Brad Ketron: Recruiting Less About Stars, More About Needs

Published Jan 31, 2007

Recruiting Less About Stars, More About Needs

As Canes fans, we’re used to getting the best of the best of the best. That’s the reason why Larry Coker has been ousted as our head coach and others in his line have been let go in favor of fresher, newer faces that are chomping at the bit to get Miami football back to the prestige it once embodied.

Due to this mentality, a lot of us can get caught up in the Rivals and Scout “star ratings” for these high school kids when we’re tracking recruiting. It’s nice to have or at least be in the running for someone in these top 100 lists, mainly because there is something to them.

However, they’re not everything.

Let’s look at the core of the current commitments we’ve got on the board in the 2007 class: RB Graig Cooper, WR Kayne Farquharson, and OL Orlando Franklin.

A year ago, Cooper was a three-star recruit who wasn’t nearly the five-star crown jewel that he appears to be now, after outshining another former five-star, LeSean McCoy, at Milford Academy. Kayne wasn’t even on any school’s radar until tearing up Southern Cal’s secondary in 7-on-7 drills during the spring, and by then, he was already a Cane and now a four-star JuCo diamond in the rough. Franklin should have been at UM this year if not for the NCAA Clearinghouse not accepting a couple of English classes taken at a high school in Canada. After a scare from Georgia pursuing his services, he is another four-star prospect in this year’s Cane class.

So out of those three players, we have two that were either off the radar or under the radar in terms of recruiting, and another that everyone agreed should be successful in Franklin, who almost got away. Instead of being nonexistent or unappreciated—those guys are basically the backbone of this year’s class along with QB prospect Robert Marve.

Our average star rating for this year’s class as it stands up to and including Jared Campbell’s recent commitment is 3.42. Last year’s average was 3.36, and 2005’s was 3.82. We have roughly 7 players from the ’06 class (Fox, Shields, James, Hill, Grant, McCarthy, and Gordon) who have made substantial contributions as freshmen at UM, as opposed to only 4, by my estimation, from the higher star-average ’06 class (Bruce Johnson, K. Phillips, R. Phillips, and Youngblood).

What that tells me is that you look for potential in the videos and production combined with work ethic on the high school level as opposed to just the number of stars beside a given recruit’s name. The lower average star class from 2006 helped us fill more holes on the field this past season than the 2005 class has so far, and ultimately, that’s what it is all about—players on the field making plays and helping us win ballgames.

Recruiting is a fun game to follow in between the actual seasons, but we must be careful to not get caught up in what the experts say, and follow what we see with our own two eyes via videos and stat comparisons. Just think—we could be thanking our lucky stars for Graig Cooper and Shawnbrey McNeal helping us to win national titles, while those schools (and their fans) who sign LeSean McCoy & Noel Devine might eventually kick themselves for buying into the star hype.

Sideline Notes: Still hearing about those new uniforms we’ll be wearing next year in several different interviews done with recent visitors to UM. Nothing but good reviews from the recruits so far—not one has said they hate them. The only descriptive comment regarding the new uniforms has been from DT commit Chris Perry: "The coolest part was the wind pants -- they're orange and are a swim trunk material," he said. "I freaked out when I saw it." Stay tuned…One of the biggest turn-ons for recruits from this past weekend seems to be seeing the likes of Ray Lewis and Edgerrin James around campus this weekend. Several recruits mentioned this, and I personally think that Coach Shannon is going to ride that recruiting tool hard for the next few classes to show where Miami’s been and where we can get back to. Coker did not embrace that, then again—he wasn’t a former Cane like Shannon, either.

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