Friday, October 03, 2008
Theorizing on recruiting trends
Doug Doughty
Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.
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For months I’ve been writing about the proliferation of Division I-AA football recruits in Virginia – ad nauseum, I’m sure, for some readers – without providing many theories.
This week, I was writing a recruiting piece for a new website, accsports.com, and attempted to get in touch with Virginia Tech offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring, who got back to me after my deadline had passed.
(I understand that he was in Washington, D.C., trying to obtain a patent for his favorite play, the “Stinescreen.”).
I also spoke to Zirkle Blakey, who operates the Virginia Preps website and is a guy with whom I’ve discussed recruiting since, gee, maybe the 1970s.
I’ve calculated that there were close to 50 Division I-A signees from Virginia in 2007 and 2008, and this year there may be close to 60.
Here were Blakey’s thoughts, shared in an e-mail:
1) Prospects are committing earlier and earlier - which means commitment numbers at this time are higher than that of the same date (Oct. 1) in previous years
2) Schools outside the commonwealth were aware that Virginia Tech had limited scholarships for 2009, and placed more emphasis on the state this year
3) Virginia continues to build upon its reputation for developing strong high school football talent.... Some reports I have read have Virginia well up in the top 10, behind states like Florida, Texas, California, and Pennsylvania
4) The 2009 in-state class is exceptionally deep.
HE MAKES SOME good points and I suspect that websites like virginiapreps.com, thesabre.com, techsideline.com, cavscorner.com and hokiehaven.com have contributed to football craze.
VirginiaPreps.com is the top high-school site in the rivals.com network in terms of both page views and subscribers.
WHEN I FINALLY got in touch with Stinespring, it took him a few minutes to warm to the topic, first attributing the increased number of I-A commitments and signees to the high level of high-school coaching in the state.
That was the politically correct thing to say, I told him.
He then mentioned the year-around commitment that many high schools now place on football. Many teams lift weights year-around and many take part in summer passing leagues. Players have always lifted weights, maybe not with the concentration they do now, but the passing leagues are a relatively new concept.
He also pointed to the “reinvigoration” of football around the state in the past 10 years and the way that Virginia Tech and, yes, Virginia, too, are routinely putting 60,000 people in the seats.
“Interest in college football is at its apex,” he said.
BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T seen much growth in this part of the state, I was inclined to dismiss the most obvious theory, population.
Virginia has been the nation’s 12th-ranked state in population for as long as I can remember, but, just because growth is minimal in southwest Virginia doesn’t mean that other areas aren’t growing.
Going through the Virginia High School League directory for 2008-2009, I compiled a list of schools that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Many were in the areas of Loudoun County, Virginia Beach and Fredericksburg.
You’ve heard of Landstown High School, alma mater of Florida football star Percy Harvin? It didn’t exist 10 years ago. Stone Bridge, which won last year’s Group AA Division 5 championship and has four players committed to I-A schools? It didn’t exist 10 years ago.
North Carolina took an oral commitment this year from Curtis Campbell, a defensive back from Chesapeake who plays for Grassfields High School. I had never heard of it. There was no Freedom High School 10 years ago; now there are two, in Woodbridge and not too far away in South Riding, another Loudoun County locale.
Test your knowledge of Virginia high schools by matching up the following high schools with their locales: Battlefield, Briar Woods, Eastern View, King’s Fork, Skyline and Warhill. Mountain View is located in Fredericksburg, of all places. Where are the mountains?
I understand that Wake Forest took an oral commitment earlier this week from Patrick Thompson, the quarterback for Stone Bridge whose twin brother, Zach, had committed to the Deacs during the summer.
That’s four Wake commitments from Virginia, but, believe me, there will be plenty to go around.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS account of the North Carolina-Miami game that appeared in The Roanoke Times did not reveal that Tar Heels’ hero Cameron Sexton did not start the game.
UNC coach Butch Davis said Wednesday on the ACC coaches’ teleconference that Sexton’s appearance on Carolina’s third offensive series had been determined ahead of time. Sexton, who had played in one game in the previous two seasons, completed 11 of 19 passes for 242 yards in a 28-24 Tar Heels victory.
Carolina fans and no doubt some Virginia Tech fans might have wondered if Sexton would have made a difference Sept. 20, when the Hokies rallied from a 17-3 deficit to defeat the Tar Heels 20-17 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Redshirt freshman quarterback Mike Paulus replaced injured starter T.J. Yates in that game and yielded two interceptions.
I have always suspected coaches of favoring players they personally have recruited, although Yates, like Sexton, was a John Bunting recruit. Still, you had to question Davis for sending the less experienced back-up into the Tech game.
“We didn’t know when Cam went in the [Miami] game how the game was going to unfold,” Davis said. “He went in and moved the team straight down the field and that obviously gave him the opportunity to continue.
“It’s very difficult to get one quarterback ready. All of the quarterbacks are inexperienced in the offense that we’re running and they’re all very young. You can’t get three ready in one week and it’s hard enough to get one.
“You just kind of split the work up between the [No.] 2 and the 3 and it’s one of the reasons that we impress on all of them, ‘If we ask you to go down with the scout team, that’s not a relegation. You’re not a scrub. We need you to go down there to get these 45 throws against a quality secondary.’ A lot of times, there’s carryover.”
UNFORTUNATELY, I CAN’T provide the results of last week’s Notebook Plus poll because it has disappeared off the roanoke.com sports site. I can’t even remember what the question was and can’t find any editors to retrieve it for me.
This week’s poll question results from today’s SEC Roundtable luncheon at O'Charley’s in Roanoke.
It was the 59th different destination for the Roundtable and received high marks, but most likened it to chains like Ruby Tuesday, TGI Friday’s and Applebee’s.
