Recruiting

[GTFLETCH]

We're currently near the bottom of the ACC in 2017 Recruiting Rankings

http://247sports.com/Season/2017-Football/CompositeTeamRankings?Conference=ACC

We should never lose to Duke. The whole 'commitment' argument fails with Duke - their facilities are horrible. Durham's a hellhole and Duke's not exactly Florida State in the classroom.

Yahoo Rivals Current 2017 ACC Recruiting Rankings based on athletic "quality" of prospects being recruited to your school! Clemson is at #1 with 3.86 and GT is at #4 with an Avg of 3.15...

1. Clemson
2. FSU
3. Miami
4. GT
5. UNC
6. VT
7. NC State
8. Duke
9. PITT
10. UVA
11. Wake Forest
12. Louisville
13. CUSE
14. BC

Go to this link and then click on AVG...
https://n.rivals.com/team_rankings/2017/acc

 

[Techster]

Here's a blast from the past: Giff Smith

Out of curiosity, I looked up where he is now. Still just a DL coach, but now with the San Diego Chargers:

http://www.chargers.com/team/coaches/roster/giff-smith

Before making the leap to the NFL, Smith spent 19 years in the college arena. Six of these seasons (2004-09) were spent as the defensive line coach at Georgia Tech. In 2007, the Yellow Jackets led the nation in sacks (47) and ranked second in tackles for loss. One of Smith’s top players at Georgia Tech was Joe Anoa’i, a first-team All-ACC pick in 2006. Anoa’i, who is now known as Roman Reigns, won World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) heavyweight championship in April 2016. Three additional linemen who played for Smith at Georgia Tech were still playing in the NFL in 2015. They included Cincinnati’s Michael Johnson, Denver’s Vance Walker and Tennessee’s Derrick Morgan.

Obviously those highlighted numbers had to do with Tenuta's attacking style and the LBs we had at the time as much as the DL we had...but holy crap, those are some dream numbers for a defense.

This post is apropos of nothing really, just that GT can play better defense than we have been and we need to start getting some speed on our defense.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Roof makes 750. Ellis would come here to be a DC in 2008 for 750. I am sure of it.

Wommack made $285,000/year. Groh made $150,000/year. $750,000 wasn't an option for Ellis Johnson in 2008.

Calling CPJ's lack of an OC a financial bonus misses the point. Instead of being cheap, GT should be using that money to pay the absolute best assistants and recruiters money can buy.

 

[iceeater1969]

Wommack made $285,000/year. Groh made $150,000/year. $750,000 wasn't an option for Ellis Johnson in 2008.

Calling CPJ's lack of an OC a financial bonus misses the point. Instead of being cheap, GT should be using that money to pay the absolute best assistants and recruiters money can buy.

I totally agree.
Please tell bud to move foward on correcting this error.

Till the administration gets a clue on how a good football team impacts giving on both sides , we will have cheap thinking that let's others pass us. .

They must have thought they stole money when coach won on day one.

 

[Vespidae]

Do you not think we do this?

Honestly, it is not clear what we do. For all our math and statistical rigor and "analysts" at Tech, when we get to GTAA it's all just anecdotal information. There is almost never a discussion on data to see how we are doing ... recruiting to my mind is like a sales process. What is the recruiting process and how is it doing?

- What's our yield? What should it be?
- How large is our pool ... how many kids will our hot schools produce this year? How many should we get?
- How many prospects in our pool fit our ideal criteria? How many are considering Tech? [Not everyone the pool is a candidate for Tech.]
- What are the results of our first contact? Second? Third? What's the commitment at each stage?
- How many of the ideal prospects did we lose? Why?
- What changes are we making to our recruiting process this year?

If we have a perfect recruiting process and it's working and we only need to expand it geographically, that's one option. Another is that it is not working because we are getting out recruited in our backyard and we have to expand. I've heard multiple theories. But I've never heard anyone from GTAA articulate what they are doing and why ... it's more just gut feel and we need more resources.

OK. You probably do. But how do we measure success? What's the dashboard?

Sorry ... 30 years of marketing.

Personally, I would take a certain amount of pride knowing that our recruiting is so good we can do with half the resources of Clemson or whoever. But it sounds like we just want to add until we have what they have ...

 

[Milwaukee]

Here's a blast from the past: Giff Smith

Out of curiosity, I looked up where he is now. Still just a DL coach, but now with the San Diego Chargers:

http://www.chargers.com/team/coaches/roster/giff-smith

Before making the leap to the NFL, Smith spent 19 years in the college arena. Six of these seasons (2004-09) were spent as the defensive line coach at Georgia Tech. In 2007, the Yellow Jackets led the nation in sacks (47) and ranked second in tackles for loss. One of Smith’s top players at Georgia Tech was Joe Anoa’i, a first-team All-ACC pick in 2006. Anoa’i, who is now known as Roman Reigns, won World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) heavyweight championship in April 2016. Three additional linemen who played for Smith at Georgia Tech were still playing in the NFL in 2015. They included Cincinnati’s Michael Johnson, Denver’s Vance Walker and Tennessee’s Derrick Morgan.

Obviously those highlighted numbers had to do with Tenuta's attacking style and the LBs we had at the time as much as the DL we had...but holy crap, those are some dream numbers for a defense.

This post is apropos of nothing really, just that GT can play better defense than we have been and we need to start getting some speed on our defense.

I miss Giff.

 

[takethepoints]

Honestly, it is not clear what we do. For all our math and statistical rigor and "analysts" at Tech, when we get to GTAA it's all just anecdotal information. There is almost never a discussion on data to see how we are doing ... recruiting to my mind is like a sales process. What is the recruiting process and how is it doing?

- What's our yield? What should it be?
- How large is our pool ... how many kids will our hot schools produce this year? How many should we get?
- How many prospects in our pool fit our ideal criteria? How many are considering Tech? [Not everyone the pool is a candidate for Tech.]
- What are the results of our first contact? Second? Third? What's the commitment at each stage?
- How many of the ideal prospects did we lose? Why?
- What changes are we making to our recruiting process this year?

If we have a perfect recruiting process and it's working and we only need to expand it geographically, that's one option. Another is that it is not working because we are getting out recruited in our backyard and we have to expand. I've heard multiple theories. But I've never heard anyone from GTAA articulate what they are doing and why ... it's more just gut feel and we need more resources.

OK. You probably do. But how do we measure success? What's the dashboard?

Sorry ... 30 years of marketing.

Personally, I would take a certain amount of pride knowing that our recruiting is so good we can do with half the resources of Clemson or whoever. But it sounds like we just want to add until we have what they have ...

My guess is that we are already doing almost everything you mention above, at least as far as analysis goes. I say this because whenever we do get any "insider" information on the recruiting process the kinds of analysis you ask for are mentioned.

But recruiting is one of those areas where more humans makes a difference. The machines can't tell us what a few more recruiting assistants would. Our recruiting has picked up recently due largely to the willingness to let in more "exceptions" and more assistants to help with recruiting. In line with my longstanding mantra on such matters, I think we should throw more money at this problem. Despite what people say, that almost always works. The marginal payoff will decrease, but in football recruiting that isn't a consideration.

That said, I stand behind what I've said about our players: I really don't see a massive talent difference between our squad and others. We've been whipped physically once this year: Clemson. We need to do something about that.

 

[Vespidae]

Thanks. Since my note above, I found a couple of things that were interesting.

First, yes ... we have a coach, Lamar Owens, who uses Minitab to run statistics on players. They (he) gets data and input from NFL camps and uses that information to project who would be good fit at Tech. However, he also says he doesn't have time to do it properly, so there's that. Maybe we have an analyst. I don't know.

Second, I wanted to see what another program's recruiting looked like. Perhaps benchmarking can help us by pointing out Strengths and Weaknesses in our approach. So, looking at Notre Dame, which recruits nationally, this is what it takes to get 25 commits per year:

Notre Dame Summary:

· Full-time staff of 4, plus 2 interns

· Recruit nationally, so they begin by dividing the map geographically into recruiting areas for each individual coach.

· Use a standard framework to evaluate according to Athletic ability, Academic ability, Character, Medical history and Work Ethic. (Details on each)

·

Pipeline

· Notre Dame evaluates between 1,500 and 2,000 prospective student-athletes each year, from which they

· Create a mailing list of 850, and

· Play host to 500 prospects (and often their families) making unofficial visits to campus; and

· Extend offers to about 150 players, and

· Organize 40 to 45 official visits and

· Sign somewhere between 20 and 25 players per season.

Process – emphasis on teaching about ND University and the football program

· Begins with a 75 week mail campaign to prospective commits (the 850)

· Supports mail campaign with social media outreach to commits

· Extends campaign to commits with Facebook and Email to parents (different campaign)

· Twitter followers of Coach Kelly – 250,000

· Additonal social media accounts to support this effort on Instagram, Snapchat and others

· Individualized information (as needed), handwritten notes, text messages from coaches, strategic phone calls

· “Pot of Gold” package for players

· Partnerships with Bleacher Report and Showtime to highlight the Irish program and educate prospects

· Post commit communication plan until registration


That's a lot of leverage on 4 FT employees. That's what I'm interested in. How many prospects are in our pool? How many are on the mail list? How many make unofficial visits, etc.

Just trying to get a feel for a comparison on the process side of recruiting. Do we know?

 

[RonJohn]

Honestly, it is not clear what we do. For all our math and statistical rigor and "analysts" at Tech, when we get to GTAA it's all just anecdotal information. There is almost never a discussion on data to see how we are doing ... recruiting to my mind is like a sales process. What is the recruiting process and how is it doing?

- What's our yield? What should it be?
- How large is our pool ... how many kids will our hot schools produce this year? How many should we get?
- How many prospects in our pool fit our ideal criteria? How many are considering Tech? [Not everyone the pool is a candidate for Tech.]
- What are the results of our first contact? Second? Third? What's the commitment at each stage?
- How many of the ideal prospects did we lose? Why?
- What changes are we making to our recruiting process this year?

If we have a perfect recruiting process and it's working and we only need to expand it geographically, that's one option. Another is that it is not working because we are getting out recruited in our backyard and we have to expand. I've heard multiple theories. But I've never heard anyone from GTAA articulate what they are doing and why ... it's more just gut feel and we need more resources.

OK. You probably do. But how do we measure success? What's the dashboard?

Sorry ... 30 years of marketing.

Personally, I would take a certain amount of pride knowing that our recruiting is so good we can do with half the resources of Clemson or whoever. But it sounds like we just want to add until we have what they have ...

I was responding directly to this "They competed on relationship - who are the prospects most likely to identify with us? Hugely effective." I was pointing out that the coaches do base recruiting on relationships instead of quantity, as a direct point to your direct statement. The coaching staff, at least CPJ, is brutally honest with recruits and he expects brutal honesty back from the recruits. CPJ has said at times they give up on a recruit who says he is still interested in GT because his actions indicate that he is not. From everything I have seen and heard, CPJ bases interactions with recruits on honesty and integrity. I don't know how much more of a "Trusted Advisor" type role the football staff can enact.

As to the questions about process and yield, I don't think you are going to be able to get information to make apples to apples comparisons. ND might say that they have 4 people and 2 interns that do that work, but that does not mean that more people without that title do not assist. I have seen articles about Alabama that list the number of recruiting staff, but then list about 20-30 additional people that "assist" in the effort without officially being on the recruiting staff. I believe that they also used paid services to analyze and reduce the manpower required to sort tapes. I have heard CPJ state that the coaching staff does most of the HS film analysis at GT because they don't have 20-30 people, or even 4 to do it for them. During the recruiting periods, only a certain number of coaches can go to meet with players at their homes. Schools such as Alabama get pretty much unrestricted access to private planes in order to travel farther and faster. I do not believe that GT has that luxury. Things like that would not show up on a summary sheet as you have requested.

I don't believe that GT will publish the data publicly. I actually don't think many will. Even if many schools did publish information, the discrepancy in reporting would make actual comparisons useless. The data would have to be anonymous because it is an NCAA violation to speak about specific prospects before they sign with the school. If you would really like to see the data for GT, you would probably need to: Donate a lot of money to the program, Demonstrate your expertise and convince the athletic department that you can actually help them, and volunteer time to help.

 

[takethepoints]

First, yes ... we have a coach, Lamar Owens, who uses Minitab to run statistics on players. They (he) gets data and input from NFL camps and uses that information to project who would be good fit at Tech. However, he also says he doesn't have time to do it properly, so there's that. Maybe we have an analyst. I don't know.

Well, that explains it. Minitab? Really? I'm pretty sure we need a more sophisticated engine then that. And an entire crew of analysts, preferably people who know their way around an SQL table.

And, yes, I don't think anything short of a second story job could pry the kind of data you are asking for out of Tech. It'd be like giving up the Coke formula.

And a blast from the past: One of the reasons Bill Curry was hired at Bama was so he could bring over the sophisticated recruiting analysis he was using at Tech. I read a story about how his assistants were shocked to find that almost all the player analysis at Bama was paper based and drawn mostly from secondary sources. They didn't even have pagers for the coaches out in the field. Curry fixed all that and the rest is history.

 

[Vespidae]

The numbers I shared were from ND. They can't visit every prospect, so they do it differently. As recently as 1976, apparently, no one was in charge of recruiting. But one thing lead to another and this is what they say they have. They are Catholics though ... they could be lying. (I'm Catholic.)

I'd be delighted to help and would do it for free. But that wasn't my point.

If you don't know what the gaps are, it's hard to ask for resources. Following ND's pipeline, I now know they have to have a system to evaluate 2000 players a year and
generate 500 unofficial visits ... efficiently.

Kelly, for example, did not want to use Twitter. Neither does CPJ. It now they do because they can maintain a relationship more efficiently.

Net net ... it's hard to evaluate Techs challenges if there is nothing for us to actually ... evaluate.

 

[Vespidae]

Btw, a phd statistician in India is 20k a year. These guys already evaluate Cricket players. I'm sure they could figure out how to database and manage the IT to recruit football players ... if resources are a challenge.

I can hook you up.

 

[AE 87]

Btw, a phd statistician in India is 20k a year. These guys already evaluate Cricket players. I'm sure they could figure out how to database and manage the IT to recruit football players ... if resources are a challenge.

I can hook you up.

Tell the AD not us.

 

[Vespidae]

I did.

"Thanks for your support. But everything is fine."

 

[MeatWrench]

Thanks. Since my note above, I found a couple of things that were interesting.

First, yes ... we have a coach, Lamar Owens, who uses Minitab to run statistics on players. They (he) gets data and input from NFL camps and uses that information to project who would be good fit at Tech. However, he also says he doesn't have time to do it properly, so there's that. Maybe we have an analyst. I don't know.

Second, I wanted to see what another program's recruiting looked like. Perhaps benchmarking can help us by pointing out Strengths and Weaknesses in our approach. So, looking at Notre Dame, which recruits nationally, this is what it takes to get 25 commits per year:

Notre Dame Summary:

· Full-time staff of 4, plus 2 interns

· Recruit nationally, so they begin by dividing the map geographically into recruiting areas for each individual coach.

· Use a standard framework to evaluate according to Athletic ability, Academic ability, Character, Medical history and Work Ethic. (Details on each)

·

Pipeline

· Notre Dame evaluates between 1,500 and 2,000 prospective student-athletes each year, from which they

· Create a mailing list of 850, and

· Play host to 500 prospects (and often their families) making unofficial visits to campus; and

· Extend offers to about 150 players, and

· Organize 40 to 45 official visits and

· Sign somewhere between 20 and 25 players per season.

Process – emphasis on teaching about ND University and the football program

· Begins with a 75 week mail campaign to prospective commits (the 850)

· Supports mail campaign with social media outreach to commits

· Extends campaign to commits with Facebook and Email to parents (different campaign)

· Twitter followers of Coach Kelly – 250,000

· Additonal social media accounts to support this effort on Instagram, Snapchat and others

· Individualized information (as needed), handwritten notes, text messages from coaches, strategic phone calls

· “Pot of Gold” package for players

· Partnerships with Bleacher Report and Showtime to highlight the Irish program and educate prospects

· Post commit communication plan until registration


That's a lot of leverage on 4 FT employees. That's what I'm interested in. How many prospects are in our pool? How many are on the mail list? How many make unofficial visits, etc.

Just trying to get a feel for a comparison on the process side of recruiting. Do we know?

You also forgot the part where they are ND and we are not.

 

[Vespidae]

You also forgot the part where they are ND and we are not.

It doesn't have to be ND. I was trying to demonstrate that there should be a structured process with data, rather than anecdotal information, to improve.

 

[ATL1]

Here's a blast from the past: Giff Smith

Out of curiosity, I looked up where he is now. Still just a DL coach, but now with the San Diego Chargers:

http://www.chargers.com/team/coaches/roster/giff-smith

Before making the leap to the NFL, Smith spent 19 years in the college arena. Six of these seasons (2004-09) were spent as the defensive line coach at Georgia Tech. In 2007, the Yellow Jackets led the nation in sacks (47) and ranked second in tackles for loss. One of Smith’s top players at Georgia Tech was Joe Anoa’i, a first-team All-ACC pick in 2006. Anoa’i, who is now known as Roman Reigns, won World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) heavyweight championship in April 2016. Three additional linemen who played for Smith at Georgia Tech were still playing in the NFL in 2015. They included Cincinnati’s Michael Johnson, Denver’s Vance Walker and Tennessee’s Derrick Morgan.

Obviously those highlighted numbers had to do with Tenuta's attacking style and the LBs we had at the time as much as the DL we had...but holy crap, those are some dream numbers for a defense.

This post is apropos of nothing really, just that GT can play better defense than we have been and we need to start getting some speed on our defense.

Kind of an indictment of our current Dline coach and the defensive coordinator.

 

[MeatWrench]

It doesn't have to be ND. I was trying to demonstrate that there should be a structured process with data, rather than anecdotal information, to improve.

I was just trying to point out that they do all of what you outlined even though they also have an extremely well known brand and a much better national perception of relevance in football which would make one think recruiting would be easier.

 

[Vespidae]

I was just trying to point out that they do all of what you outlined even though they also have an extremely well known brand and a much better national perception of relevance in football which would make one think recruiting would be easier.

Do we do all of that? Really? All of it? Do we do it well? Or just ok? Or do we do some of it? And maybe some of what we do, we don't do really all that well. (Minitab?)

Results are a function of the Approach used and the thoroughness of its Deployment. (That's the old quality guy in me.) Do we really evaluate 2000 kids a year? Host 500 unofficial visits? Does Coach Paul really have 250,000 Twitter followers? (He actually has 38.5K and posts irregularly.)

I don't work for the GTAA so maybe they do, as you say, do all of this. I would bet my house though, that they don't do it as well as they should. Why be concerned?

First, everyone and his brother is recruiting in GA, SC, AL, and FL these days. So the talent is being woo'd far more than ever before. It's a seller's market.

Second, our academic standards mean we have a lower yield from the git go. I read a report from another AD at an academic school similar to Tech that said at most, 20% of the kids graduating high school and playing football would be prospects at his school. So nationally, what is the pool we are going to pull from? What's our success rate?

Third, we have a national reputation. Our alumni base is all over the country. I've heard that we want to go more "national" but not sure if we are ... or if we are ... are we doing it at the level we need to be?

In the end, it's all about feedback and improvement. A recruiting process again, reminds me a lot of a sales process ... so there's a pool, a process, a pitch, people, prospects and technology. Something could be working better, but it's not clear to me where the gaps are ... because we don't talk about the inputs or the process ... we usually just see it in the Results.

Again ... good input and I appreciate your thoughts. Probably best to just leave it up the new AD and Coach Paul to figure out. (Which begs the question ... Why wouldn't GTAA have a Director of Continuous Improvement to evaluate and help fix these gaps? The revenue is certainly there to support it. Just a closing thought.)

 

[bhoffman123]

Another thought . . .

One of the things working against us is one of our strengths. We see Tech as the intellectually elite of Georgia schools. While this is great for our intellectual ego's, it hurts us with sidewalk fans. Non alum's will find it easier to relate to a school like Georgia which appears to better represents a cross section of the public vs a school that declares it self smarter then the average bear.

This leads to more fans > money > press coverage and in turn recruiting flowing to other schools.

So how do you be intellectually elite and relate able to all? Not easy to do but I would probably start here:

• Win - Winning solves all. Although the above problem makes this harder to achieve.
• Marketing / Branding: Use marketing to re position the GT brand. Unfortunately I dont believe our sports marketing has realized the above insight and much of our marketing reinforces the intellectually elite story line with out making GT relate able. A slight change in the complexion of the narrative can both celebrate the skill and potential of GT grads while also making us relate able to non engineers.
• More majors - While personally I am not a fan of this as it dilutes focus and resources, it would help the GT relate to a broader audience.

I may be on a wild tangent here but I have seen enough of this in media and conversations to think it real.