talent, and given our relative lack of recent success, of course that will color the rating by Athlon. More useful as a gauge of external perception than anything about the roster itself.