KU Going Juco Crrraaazzzzyyyy

[Triggermv]

Exactly. It's going to be a team with a lot of guys having little to no big time college football experience. A few guys? Not a problem. 16 of them? That is a train wreck waiting to happen. I'm no coach and far from being anything near an expert on building a program, but when it comes to football, I'd think you have to work from the ground up. Build up young talent with red shirting and multiple years of training before they see the field while filling in a gap here and there with a JuCo player.

I'd go as far as saying that this is an incredibly selfish way to try to find instant, short term successes (i.e., actually winning a B12 game) with no regard for the long term health of the program by Weiss, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

But your method would require Charlie to stay around for a minimum of 4-5 years to truly see its fruits rather than only 2-3 years, which is much too long for good old Charlie. Come on, Charlie is WWWAAAAYYY too good of a coach to stick around Kansas for a whopping 4 years right???? He's got so many people knocking on his door, he doesn't even have time to answer them all. KU should just be blessed to have him for 2 years even.

 

[ripvdub]

He'll just have to get more jucos next year and slowly get more hs kids every year, just get used top seeing new faces every year like we do at Eeemauw.

 

[ribsnwhiskey]

Come on man. Lets lay off the comments on Charlie Weis's body figure. Very uncalled for.

I was just suggesting he eat more of those than chili dogs and milkshakes.

 

[Triggermv]

I was just suggesting he eat more of those than chili dogs and milkshakes.

Tuschee, my friend, tuschee.

 

[cyhiphopp]

Exactly. It's going to be a team with a lot of guys having little to no big time college football experience. A few guys? Not a problem. 16 of them? That is a train wreck waiting to happen. I'm no coach and far from being anything near an expert on building a program, but when it comes to football, I'd think you have to work from the ground up. Build up young talent with red shirting and multiple years of training before they see the field while filling in a gap here and there with a JuCo player.

I'd go as far as saying that this is an incredibly selfish way to try to find instant, short term successes (i.e., actually winning a B12 game) with no regard for the long term health of the program by Weiss, which doesn't surprise me in the least.

Before anyone points to Hoiberg's strategy and makes a snarky comment, realize that football and basketball are nothing alike in terms of building a program and can't even be compared.

We can look directly at our own football program to see the opposite of Charlies approach.

CPR and staff have done everything they can to rebuild depth by developing HS athletes. JuCos have been brought in to address specific needs, not to fill 16 roster spaces a year.

 

[cyhiphopp]

CPR is obviously here for the long haul and was thinking ahead to years 4 and 5 when his HS recruits would be peaking. Weiss wants to win now at the expense of the future.


Notice how well Ron Prince did at K-State following up for Skeletor after his first retirement. I believe Prince tried really hard to ween them off JuCo dependency and went heavy with HS players. That blew up in his face and Snyder went right back to farming JuCos when he returned. No one works the JuCos like Skeletor.

 

[Triggermv]

CPR is obviously here for the long haul and was thinking ahead to years 4 and 5 when his HS recruits would be peaking. Weiss wants to win now at the expense of the future.


Notice how well Ron Prince did at K-State following up for Skeletor after his first retirement. I believe Prince tried really hard to ween them off JuCo dependency and went heavy with HS players. That blew up in his face and Snyder went right back to farming JuCos when he returned. No one works the JuCos like Skeletor.

Seeing stuff like this only makes me glad we have Paul Rhoads over the likes of Charlie Weis any day of the week. Based on ISU's history, I'm also at the point where I'd take a good long-term program building coach over a short-term flash in the pan coach who already says he is out the door, any day of the week. I'd still make that same choice if Charlie Weis proves to have a ton of success for a couple years before he leaves. I'm just at the point where I'm willing to make sacrifices for longer term success.

 

[trajanJ]

I think it's the best thing Charlie could do. No way you can recruit very many good high school prospects when you haven't won a conference game in forever. He's done a great job of filling the holes which is pretty much every position except rb and qb (because he really likes his 2 hs recruits and the redshirt sophomore and the BYU transfer). If other schools didn't want these jucos and he's just filling the roster then we would be in big trouble. But on paper and film this is a great group of jucos and several are coming in for spring ball and a lot have 3 to play 2. Now if KU's signs 17 jucos next year we're in trouble but if it's a one year deal then I think it's a great move. I wouldn't mind signing around 8 every year, I've always felt KU didn't take advantage of the jucos in the past.

 

[TXCyclones]

He's not planning on being there long anyway. He planned on trying to get KU on the right track then handing it over pretty quickly to someone else.

Where would Weis go after failing miserably at KU? To coach the Junior College that he's recruiting from?

 

[CYphyllis]

I think it's the best thing Charlie could do. No way you can recruit very many good high school prospects when you haven't won a conference game in forever. He's done a great job of filling the holes which is pretty much every position except rb and qb (because he really likes his 2 hs recruits and the redshirt sophomore and the BYU transfer). If other schools didn't want these jucos and he's just filling the roster then we would be in big trouble. But on paper and film this is a great group of jucos and several are coming in for spring ball and a lot have 3 to play 2. Now if KU's signs 17 jucos next year we're in trouble but if it's a one year deal then I think it's a great move. I wouldn't mind signing around 8 every year, I've always felt KU didn't take advantage of the jucos in the past.

I'm sure most Kansas fans feel that way, it's called offseason optimism.

From the outside looking in, it looks a lot like delayed program suicide. Football is a lot like business in the sense that short cuts rarely work out in the long term.

 

[iowa_wildcat]

ISU is definitely doing it the right way and following the blueprint for long term success. How long has Iowa State been recruiting high school talent to slowly build to having a competitive and eventually a championship team? When will Cyclone fans be rewarded with that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Will anyone over 60 live to see that first ISU Big 12 championship in football?

 

[VeloClone]

ISU is definitely doing it the right way and following the blueprint for long term success. How long has Iowa State been recruiting high school talent to slowly build to having a competitive and eventually a championship team? When will Cyclone fans be rewarded with that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Will anyone over 60 live to see that first ISU Big 12 championship in football?

Nice trolling; where is the negative rep button?

Yeah, obviously a coach who can take a storied Auburn program and drive it into the ground in a few short years obviously did wonders for the ISU program. Snyder has used jucos throughout his tenure and always seems to make the math work out; more power to him. I would like someone to show me how Charlie is planning to make the math work out when he has that many sophs and is bringing in that many jucos. It just doesn't appear to add up and they will have to pay the piper in a couple of years. Iowa State learned just how devastating to a program it can be when you are not able to give out a full complement of scholarships when Criner brought sanctions on the program that included limiting scholarships. For a struggling program something like that can be a hole from which it takes a long time to extract yourself.

 

[trajanJ]

Nice trolling; where is the negative rep button?

Yeah, obviously a coach who can take a storied Auburn program and drive it into the ground in a few short years obviously did wonders for the ISU program. Snyder has used jucos throughout his tenure and always seems to make the math work out; more power to him. I would like someone to show me how Charlie is planning to make the math work out when he has that many sophs and is bringing in that many jucos. It just doesn't appear to add up and they will have to pay the piper in a couple of years. Iowa State learned just how devastating to a program it can be when you are not able to give out a full complement of scholarships when Criner brought sanctions on the program that included limiting scholarships. For a struggling program something like that can be a hole from which it takes a long time to extract yourself.

They don't have that many sophomores. They had 20 on scholarship this year and a few walk-ons. From what I'm hearing they all aren't coming back and some will be possible redshirts next year because they haven't taking their shirt yet. Then a lot of the jucos that aren't there for spring ball will be redshirted. In all you're probably looking at a junior class that has about 26 scholarships which is only about 4 over normal.

 

[VeloClone]

They don't have that many sophomores. They had 20 on scholarship this year and a few walk-ons. From what I'm hearing they all aren't coming back and some will be possible redshirts next year because they haven't taking their shirt yet. Then a lot of the jucos that aren't there for spring ball will be redshirted. In all you're probably looking at a junior class that has about 26 scholarships which is only about 4 over normal.

How many freshman are there that will be sophs next year? The roster wasn't clear on who were redshirting last year and who had already redshirted. TIA

 

[Triggermv]

ISU is definitely doing it the right way and following the blueprint for long term success. How long has Iowa State been recruiting high school talent to slowly build to having a competitive and eventually a championship team? When will Cyclone fans be rewarded with that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Will anyone over 60 live to see that first ISU Big 12 championship in football?

You obviously don't know our history of recruiting to know what we are doing now is actually quite different from our past. Prior to Rhoads, we DIDN"T recruit all high school talent and we've always gone nearly as heavy on the jucos as Kansas State. Then, what we did get for high school talent was rarely redshirted because we always have needed them to play some immediately due to a lack of depth. With this method, we've always seemed to be fighting from behind. This blueprint has worked well for KSU, but only yielded inconsistent results here.

What has changed drastically with our current coaching staff is that we are still utilizing the jucos some to fill instant needs (I'm okay with this), but are more focused on bringing in high school players than we ever have been. Then, once we get them in, we try to redshirt nearly all of them. We even try to redshirt all the Jucos we can too, which has been most of them. We are oprtimistic about this plan because it is a plan that definitely sacrificed short term success for longer term success and depth, so that we are for once not fighting from behind every year to fill gaps. Only this past year could one say that we are finally getting to the point in the plan to expect to see results and I can honestly say we have. I only expect us to see more in the future too. Without question, we have more depth now and it shows through how kids almost need to be an upperclassman anymore before they are good enough to start. Before, if you had talent, we plugged you in right away whether you were ready or not.

This is why I believe you don't know our history of recruiting to make that comment because what we do now is VERY different from what we've done in the past. While we've yet to see a championship team come from it, it is hard to sit here and judge our strategy yet as we are FINALLY just on the verge of reaping the benefits. Also, the reason we are a bit critical of Kansas's approach is because we've somewhat been down that road before, just not quite to that extent (I doubt anyone has to their extent), and we know how short term of a strategy it is with very risky results. Combine that with Charlie only planning on being there short term and it seems a recipe for disaster. Right now, I'll still stick with our approach.

 

[klamath632]

At least you didn't write "Cray cray."

 

[CYphyllis]

ISU is definitely doing it the right way and following the blueprint for long term success. How long has Iowa State been recruiting high school talent to slowly build to having a competitive and eventually a championship team? When will Cyclone fans be rewarded with that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Will anyone over 60 live to see that first ISU Big 12 championship in football?

I have a hard time figuring out if you are senile or drunk.

 

[trajanJ]

How many freshman are there that will be sophs next year? The roster wasn't clear on who were redshirting last year and who had already redshirted. TIA

About half of a small freshman class. That's why this large juco class really won't set them back and is actually what they need. Plus this class is full of guys that have impact player possibilities and were recruited by a lot of very good schools. There's no way KU gets those type of players out of high school right now.

 

[iowa_wildcat]

Thanks Triggermv and TrajanJ! No, I am not drunk, senile or trolling. I asked honest questions and these two gentlemen gave me answers.

 

[VeloClone]

About half of a small freshman class. That's why this large juco class really won't set them back and is actually what they need. Plus this class is full of guys that have impact player possibilities and were recruited by a lot of very good schools. There's no way KU gets those type of players out of high school right now.

Good to know. There are 26 freshmen listed on the roster so I would quibble with your statement that it is a small class, or are you saying that most of those are walk-ons?