Blogtoberfest: what indeed happens when pasta meets antipasta.

–Who says recruiting isn’t an exact science? We do, but trained economists object. A trio of trained dismal scientists have been predicting the school of choice for some 3,000+ D-1 recruits since 2002. The results aren’t unimpressive, hanging at around seventy percent for the whole timeframe of their analysis. Matters/not matters, according to the study?

For instance, factors such as school graduation rate, number of bowl appearances, depth at the player’s position, number of players drafted by the NFL, and number of national championships were not significant.

What does matter? Winning programs that are close to home, have good physical facilities, and are in good graces with the NCAA.

After correctly notching another seventy percent this year, you know the three are gonna grab some blow, get some hookers, and just let it rip ’til the boys in blue show up at the Ramada. That’s just how dismal scientists do.

Milton Friedman: once made love to a groupie with shark he caught from his hotel window.

Wanted: fight in dog, not dog in fight. The Ladanian Tomlinson meme reigns at TCU, where recruits clamoring to be the next LT come in droves despite TCU’s location square in the middle of Big 12 recruiting hell. That badass Nike commercial with the guy in the baseball cap with neckflaps has to help, too.

Elton John is bellowing “The Circle Of Life” and there’s nothing you can do about it…. Those who forgot the “snake eats mouse who then gets eaten by pig who gets devoured by panther” when Urban Meyer went on a commit poaching spree last week, take note: Florida loses two recruits this week, one to hated, hateful, hatrocious Florida State, the other to Miami. One, Bert Reed, is a wide receiver, a loss that will leave Florida with only 52 wide receivers on scholarship.

Fanblogs, chocked full of good recruiting coverage, also brings us a link to the story of how even at a late stage in life, Bobby Bowden took great joy in degrading and embarrassing his sons like the short two-faced blotchy satanic bastard twit hellspawn redneck cornpone shyster he is. We hope Joe Pa coaches from the inside of an iron lung if he has to, communicating with staff via eyelid twitches at the age of 248 like an Italian Mao.

If that’s what it takes, we’ll buy it ourselves.

Shyster, yes. Dumb, no. Bowden didn’t survive on height or scruples, obviously. He’s quite smart, as evidenced by his unorthodox recruiting strategy as detailed in the AJC:

A lot of schools like to lock in all 24 or 25 guys before signing day. They kind of want to know that all the hay is in the barn. We don’t like to do that. I like to leave at least eight or more spots open until signing day to give us a chance to get those special guys who decide late. We usually offer 16 guys to get those final eight.

When in doubt, sell it! SMQ has his own bit on the Schlabach article. [NAME REDACTED]’s m.o? SELL IT!!!

A dozen years before Zook, the Gators were 122-23-1 (.836), finished in the top 12 every year and won six SEC titles and one mythical title. Three years under Zook, they were 23-15 (.605), did not have a poll finish higher than 24th and won zero SEC or SEC East championships. Two years after Zook, UF is 22-4 (.846) and has won both the SEC and the mythical championship. When an individual has the guts to suggest, on the record, his successor in that situation is riding has coattails, that it was all part of his grand “blueprint,” and a slow implementation of it at that, then that, friends, is evidence of an endless reserve of balls. That is confidence and optimism run absolutely amok, until it bubbles over into frothing madness. So Zook has guts, too, a huge, disgusting supply of effervescent, non-white, uptight guts - Sell it!

Yep. When in doubt, yell louder and longer.

Katie Hnida is still a girl. Gelf Magazine has an interview with Katie Hnida, who istill a girl. Gary Barnett, incidentally, is still at home and “exploring his opportunities,” in case you want him to send you his resume or whatever.

Tom’s on top of that. Tom Lemming says that while Notre Dame is having a good year in recruiting, they’re short of defensive talent, something he says he has vowed to help Notre Dame fix over the next day or so personally. Tom Lemming, only on ESPN CSTV! For now!

Tom Lemming! Not NOT a Notre Dame shill!

Via Nathan, we find the widget that just destroyed any hope you had of getting anything done today. MapGameday has a map displaying each school’s prospects on a national scale so you can see exactly how your school is faring both within their state and also on a national level. In addition to being ooh-clicky-neato, the map will undoubtedly have hardcore recruitniks eating their hats at their desks as they wonder important things like “WHY DON’T WE DOMINATE EASTERN UTAH DAMMIT?!?!?!?”

Again: you’re welcome. That spreadsheet can wait until tomorrow. A few interesting examples follow, including a few showing that despite an alleged nationwide recruiting focus, few schools actually embrace the “fifty states plan” for drawing talent. Recruiting remains local, even for the silverbacks of the college football world.

Texas keeps it very simple by locking down anyone and anyone in the Houston and DFW areas, all but turning the high schools into a public utility supplying Austin with fresh legs:

Ditto for USC. (more…)

Warning: This is not a love song.Caustic language ahead. But you knew that already.

Mark Schlabach turns in a piece on [NAME REDACTED], the coach who spent three years in the offices of the Florida athletic department and now does the same at the University of Illinois. During that time, [NAME REDACTED] spent his time performing what he defined as the seven core competencies of a head coach:

Headbutting Coke machines. You can’t just get angry–you have to emote to show your passion to 18 year olds and other young adults watching you. (The one thing 18 year olds are short on is passion. We know, we know, but this is written in the high ironic from [NAME REDACTED]’s point of view. Roll with it.)

Therefore, you demonstrate your commitment and passion by headbutting machinery. Mind the ones with glass fronts, though the bleeding may add to the image. Watching film does not show passion, by the way. Avoid.

Talking on the phone in the shower. [NAME REDACTED] actually did have a phone in the shower so he could call recruits while washing all that blood off from headbutting innocent Coke machines. It also allowed him to hold conversations without bursting into flame from all the passion and excitement he emits. (Florida fans, in unison: pity, really.)

Writing stuff down on a notepad. What was he writing down? This, actually:

Saying the same five things over and over again. [NAME REDACTED] forever claimed how “excited” he was, and how the mental lapses and inability of his team to close games was “correctable.” In year one, this was pablum. In year two, it crept into delusion. In year three, it crossed the line into what philosopher Harry Frankfurt would correctly identify as bullshit. The difference between that and standard clipboard-holding lies?

Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. …The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Paying no attention became a theme for [NAME REDACTED], whether it involved the truth, the ineffectiveness of the soft zone late in the game, or the rogue waves of incompetence paralyzing Florida late in the game. And yet…it was all correctable. Which was technically correct, but only in the most lawyerly way possible, since the correction required involved his removal, a prescription eventually administered by those who held the purse strings.

Anyway, Mark Schlabach’s got this piece on [NAME REDACTED] that backs up Orson’s Sad But Reliable Rules for Humanity yet again.
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