B1G Recruiting impacted by Eastward Expansion | The Boneyard

B1G Recruiting impacted by Eastward Expansion

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http://www.pennlive.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/08/maryland_and_rutgers_skeptics.html

Maryland and Rutgers skeptics ignore recruiting trends; entire Big Ten mines DMV and NJ

Population trends sometimes happen so slowly we don't notice. But college football coaches see them before anyone. They understand the job prospects and migrations of the locals because they are around every year, seeing the school enrollments, talking to the parents.

What's clear to anyone paying attention is that healthy economies bear abundant caches of college-ready athletes. Right now, that means the suburban areas in stable tech and service industries. The areas that were able to diversify and retain their populations during the emigration of America's heavy industry and manufacturing to Asia in the 1970s and '80s have continued to churn out talent.

The I-95 corridor has included all types of business. So, while certain more industrial areas have faltered some, other tech-heavy pockets have taken their places.

That's not quite as true with many semirural Midwestern and western Pennsylvania river burgs that thrived a few decades ago while depending on two or three businesses that subsequently moved their jobs overseas.

They're in pain now and their segmented populations are hemorrhaging. The old heavy industrial regions that used to run out football stars like assembly lines are being drained of youth.

None of these trends are breaking news; they've been evolving for four decades. But I've never seen such demographic data distilled so succinctly in one graphic as in Dave Bartoo's recruiting "heat map" for the Big Ten, available at his fascinating CFBMatrix.com website.

What the heat map shows most stunningly is how fertile for all Big Ten schools, not just the Eastern outposts of Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland, are the metro areas along the I-95 corridor. This is especially true when those areas are compared to the traditional hot Midwestern recruiting grounds around the Great Lakes population centers. It's really pretty amazing.

This only reinforces my belief that Jim Delany's expansion to RU and UMd, so disparaged and mocked by so many in the Midwest, will be validated sooner or later. It's inevitable. In fact, I'll predict that, within a decade, Rutgers and Maryland will be established as more important to the Big Ten than longtime football powerhouses Nebraska and Wisconsin.

More on the recruiting graphic in a moment but first a little data on the Knights and Terps, again based on handy recruiting-rank analytics provided by CFBMatrix..com:

Bartoo averages the rankings of the three most respected services – Scout, Rivals and 24/7 – to arrive at his annual national rankings. The evidence clearly shows that success breeds success at Rutgers and Maryland as well as anyplace else. The problem has been sustaining it. It's not easy to turn around a barge and generate enough positive momentum so that it remains pointed in the right direction.

The only Big Ten program that's been able to turn from chronic loser to habitual winner in the last 30 years is Wisconsin. Thanks to AD Barry Alvarez and his predecessor Pat Richter, UW has been able to instill a stable regime and two decades of abundance (1993-2012) after three previous decades of famine (1963-1992). The Badgers are the template every struggling program struggles to emulate.

Much more often at such places, miracle-worker coaches arrive and, once they string together some success, quickly evacuate for a better situation or simply cannot withstand the annual stress of maintaining an outpost lacking tradition.

Consider the brief spikes of high performance under Greg Schiano at Rutgers (2005-11) and Ralph Friedgen at Maryland (2001-06) and how those periods affected recruiting.

Partly using the recruiting of predecessor Ron Vanderlinden, Friedgen stepped in and assembled three straight double-digit-win seasons and upper-tier bowl appearances (2001-03), two of them blowout wins over BCS conference opponents after the 2002 and 2003 seasons.

Not coincidentally, in 2004, 2005 and 2006 Maryland enjoyed its best recruiting hauls since rankings were initiated – three straight top-30 national classes (Nos. 16, 21 and 27, respectively).

But Friedgen, aging, not in the greatest of health and increasingly at odds with athletics director Debbie Yow, could not sustain the roll. He was removed in 2010 by current AD Kevin Anderson and the Terrapins have not recruited anywhere near that well before his arrival or since.

"If Maryland could get their [bleep] together, they could be absolutely outstanding; they have top-25 potential," said Bartoo, a college football analytics specialist from Portland, Ore. He did not agree with Friedgen's firing and sees the Terrapins as adrift now:

"They have the potential to be a contender in that Big Ten East division if they get the right coach and buy-in from all the critical areas – athletics department, administration, coaches."

Rutgers was nothing less than college football's radioactive wasteland when Schiano arrived in 2001. It took four years of hard labor but the former Penn State assistant eventually lifted the Scarlet Knights to 7-5 in 2005 and then 11-2 in a memorable 2006 that included a No. 12 Associated Press poll ranking at season's end. In 2007, RU enjoyed its best recruiting class ever, ranked No. 30 nationally.

After four 8- and 9-win seasons over a 5-year span, RU assembled the No. 32 and 25 ranked classes nationally in 2011 and 2012, beating out Penn State in both years. Had the Knights been a Big Ten member, the '12 class would have ranked third in the conference behind only Ohio State and Michigan.

But Schiano's departure for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a week before 2012 Signing Day unplugged that recruiting momentum and it has not been recaptured.

These cases suggest Maryland and Rutgers can be cultivated if a long-term head coach with the chops to recruit and the will to stick around can be attracted. Little evidence exists that current HCs Randy Edsall and Kyle Flood are those guys. But if and when the right men arrive, the recruiting turf exists to nourish both programs.

Bartoo's heat map shows that. Those who disparage Delany's initiative to expand east may ignore all the cable revenue and alumni numbers if they wish and simply focus on the geography of high school talent.

A glance at the recruiting map shows the single most fertile metro area for Big Ten rosters in 2014 was not Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland but DC/Baltimore. A close third to runner-up Chicagoland was Philadelphia/South Jersey. And right there in the mix is NYC/North Jersey.

Something else to note from that map: The western PA veins once mined by everyone from Joe Paterno to Woody Hayes to Bear Bryant haven't totally dried up but they aren't pumping out what they used to. Pittsburgh metro and the surrounding coal and mineral and steel towns now account for less Big Ten roster talent than metro Indianapolis or Columbus or Cincinnati/Dayton.

That's simply a matter of census math. For instance, Beaver County -- the place that germinated Mike Ditka, Joe Namath and Tony Dorsett -- had 210,000 residents in 1970; it now has 169,000 and is still declining.

Not true of all the suburbs in southern Maryland and northern Virginia, full of thriving service industries in financial, consulting, healthcare and technology sectors. So saturated are the communities closest to the Beltway that now more distant Stafford and Winchester counties in Virginia and Frederick County in Maryland are burgeoning. All are expected to keep growing.

"That DC-Maryland-Virginia area [known to college coaches as The DMV] is critical for the entire Big Ten, especially Penn State, in terms of keeping up with the rest of the nation," said Bartoo. "It's an area of strength that the Big Ten needs to control in order to keep up with the SEC, the ACC and the Pac-12. That is a top-three recruiting area in the Big Ten without a question."

Penn State fans would not be surprised at this; Vanderlinden and Larry Johnson threw out their nets in these areas and reeled them in for a decade at PSU. James Franklin's staff is doing it now.

But the conference's traditional Midwestern fans might be stunned at just how important the East is to the lifeblood of everybody in the league. That includes schools amid the Great Lakes and Great Plains hundreds of miles away.

screen-shot-2015-08-11-at-21633-pmpng-400bde2fb61ffe1e.png
 

dayooper

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Michigan has 5 players from Jersey with two more committed for next year, another probable commitment by the end of the month, and are in on Rashad Gary, the #1 recruit in the nation and is from NJ (he has paid his own way to visit Michigan twice). There are also three players who went to school in Maryland (two are from Delaware, but went to school in MD). They already have one committed recruit and are expected to bring in another. They also have two kids on the roster from Virginia.
 

CL82

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This is somewhat of a problem for us as we recruit heavily out of NJ.
 
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Makes me wonder what opening up New England will do for basketball recruiting.........
 
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What a remarkable hypothesis, that playing games in a certain region and introducing your conference to the most densely populated part of the country could improve recruiting access to said area.

I can't believe someone got 1,200+ words to write this.

Of course B1G recruiting was going to improve.

Any time you introduce a product of any type that has a proven track record of success in one region, to a brand new region with a larger population you are going to see an increase in sales/interest. When In-N-Out Burger began expanding out of California there were lines out the door in Vegas, Dallas and Austin. People in NYC are losing their mind right now because Chick-fil-A just announced they were opening a gigantic midtown location.
 

CTMike

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I can't find it right now but there was an article recently on one of the recruiting websites about how the caliber of football recruiting in CT is improving considerably. We should be shouting that from the mountain tops and emphasizing how much more it would grow if given the opportunity....
 
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I can't find it right now but there was an article recently on one of the recruiting websites about how the caliber of football recruiting in CT is improving considerably. We should be shouting that from the mountain tops and emphasizing how much more it would grow if given the opportunity....

Is it really? Honestly that would be huge for us because quite honestly when I arrived in Storrs in 2002 it was really really bad.

That's how I knew the PP hire was going to be doomed. When he talked about how he was the right guy to build relationships with CT HS coaches since he was local. Great, Paul, but you can't build a BCS team with CT players.
 
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I can't find it right now but there was an article recently on one of the recruiting websites about how the caliber of football recruiting in CT is improving considerably. We should be shouting that from the mountain tops and emphasizing how much more it would grow if given the opportunity....

I would be shocked if the 2017 class didn't have multiple 4 star players in it. Granted many/most are at the academies but many are also home grown despite playing outside of their hometown. It would be fantastic to land one/any of the high profile guys and start pushing ahead, which leads directly into a comment from the main article of this post:

"The evidence clearly shows that success breeds success at Rutgers and Maryland as well as anyplace else. The problem has been sustaining it. It's not easy to turn around a barge and generate enough positive momentum so that it remains pointed in the right direction."

This is what Diaco is attempting to do right now, just turn around the barge, let alone get that positive momentum. There was a quote at some point on the conference realignment board that UConn is a sleeping dog in football, and I'm completely a part of that camp. If you put us in the B1G along with a record above .500, success will breed success.
 
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Is it really? Honestly that would be huge for us because quite honestly when I arrived in Storrs in 2002 it was really really bad.

That's how I knew the PP hire was going to be doomed. When he talked about how he was the right guy to build relationships with CT HS coaches since he was local. Great, Paul, but you can't build a BCS team with CT players.
And he is also the guy whoo will tear them down and shift kids to Addazio. It was know that P and Edsall weren't exactly chummy bodies at Cue...case in point..Edsall left for BC as soon as P was promoted to HC. Ever wonder why Edsall had such a hard time here with the CT hs coaches (Ambrose did him no favors with Marinan...but Marinan isn't part of the P coaching tree/buddy tree like a lot of these guys are)...UCONN wasn't good enough to send their players to...then P comes here and UCONN is an option for instate kids...P gets fired and all of the sudden it's not good enough anymore..BUT BC and our buddy Addazio is a great fit!
 
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If Jersey recruiting is so good ,adding another game where parents can drive should only help. New England kids are a bonus.
Compared to the ACC who really has no close teams to that area.
Say a kid wants to go away to either Michigan State or a Carolina
If he goes to the former you have local games with PSU,Rutgers,Maryland ,and UConn vs long rides to Cuse or BC. That could be decisive especially for a parent or even friends.
Northeasteners are spoiled by its compactness. NJ is closer to the Rent than most of Ohio is to Columbus.
 

CTMike

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Connecticut will never be Texas or Georgia in recruiting, but we just need people to see us as acceptable. We aren't some recruiting desert. And I think we have a chance to continue to grow.
 

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This is why I think the Big Ten wants Georgia Tech, Virginia and Carolina more than anyone. They need to recruiting territory to compete.
 

pj

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This is why I think the Big Ten wants Georgia Tech, Virginia and Carolina more than anyone. They need to recruiting territory to compete.

Wanting and getting are not the same things. New England and New York can grow into top recruiting areas and as the heatmap shows, the B1G doesn't get anything out of New England right now.
 

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Wanting and getting are not the same things. New England and New York can grow into top recruiting areas and as the heatmap shows, the B1G doesn't get anything out of New England right now.

I don't know if they can but I think that's who they want.

New England and New York will never produce anywhere near the quantity or quality of players that Georgia, NC and Virginia produce.

The gap is going to grow. Not shrink.
 
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I don't know if they can but I think that's who they want.

New England and New York will never produce anywhere near the quantity or quality of players that Georgia, NC and Virginia produce.

The gap is going to grow. Not shrink.

The problem with recruiting from the south is that the SEC is close by. If distance is a big factor, then the B1G wouldn't be able to make many inroads into, say, Georgia. The northeast would have a higher yield for the B1G.
 
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I don't know if they can but I think that's who they want.

New England and New York will never produce anywhere near the quantity or quality of players that Georgia, NC and Virginia produce.

The gap is going to grow. Not shrink.

Why not? Population wise NY and New England is larger than Georgia, NC, SC and Virginia.

Things change. 25 years ago NYC was the undisputed high school basketball capital of the country. Today you could argue it has shifted to the DC-Metro area.
 
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pj

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Why not? Population wise NY and New England is larger than Georgia, NC, SC and Virginia.

Things change. 25 years ago NYC was the undisputed high school basketball capital of the country. Today you could argue it has shifted to the DC-Metro area.

Yes, and much more competition recruiting the southeast (ACC, SEC) whereas the B1G would have New England and NY largely to itself
 
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Teams do cherry pick the NJ, DC, Maryland, DC area....The B1G will need to lock that down.

Example...even though FSU sits in Florida and recruits heavily also from Georgia...they have picked from that area..especially for offensive linemen.

on FSU roster...

...Josh Sweat...4 star DE...Va.
...Sean Maguire..probable starting or back up QB...NJ
...Marcus Lewis...DB...Wash. DC
...David Rollins..O line...Maryland
...Alec Eberle....O line...Va
...Chad Mavety....O line...NJ
...Brock Ruble....O line...Maryland
...Kareem Are.....O line...NY
...Roderick Johnson.....O line...Maryland
...Ryan Izzo.....TE...NJ
...Darvin Taylor...DT...Va
...Derrick Nnadi...DT...Va
...Rick Leonard...DE...Maryland

Alabama, who recruits the southeast hard, has eight on the roster from Maryland, Virginia, NJ...

The Hurricanes have 15 just from NY and NJ...a handful more from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia.
 

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Why not? Population wise NY and New England is larger than Georgia, NC, SC and Virginia.

Things change. 25 years ago NYC was the undisputed high school basketball capital of the country. Today you could argue it has shifted to the DC-Metro area.

Three easy reasons.

Demographics, weather and culture.

They are growing faster than the Northeast. So the fact the NE is bigger and is so far behind is a bad sign not a good sign.

There is a simple reason why MLB is dominated by players from CA, Florida and the broader south. They can play all year.

If you spend two seconds in the south the culture is obvious. Sports, especially at the high school level are at a much higher level of importance in places like Georgia. Also, they have 2 seasons - football and off season football. Georgia and NC high schools don't lose athletes to soccer or basketball.

The premise that football recruits will ever be the same quality and in the same quantity in the Northeast as the Southeastern US is absurd on it's face - nevermind after giving it some thought.
 

whaler11

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I know y'all want certain things to be true. But these things just aren't true - they are the complete opposite of reality.

The reason why UConn's football recruting territory is treated as a huge negative in CR - is because it is.
 
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Well if we are just talking out of our a**es:

The sporting interests of the nation evolve over time. Horse Racing used to dominate the headlines.

In your scenario by the time the Northeast is cranking out football recruits, concussion fears may have transformed the sporting landscape and the Yankees may be playing in NYCFCs stadium.

So if you think the Big Ten is making expansion choices based on your population shift predictions...

This conversation is absurd. If you think Connecticut is more valuable to a college sports conference than North Carolina - you need to take a step back, a deep breath and come back to reality.

All right. Good talk, see you out there.

And for what it's worth, I do think that Connecticut - located halfway in between two of the top 10 DMA's in the country and the flagship university of a state that is home to 3.5 million people who enjoy the 4th highest media income per resident in the country is more valuable than any university in a state that splits it's allegiances 3 or 4 different ways and is home to 3 times as many people who enjoy minimum wage jobs (NC is 39th in the nation in median income).

As for "my population predictions" they are based on the fact that red states refuse to spend money on infrastructure projects or invest in public education. It's desirable for companies to relocate there now because of loose labor laws and the fact that they're throwing tax breaks at them like confetti, but in a decade when their trucks can't get out of the factory because of a collapsed interstate and their children aren't qualified to do anything but pump gas, the midwest and northeast , who continue to invest in these items is going to look very attractive.

If you think the B1G is interested in adding teams based solely on what things look like today you are not paying attention. The B1G has never made an expansion move hastily. Every team they have added since Penn State was done either to bolster their football strength (Penn State/Nebraska) or break into a critical DMA (RU and Maryland).

So tell me, what is so attractive to the B1G in North Carolina? A couple of 6-6 football teams playing in front of 40,000 people who probably won't even be able to afford their network in the 25th ranked DMA?
 
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whaler11

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All right. Good talk, see you out there.

And for what it's worth, I do think that Connecticut - located halfway in between two of the top 10 DMA's in the country and the flagship university of a state that is home to 3.5 million people who enjoy the 4th highest media income per resident in the country is more valuable than any university in a state that splits it's allegiances 3 or 4 different ways and is home to 3 times as many people who enjoy minimum wage jobs (NC is 39th in the nation in median income).

As for "my population predictions" they are based on the fact that red states refuse to spend money on infrastructure projects or invest in public education. It's desirable for companies to relocate their now because of loose labor laws and the fact that they're throwing tax breaks at them like confetti, but in a decade when their trucks can't get out of the factory because of a collapsed interstate and their children aren't qualified to do anything but pump gas, the midwest and northeast , who continue to invest in these items is going to look very attractive.

If you think the B1G is interested in adding teams based solely on what things look like today you are not paying attention. The B1G has never made an expansion move hastily. Every team they have added since Penn State was done either to bolster their football strength (Penn State/Nebraska) or break into a critical DMA (RU and Maryland).

So tell me, what is so attractive to the B1G in North Carolina? A couple of 6-6 football teams playing in front of $40,000 people who probably won't even be able to afford their network in the 25th ranked DMA?

Good grief.

The University of North Carolina is one of the five best public universities in the nation.

The University of North Carolina is one of the three biggest programs
in college basketball history.

The University of North Carolina isn't attached to the Triangle DMA. Their fan base spans the entire state and in basketball the entire nation.

North Carolina already has ~3 times the population of Connecticut and the gap is growing.

On football signing day in 2015, North Carolina alone had 83 kids sign letters of intent, New York and New England had 60 combined. BTW, Georgia had... 248 - maybe that will help y'all wrap your heads around why Georgia Tech is at the top of the Big Ten list.

You are living in an absolute fantasy land. Conference Realignment is going to be determined by schools like UNC. If they called the SEC, Big 12 or Big Ten tomorrow asking to join, there would be a press conference welcoming them on Friday. If they called the PAC 12 - they would spend the weekend trying to figure out how to make it work and on Monday they would say F it and welcome them.

I know PJ has some type of PTSD that leads him to nonsense. Your ignorance of reality is aggressive.
 
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