Internet Recruiting Bringing Parity to College Football

I have been paying attention and I hope you have been too.  Top tier college football programs are finding it difficult to polish off those teams they have historically demolished by half time.  This year, more than ever, it seems that the meek are beginning to rise.  Just this past week I watched Utah St. beat someone (Wyoming) by 49 points!  Utah State!  This would have never have happened 10 years ago and I don’t care who Utah St. was playing.  Wake Forest jumps up and beats Florida St.  Syracuse had to travel to the edges of hell to beat Tulane 37-34.

Previous weeks has seen more glaring examples of the parity I have been noticing. Week before last week had Western Michigan beating Connecticut on the road.  Bethune Cookman keeping Miami in check until late in the 3rd quarter.  SMU beating TCU on the road!  Week four there was, of course, Temple crushing Maryland.  Virginia losing at home to Southern Mississippi.  Auburn wrapped up in a battle with Florida Atlantic through four quarters.  Ten years ago,  that’s a 56-7 football game.  There’s also North Dakota St. traveling to Minnesota and winning by two touchdowns.  You need more?  How about Temple losing by only four to Penn St.  How about Toledo taking Ohio St. down to the wire.   Tulsa putting up 33 points on Oklahoma St.  Washington barely beating Hawaii 40-32.  Clemson only beating Wofford 35-27.

As sites like Rivals.com and Scout.com begin hitting the 10 year mark of being significant and a load of other recruiting websites pop up monthly doing their due diligence to find hidden talent in every city, state and county,  college coaches can recruit from their desktop.  This allows the college programs with smaller budgets to navigate into parts of the country where they would not have dared to go in year’s past.  Now,  from their computer,  a small school in Illinois can find an under-recruited kid in Texas with talent and find out if he would be interested before they spend money on a trip down there to see him.  In the past,  that small school from Illinois would not risk their budget to go down into Texas to find a kid that they think would either go to Texas or at the worst TCU.

This ability to shop for recruits from the office is bringing better talent to the smaller schools and depleting the “quality depth” of a lot of the major Division-I programs.  Only the big time programs that have remained savvy and embraced the Internet recruiting will remain as relevant as they have always been.  Programs with the old school mentality will sink in the rankings and relativity scale like a led balloon.  We are watching it before our eyes.  Smaller programs that make the most of what recruiting sites have to offer can see themselves ascend quickly and give the big time school fits.  Once they sleigh a dragon on a Saturday,  now even more eyes will be on their program.

This phenomenon also refocuses the importance on coaching and player development.  Once upon a time,  staffs at big time schools could just go out and shoot fish in a barrel and bring in big time talent.  The better talent would get you a win on at least nine Saturday’s per season.  If  a coach could recruit well he always had a job.  Well now,  recruiting won’t be enough.  Some college programs have not figured this out yet but they will sooner or later.  If you can’t bring in your talent and develop them,  you will get beat more often than not by some of these smaller programs that have been having to coach their tails off for years just to compete.   It’s happening I tell you.

Some big time programs are crumbling and these are the major factors that are contributing.  Embracing and using Internet recruiting sites to the fullest and developing your talent will be the two major factors in a college program maintaining their superiority and in smaller programs climbing their way onto the theater stage.

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