I have been paying attention and I hope you have been too. \u00a0Top tier college football programs are finding it difficult to polish off those teams they have historically demolished by half time. \u00a0This year, more than ever, it seems that the meek are beginning to rise. \u00a0Just this past week I watched Utah St. beat someone (Wyoming) by 49 points! \u00a0Utah State! \u00a0This would have never have happened 10 years ago and I don’t care who Utah St. was playing. \u00a0Wake Forest jumps up and beats Florida St. \u00a0Syracuse had to travel to the edges of hell to beat Tulane 37-34.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Bethune Cookman keeping Miami in check until late in the 3rd quarter. \u00a0SMU beating TCU on the road! \u00a0Week four there was, of course, Temple crushing Maryland. \u00a0Virginia losing at home to Southern Mississippi. \u00a0Auburn wrapped up in a battle with Florida Atlantic through four quarters. \u00a0Ten years ago, \u00a0that’s a 56-7 football game. \u00a0There’s also North Dakota St. traveling to Minnesota and winning by two touchdowns. \u00a0You need more? \u00a0How about Temple losing by only four to Penn St. \u00a0How about Toledo taking Ohio St. down to the wire. \u00a0 Tulsa putting up 33 points on Oklahoma St. \u00a0Washington barely beating Hawaii 40-32. \u00a0Clemson only beating Wofford 35-27.<\/p>\n
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, \u00a0college coaches can recruit from their desktop. \u00a0This 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. \u00a0Now, \u00a0from their computer, \u00a0a 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. \u00a0In the past, \u00a0that 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Only the big time programs that have remained savvy and embraced the Internet recruiting will remain as relevant as they have always been. \u00a0Programs with the old school mentality will sink in the rankings and relativity scale like a led balloon. \u00a0We are watching it before our eyes. \u00a0Smaller programs that make the most of what recruiting sites have to offer can see themselves ascend quickly and give the big time school fits. \u00a0Once they sleigh a dragon on a Saturday, \u00a0now even more eyes will be on their program.<\/p>\n
This phenomenon also refocuses the importance on coaching and player development. \u00a0Once upon a time, \u00a0staffs at big time schools could just go out and shoot fish in a barrel and bring in big time talent. \u00a0The better talent would get you a win on at least nine Saturday’s per season. \u00a0If \u00a0a coach could recruit well he always had a job. \u00a0Well now, \u00a0recruiting won’t be enough. \u00a0Some college programs have not figured this out yet but they will sooner or later. \u00a0If you can’t bring in your talent and develop them, \u00a0you 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. \u00a0 It’s happening I tell you.<\/p>\n
Some big time programs are crumbling and these are the major factors that are contributing. \u00a0Embracing 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been paying attention and I hope you have been too. \u00a0Top tier college football programs are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[112,212,634,635],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-college-football-recruiting","tag-high-school-football","tag-rivals","tag-scout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}