I really don't have an answer. I think they're fairly similar players, with Duke being a better tackler.

One factor that is very important: Which NFL team drafts a guy, and what defense they run. The same player can have a widely varied career track depending on which team drafts him.

I'll be the first to admit, I always used to watch ND simply as a fan. Watching a ND practice, the BG game, or a game in the fall with TerribleTr used to drive me nuts. He stayed in "coach mode", complaining about the 3 technique, and I'd be yelling at him "Dammit, Terry, I'm trying to watch the game!" Only the last year or two have I started to take a closer look at things.

That's my cop-out, and I'm stickin' to it.

ND being a national school gives it a larger territory from which to draw recruits, but it also leaves us with a smaller home base where we can expect to land the top players on a regular basis. Northern Indiana doesn't provide much of a pipeline. Chicago helps, but Indy does jack squat for us due to the miserable academic performance of its most bountiful schools.

The wider geographic dispersion also makes coordination of the recruiting effort more of a challenge, and I suspect that it is also a greater burden on our coaches to recruit with larger areas to cover resulting in more travel time. It can be done effectively (and has at times under Weis), but it's definitely more of a chore.

He didn't have a lot of picks, and he definitely seemed to lack some instinct, but he's pretty much locked up a starting spot in the NFL already. What separates him from Bruton?

The theme of the paragraph that "programs which draw at least 50 percent of their players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not." is misleading and false. The article talks about talent rich Mississippi, but when is the last time Ole Miss or Mississippi State was any good? The article talks about Pete Carroll recruiting in talent-rich southern California, but didn't Paul Hackett and John Robinson also recruit in Southern California?

As you point out, it is not recruiting close to home that leads to strong teams, it is recruiting in talent rich areas, which is easier if you are located in those areas. My problem with the article is that it presents data which is misleading, even if the conclusions have a grain of truth in them. This type of "argument by anecdote" is why stats get a bad name.

"Of the last ten national champions, eight came from states that end in the letter "A", therefore it must be difficult to win a championship if your state does not end with the letter "A"." That is a ridiculous (but true) statement, it just happens that California, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Florida all end in A. By the same token, "Of the nine schools that won 50 or more games from 2004-08, seven signed more than half their recruits during that span from within their state or from within 200 miles of campus" may be true, but it links two sets of facts that may not be linked. To verify these statements, you need to look at what happened to teams that didn't perform well and see where they recruit (or how their state names are spelled).

I also don't like the "Of the 22 schools that won 40 or more games during that span, 16 attracted more than half their players from within 200 miles or from within their state. Of the 44 schools that won fewer than 40 games, only 13 met the homegrown recruiting criteria." statements in the article. Why draw the line at 2004? Did the landscape of football and TV exposure significantly change in 2004? Why not look at 10 or 15 years worth of data. And why is winning or losing 40 games the benchmark for being good or bad. Why not 35 games? Or 50? Are wins the best measure of a program's strength? Why not look at final rankings or computer polls? Why not bowl wins?

I'd be curious to see the data they used, but and there may be truth to their statement. But the you can't draw the conclusions they've made with much certainty from the data they present. Certainly we are in a down cycle for many of the more "poorly" located schools. Colorado, Nebraska, Washington, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Michigan are all currently underperforming their historic standards, but I could just as easily attribute that to the coaches at those schools as I could to their location. As it happens, coaching cycles are much longer than 5 years, and it is true that Les Miles and Urban Meyer chose southern schools over northern ones. But that doesn't automatically mean that southern schools necessarily have an significant advantage. Did they choose LSU & Florida because talent is close by or because academic standards are more lax? Geography isn't necessarily the answer.

Teams like Baylor, Texas A&M, South Florida, Michigan State, and UCLA suffer because while they recruit close to home, they are stuck with the leavings of a bigger program that is likely going to take most of the top tier talent in the area. As for teams like Illinois, Syracuse, Rutgers, and Purdue, they aren't exactly in the middle of talent-rich areas (though Rutgers probably has the best location out of the group). Recruiting close to home in Florida is a lot different than recruiting close to home in Upstate New York.

The schools mentioned in that paragraph are the premier programs in the middle of talent-rich areas. I fail to see how that isn't an advantage. I'm not saying it's impossible to succeed recruiting nationally, but it is more difficult.

Those seven schools draw talent from key recruiting centers which just happen to be close to the school (FL/GA/TX/CA/OH). While it may be true that winning programs draw players from close to home, it is also true that losing programs draw players from close to home. Other schools that drew a lot of players from close to home include: Baylor, Texas A&M, South Carolina, Rutgers, South Florida, Illinois, Michigan State, and UCLA. Plus, a lot of others like Syracuse, Purdue, and Indiana look close to over 50% as well (I'm not going to bother counting push-pins on the map). During their NC days, Colorado and Washington both recruited heavily in CA, and ND has recruited from all over the country.

If these numbers are meaningful to you, you might want to add the fact that of the seven schools listed, six do not have blue on their uniforms or five do not have "State" in their names.

on this one. I try very hard to never say a bad word about a ND player.

Bruton not only played his ass off for ND, he was even coached in HS by one of my college teammates. When I brought this up to David at a practice, he immediately lit up, and talked about my buddy with nothing but praise.

Also, as a fellow member of the "oops, I have a child on the way" club, I can't say enough about him as a human being. From everything I've heard, he is doing his best in this very, very difficult situation.

He is an amazing athlete. My hope is he'll have a very nice career in the NFL as a special teamer and find his way into the starting lineup somewhere on D.

But no, he wasn't an instinctual FS. He was incredibly opportunistic, which can either mean he was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time, or he has instincts I didn't see and took advantage of them (I'm obviously talking about fumbles forced and fumbles recovered). But when it comes to INT's and passes defensed, the FS in Tenuta's defense can make out like a bandit.

I played in a conservative, let's call it a "Minter-esque" defense in college. I knew I had about one or two chances per game to steal a pick. The FS in Tenuta's defense will get multiple chances. I know you've read me harping about experience at the FS position. This simply can't be underestimated. It's exactly like the QB position on offense. Once a FS sees enough, experiences enough, the lines start to intersect. He'll break on a route before the QB even throws it. It's a beautiful thing. It makes him an AA.

I don't have high hopes for our FS position this year, simply because it will be a first year starter. However, if the player grabs several picks, we'll know we have something.

Once the kid has played FS for a year, I expect big time production. Any FS who is instinctual and has a ton of game experience should wake up each Saturday morning in the fall planning his INT celebration moves after each pick he's going to get. And if he's cool, he'll spread his arms out wide to the opposing crowd and finger roll the ball like Dr J.

Sorry, I had a flashback. LOL

Edit: I hope everyone realized the last two sentences were tongue in cheek. I look back on those days and realize what a complete tool I was.

- No text -

And a former DB (back in the ice age):

I'm a huge fan of recruiting players who have shown they can do the actual techniques expected of them at the next level.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with grabbing a guy or two who are athletic freaks. You can't have too many athletes.

But if you want a corner, you recruit a kid who played CB. If you want a safety, you recruit a kid who played safety.

It's almost impossible to coach "ball skills". I'm sure it can be done, but I don't know if I've ever done it 100% successfully in my 18 years of coaching.

I'm not an idiot. I know what I'm doing. But certain kids react to a ball in the air. Others fight this coaching like it's Japanese to them.

That being said: My Kingdom for an instinctual Free Safety at ND. Trust me, when I see it, I'll be the idiot on every board, praising his name.

http://sfajacks.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/081705aab.html

[Apologies, I see Rob had it awhile ago...]

that never really amounted to anything.

Freddie Parrish - Scout #7 Safety, 4 Star - Transferred to Stephen F. Austin (had to look that one up). Played as a frosh but did not do anything past that. Was from Long Beach Poly, they have a reputation for guys that don't do much in college.
Labrose Hedgemon - Scout #25 CB, 3 Star - I think he was suspended for a bit along with Ashley McConnell, Dwight Stephenson. Never really did much
Isaiah Gardner - Scout #18 RB, 4 Star - Played running back in high school, committed here without ever visiting, transferred to Maryland in short time. Remember him being our "fastest player"
Ambrose Wooden - Scout #14 CB, 4 Star - Probably did not live up to his hype, but wasn't a bad player.
Tom Zbikowski - Scout #6 Safety, 4 Star - Almost forgot him. I won't include Chinedum, as he was a WR coming in.

It's interesting how different Weis and Willingham recruit DB's. Weis recruits guys that played DB in high school. Willingham really didn't care. Gardner was a RB, Wooden was a QB, Zibby was a QB, etc. I even remember Lambert playing LB.

I am glad we don't follow those recruiting standards anymore.

is that everyone loved his athleticism but he had trouble grasping the mental part of the game.

That he never really emerged at that other school seems to back that up.

The female lead in that show was gorgeous.

Of course, I was a horny young teen at the time, so my hormones might have deceived me.

It's been awhile since I've thought about that show.

Now, The Fall Guy, now THAT was great TV! LOL

I seem to recall that he got some playing time early in his freshman year. Then with a redshirt year burned, he never saw the field again. I want to say he transfered to a 1AA school called something like Matt Houston College, but that might just be because I liked the show Matt Houston.

Not sure where he ended up.

That's a lot of tranfers.

Keep clicking. The U.S. map is full of them.

Lambert played 5 years here, Vernaglia was here for 4 years and graduated before taking his 5th year of eligibility in I-AA (er, "FCS"). Reuland and Nicholas were the only southern California transfers.

Seriously. Is Clausen the only one from So Cal still at ND?

It is amazing to go down the list of recruits for teams like Florida, Texas and USC each year and see nearly everyone coming from a relatively small orbit. Then you look at us, and we're all over hell.

I love the fact that we try (and are often successful) at going wherever we want in order to find players. It makes the ceiling for our classes very high in any given year because we will not be affected (as much) by a "down" year in a specific area. That being said, we lack the safety net other programs enjoy and it requires extra effort by the staff. The highs are high but the lows can be low, and there isn't much room for error.

Alford mentioned that the travel in recruiting for ND is going to be a welcome challenge. He talked about the Monday after he was hired, he was out to the west coast, then back to New Jersey.

We are the only school trying to land top-10 classes drawing from every region of the country.

An SI study of 2004-08 recruiting data for the 65 BCS-conference schools and Notre Dame revealed that programs which draw at least 50 percent of their>players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not. Of the nine schools that won 50 or more games from 2004-08, seven signed more than half their recruits during that span from within their state or from within 200 miles of campus: Texas (93.2% from in-state, 71.8 percent from within 200 miles), USC (72.0, 61.0), Georgia (63.6, 70.1), Florida (62.3, 47.9), Ohio State (55.8, 66.3), Virginia Tech (54.3, 44.0) and LSU (50.4, 56.5). Oklahoma barely missed the cut, with 49.1 percent from within 200 miles.

ND's average distance for recruits? 650 miles. That puts us with many schools that you would consider "good but not great". This is not to say that ND can't succeed in this type of recruiting climate (I think our recruiting success under Weis says that it can be done), but it's certainly something that makes the job even more difficult.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/andy_staples/01/20/recruiting/

The ND map is actually pretty cool.

It had all of the major conferences and I think Notre Dame grouped into seperate maps of the United States. Each pinpoint related to a recruit from that county/hometown. It reminded me a lot of the BGS post from awhile ago that had the google pinpoints.

Did anyone else ever see this? Is it available online?

I put it away and haven't looked at it again since I realized I was sitting next to a former ND Lou Holtz assistant on the plane. I just remembered it right now because I'm flying today.