Recruiting Budgets

[ramblinwreck1378]

This article highlights one reason why larger schools with larger budgets are able to close on and sign big name recruits - they can have coaches go see kids whenever and however often they want. We don't have those kinds of resources at our disposable.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2016/02/12/jim-harbaugh-michigan-jet-travel/80283324/

 

[DrJacket]

Hmmm....

 

[Sheldon's]

You have to be careful posting stuff like this. It runs counter to the notion that our staff can't recruit and there truly other factors which limit us.

 

[takethepoints]

As I've said here before, I'm a very strong believer in throwing money at problems. The more the better too. I understand that there are limits, but it sure would be nice to have a fatter recruiting budget for our staff to work with.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

This article highlights one reason why larger schools with larger budgets are able to close on and sign big name recruits - they can have coaches go see kids whenever and however often they want. We don't have those kinds of resources at our disposable.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2016/02/12/jim-harbaugh-michigan-jet-travel/80283324/

Cannot even imagine what it would be like if Tech had that kind of travel money. Wow.

 

[Techster]

I may be wrong, but doesn't CPJ and staff have access to a donor's plane for recruiting purposes. I believe the trip to see Brad Stewart last season was through a donor's plane.

 

[gtpi]

unless my memory is wrong didnt we have only two people on the staff that did the grunt work? writing letters. obtaining video tapes. contacting coaches. contacting recruits. establishing a data base. etc etc etc.

one of them was fired for credit card issues but we finally expanded to 4-5 people + the coaches themselves? coach cpj had been asking for this from day one.

when i read that schools like bama uga and many others have as many as 20+ staffers to do the same things i wonder how we even do what we do.

everywhere i look i see stumbling blocks that have absolutely nothing to do with cpj and the staff. yet people complain about a lack of effort from the staff etc. sorry but i just dont see that issue. i see a whole lot of other issues but not that.

then we have people complain about our not recruiting 4 an 5 star players. here and on the hive and elsewhere.

if we went after nothing but 4 and 5 star players we would improve our chances yes but we would also whiff on a bunch leaving us potentially well short of our recruiting needs. dammed if you do. dammed if you dont.

with only 5 guys backing up our staff there is no way we can realistically compete with uga bama clemson auburn ohio state florida miami etc. for 4 star and 5 star players unless they have a strong propensity to want to come to gt to begin with.

i think the staff is doing a great job. if anything they need more help. maybe we need some volunteers from some of the boards to work part time for free to help if that is legal per the ncaa.

what am i missing?

 

[Northeast Stinger]

what am i missing?

Good question. My read is the same as yours. The schools that everyone want us to be like recruiting wise, usually have a five to one advantage on us in terms of staff. And when you factor in things like travel budgets I have a similar response to you, "It is a wonder we do as well as we do."

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

I read somewhere a couple of years ago that Georgia Tech has one of the highest recruiting budgets of any Division One football program. I will try to find that article again and post it. I think you would be surprised by how much money we actually devote to football recruiting.

Go Jackets!

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

Yep we have the 7th highest football recruiting budget in Division One football at $746,590. It's documented in a USA Today article dated 2/4/16. I can not figure out how to link to it. But you can look it up. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...g-signing-day-sec-power-conferences/22813887/

Go Jackets!

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I wonder if how much a given Division One Program spends on recruiting is a number that can be accessed easily or accurately. I noticed that Tech spends $746,590 on recruiting and Alabama spends $983,721, which doesn't sound like that great a difference given the difference in size and revenue between the two athletic departments.

So I went to RollTide.Com and counted how many people they have on staff who are involved in recruiting. I counted all the coaches, naturally, but also counted office staff, development, hospitality, productions, marketing and flight operations and came up with 73 on staff who are directly or indirectly involved in recruiting, and around 33 if you only go with coaches and recruiting staff.

And how many does Tech have that might be involved in recruiting? Perhaps 30 at best, if one counts everyone who might remotely be involved, but closer to 18 if just counting coaches, assistants, office help and recruiting staff.

So I am guessing that the number given for a recruiting budget must only count designated budget money but does not count the amount hidden in the budget for the larger staff and all the bells and whistles. Amazing that Tennessee has designated over a million dollars for recruiting not counting staff and office help. I would say they are not getting their money's worth.

 

[gtpi]

Yep we have the 7th highest football recruiting budget in Division One football at $746,590. It's documented in a USA Today article dated 2/4/16. I can not figure out how to link to it. But you can look it up. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...g-signing-day-sec-power-conferences/22813887/

Go Jackets!

beat you to that article as i read it well before i wrote my original post. tell me again how that budget adds 15 additional people to our staff without hurting travel etc? bama for instance can recruit the south and still garner a top class without having to even travel by plane. we cant even recruit ga without as struggle as we have too many factories to compete against.

again my solution would be to see if we can get a group of local volunteers to help for FREE. i have no clue how the ncaa would view this. if we have that large of a budget why does the aa hamstring our staff with so few staffers. again i am ignorant of the dynamics but im all ears for solutions. im just brain storming at this point.

even if we payed 15 staffers 30k a year that amounts to $450,000 just to get the staffers.
750-450 k would leave us with $300 k for actual recruiting putting us on an even keel with maryland, sc . ok state, nevada las vegas etc. none of those schools have anywhere near the recruiting issues we have. i dont think any of us would be satisfied to match the records of those schools. we expect more.

bueller bueller...

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Yes. Again, I am not sure how one figures recruiting budgets, especially since we just read that Michigan spends $364,000 annually just on airplane tickets for their coach to recruit.

 

[Buzz776g]

I remember reading somewhere that Clemson has something like 30 student volunteers doing social media stuff. Of course I can't find it now, but if we don't have something like that, we should.

 

[Techster]

I remember reading somewhere that Clemson has something like 30 student volunteers doing social media stuff. Of course I can't find it now, but if we don't have something like that, we should.

Would be a wasted opportunity if we didn't. GT has some of the brightest students anywhere...and definitely some of the brightest students whose football team plays P5 sports. I'm not sure if there's some NCAA rule on the limits of student involvement (pretty sure there is on direct recruiting), but we need to use as much of our resources as possible.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

There is no standard criteria for reporting recruiting budgets. Each school can include whatever it wants and some schools don't even report at all. A school might not consider a staffer salary as "recruiting budget" for example. I wouldn't put too much stock in having the 7th highest budget. You can simply compare staff size to get a better idea.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Would be a wasted opportunity if we didn't. GT has some of the brightest students anywhere...and definitely some of the brightest students whose football team plays P5 sports. I'm not sure if there's some NCAA rule on the limits of student involvement (pretty sure there is on direct recruiting), but we need to use as much of our resources as possible.

Of course it is not like Tech students are standing around with time to kill and nothing to do on their hands like Clemson students.

 

[LibertyTurns]

Would be a wasted opportunity if we didn't. GT has some of the brightest students anywhere...and definitely some of the brightest students whose football team plays P5 sports. I'm not sure if there's some NCAA rule on the limits of student involvement (pretty sure there is on direct recruiting), but we need to use as much of our resources as possible.

Agree, what we need to do is leverage our resources. We should be #1 in anything to do with sports technology (equipment, analytical systems, etc). We should have the best computer systems, the flashiest wiz bang video boards, the best designed everything everywhere on campus. We should have the best analytical tools to figure out how to market our brand, optimize every facet of our business. We should be advertising our best student athletes- the engineers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen that we often read about that went on to absolutely fantastic post-football careers in addition to Megatron, etc.

What we're not the best at we should buy. We need to buy the Sales people to close the deals, some really hot women for every area, etc. I couldn't see foisting some pencil neck geek, computer game nerd, or foreign student that hasn't see the light of day in weeks interacting in any fashion with someone we're recruiting to play sports at GT. There's top notch professionals out there and we need to buy them onto our team.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The leadership does not care about GT sports because if they did we'd be doing all of the above. Until they start caring, we're going to be what we are.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

One thing I have to keep in mind is that Tech does not advertise what their pitch is to student athletes. We all have ideas about how they could do it better but we have discovered several times in the past that they were already doing those things. A few that come to mind off the top of my head.....

Recruiting nationally, trying to make more inroads with Georgia high school coaches, talking up how many grads become millionaires, using ATL as an acronym for the Tech advantage, sharing contacts with big time businesses in the Atlanta area, recruiting schools in metro Atlanta more heavily, using technology in our presentations to athletes, expanding recruiting staff..... and so forth.

Over the years I have heard people suggest everyone one of these things while Tech kept mum about what it was actually doing. I even remember a a few years ago someone suggesting that the "fax girl" who receives the signing letter should be good looking, only to discover that ours was much better looking than Alabama's. Tech, from past experience, is often already doing many of the things we think they should be doing. They just don't show all their cards to the opposition. And I am glad they don't.

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

Well, I think all this just points out that recruiting a young man capable of playing Division One football and succeeding at a world class Technology Institute is extremely costly and difficult. Critics who claim that we are not as successful as we should be because we just don't devote enough resources to it, are not fully aware of just how much we actual do commit to the endeavor. We also have a short range and long range strategic plan for doing this that is continuously monitored, evaluated and adjusted. At the end of the day, it's just a unique situation we confront and we have to work smarter and harder to be as successful as we are. Not to say we can not do better, but in all honesty, we do pretty damn good.

Go Jackets!