Has Utah hit their "recruiting ceiling?"

[Portland Ute]

By that I mean, has Utah capped out? Is this type of recruiting class the best Utah can hope for?

Utah's class this year, post BCS bowl win, seems to be no better than last year's. In terms of average rankings and team rankings, Utah looks destined to be at or slightly below what they were ranked last year.

This was supposed to be the payoff year.

I'm starting to think this is as well as Utah is going to recruit.

Meanwhile, I TCU and BYU really appear to be making hay and will probably have their best recruiting seasons ever.

With a full year of recruiting in Texas with a BCS win to tout, i'll be TCU is better next year in recruiting, too.

Has Utah hit it's recruiting glass ceiling?

[cruelute]

In the interest of saving electrons

can we just make this post a sticky note, so no one has to repost it every year?

[MartyFunkhouser]

My frustration right now is that Utah lost our 2 top RB recruits to teams in conference.

[BlueHair]

I hope Utah doesn't recruit any better.

Utah fields a good team every year with good or very good players at most positions. I don't remember the last time they had any glaring weaknesses.

[All-American]

I tend to think not.

I have long maintained that BYU and Utah, as two fish in the same small recruiting pond, could not sustain an extended period of simultaneous success. The past three years suggest that I was wrong.

Among the factors that have lead to this period of mutual success are the following:

1. Football is gaining in national popularity. A gallup poll in 2006 showed that football's popularity has reached historic proportions: 43 percent of Americans call it their favorite sport.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/26188/foo...llup-poll.aspx

This has implications on the game. Back in 1996, the payout for a "Bowl Alliance" bowl game was just over eight million. A team makes $17 million for a BCS appearance now. Attendance is up. Viewership is up. More people are interested in football than ever before. Corresponding with this (one would imagine) is a corresponding gain in the number of quality players hoping for a crack at D1 football.

2. Scholarship limits. In spite of the growing pool of quality recruits, teams can't stockpile on talent. The best teams will have their pick of the best players, but recruiting is at best a guessing game. High quality players will be available for more and more teams.

3. The spread offense. The "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense depended on execution and coordination of 11 players. The spread allows teams to isolate talented players and exploit mismatches when an individual player is stronger, faster, or bigger (for example: George on Sylvester).

These three factors mean that more and more teams can get quality players and can leverage them in ways that minimize a team's weaknesses. On a national scale, these factors will result in a lot more variety in the names you'll see in the top ten, as well as raising the ceiling of possibilities for BYU and Utah.

Other factors have a smaller scale:

4. More and more solid LDS recruits. This particularly benefits BYU, but Whittingham in particular has done a good job making Utah a place for LDS students as well as non-LDS students. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that we now have an entire generation of church members who grew up watching BYU (and to some extent Utah) contend on a national scale.

5. Finding respective niches. BYU recruits size and strength. Utah recruits speed. BYU gets tight ends and bruising backs. Utah lands quick safeties and cornerbacks. The two teams will still go after each others' recruits, but the teams can specialize in their style of play to an extent that allows them to coexist.

None of those factors would suggest that Utah cannot recruit any better than it is doing. In fact, to the extent that these factors help account for the recent rise into prominence of BYU and Utah, they speak against typical constraints, such as distance from recruiting hotbeds and "small pond" ideology.

Besides, this isn't necessarily the year to determine what Utah is capable of doing on the recruiting trail. With a freshman quarterback and a third-place finish, you could just as easily convince me that this year shows Utah's recruiting "floor," not its ceiling.

[BoylenOver]

Without question. Whatever will we do with merely a top-50 class?

[TripletDaddy]

By that I mean, has Utah capped out? Is this type of recruiting class the best Utah can hope for?

Utah's class this year, post BCS bowl win, seems to be no better than last year's. In terms of average rankings and team rankings, Utah looks destined to be at or slightly below what they were ranked last year.

This was supposed to be the payoff year.

I'm starting to think this is as well as Utah is going to recruit.

Meanwhile, I TCU and BYU really appear to be making hay and will probably have their best recruiting seasons ever.

With a full year of recruiting in Texas with a BCS win to tout, i'll be TCU is better next year in recruiting, too.

Has Utah hit it's recruiting glass ceiling?

I think this is the real telling stat. Two BCS bowl wins since 2004 and still no significant uptick in recruiting.

This doesn't mean that Utah won't make another BCS run, but to answer your question specifically, yes, I would think that neither BYU nor Utah will really ever be perennial top 10 recruiting class schools.

[John McClain]

By that I mean, has Utah capped out? Is this type of recruiting class the best Utah can hope for?

Utah's class this year, post BCS bowl win, seems to be no better than last year's. In terms of average rankings and team rankings, Utah looks destined to be at or slightly below what they were ranked last year.

This was supposed to be the payoff year.

I'm starting to think this is as well as Utah is going to recruit.

Meanwhile, I TCU and BYU really appear to be making hay and will probably have their best recruiting seasons ever.

With a full year of recruiting in Texas with a BCS win to tout, i'll be TCU is better next year in recruiting, too.

Has Utah hit it's recruiting glass ceiling?

I see you got James Aiono enrolled (finally). He is pretty highly touted, but may be difficult to keep eligible unless his academics get better. But assuming he does stay eligible, he is a pretty big get.

[DU Ute]

I see you got James Aiono enrolled (finally). He is pretty highly touted, but may be difficult to keep eligible unless his academics get better. But assuming he does stay eligible, he is a pretty big get.

Stop trying to make PU feel better. This is the worst day ever!!!!

[Coach McGuirk]

Stop trying to make PU feel better. This is the worst day ever!!!!

Let me add to PU's dismay,

Jamil Douglas, a 6-foot-5, 245-pound offensive tackle out of Cypress High in California, has decided Arizona State is the best
place for him, not Utah as he had announced earlier.
Douglas committed to the Utes in the summer.
"When I made the verbal to Utah I hadn't seen anywhere else," he said Saturday. "Me and my family felt more comfortable in Arizona. I like Utah, I have nothing against them, but I just felt better in Arizona

Was this considered a big get?

[DU Ute]

Let me add to PU's dismay,



Was this considered a big get?

I bet he felt better at ASU

[il Padrino Ute]

Incoming recruiting classes are worthless. Always have been; always will be.

The only way to truly measure how good a class of recruits was is to see what they did while they were in school. This is why I don't worry one bit about who the U signs or who the U doesn't sign.

[Portland Ute]

Incoming recruiting classes are worthless. Always have been; always will be.

The only way to truly measure how good a class of recruits was is to see what they did while they were in school. This is why I don't worry one bit about who the U signs or who the U doesn't sign.

I figure when KW says that recruiting is the lifeblood of the program and then he goes out and recruits a kid that means that Utah wants that kid for a reason. If Utah loses that kid, I'm crazy, I guess, for being disappointed.

[SeattleUte]

Ignore Portland. This is his typical horse shit. He's either just a compulsive needler or one perpetually miserable fellow. Maybe both.

[All-American]

I figure when KW says that recruiting is the lifeblood of the program and then he goes out and recruits a kid that means that Utah wants that kid for a reason. If Utah loses that kid, I'm crazy, I guess, for being disappointed.

Not at all, but it's something to be kept in proper perspective. Losing a game to BYU is a much better reason to be disappointed than losing a recruit to BYU.