2/9 Recruiting Update

RU signee Djwany Mera has a wrestling background, which undoubtedly made him a more attractive prospect in Coach Schiano’s eyes.

Several future Rutgers walk-ons stepped by last week’s chat on State of Rutgers.

Moving onto 2011, the premium sites are reporting more new offers by the day, and that pace should continue for the time being. New reported offers (or ones that I hadn’t yet noticed until now) include Bosco QB Gary Nova, Florida WR Bo Brand, Union City OL Josue Matias, St. Peter’s OL Keith Lumpkin, Scranton OL Kevin Reihner, Florida OL Jordan Prestwood, Sayreville DT Daryl Stephenson, NY DL Kieran Borcich, Florida LB Tony Steward, and MD ATH Jamal Merritt. Add Orlando QB Jeff Driskel to the list too.

There was a linemen camp at the Rutgers bubble yesterday, and Rivals has a few details on the event. Several RU targets like Trip Thurman were mentioned in that.

The long, cold, football-less winter

FYI, I’m still working on my ‘10 class recap, but time’s limited right now. Will post that as soon as it’s finished and readable. No, I’m not sitting on any updates about the coaching vacancies or anything else. One of the names I speculated about for Tight Ends, Bob Price, is apparently shifting to an administrative role at UVA. I noticed that article because their new QB coach, Bill Lazor, used to be with the Seahawks, and probably was Mike Teel’s advocate in Seattle.

Unfortunately, wrestling’s showdown with the powerhouse Lehigh program over the weekend was postponed because of the big storm. The up and down season for the women’s taem continues with a win over USF in Tampa. Which you’d know, if you had been keeping track with Brittany Ray’s blog. Don’t really care much about the men losing to Louisville by double digits. If the smoke monster imitating Fred Hill wants to keep its job, beating Georgetown on Sunday would be a start.

The Schianocopter should watch its back, because a booster just donated a private plane to the USF program. Internet bloggers are searching for it on Flight Aware as you read this sentence.

Things are slow right now, so of course the boards aren’t happy about Phil Mushnick complaining that Rutgers signed as many prospects from Florida as New Jersey in the NY Post. Well, at least the NY press is paying attention to RU football. If any other good can come from that, it’s that Graystork came out of hibernation to post another invective. I said good day sir!

Yesterday, Jack Corcoran posted the second entry in his draft blog – focusing on his postseason training and Sunday’s Super Bowl. Steve Politi posted a Q&A with Brandon Renkart before the game on Saturday. From JoeBucsFan, here’s a picture of Eric Foster captivating media row in Miami with his bad singing.

Football season may be over, but that just means that spring training’s right around the corner. Todd Frazier loves Bruce Springsteen and Manny Ramirez, and of course wants to make the Reds this year.

Former Rutgers HC Doug Graber retired from Stan Parrish’s staff at Ball State.

NJN has video up of their interview with Pres. McCormick that aired on Sunday. Didn’t get a chance to view that one as I normally would, but I hope to soon.

Changes may be afoot with several of the senior postseason all-star games. Texas vs. the Nation is looking for a new home next year, and the Shrine Game may be kaput entirely. Maybe that’s just posturing, or it’ll be replaced by another game, but scouts and prospects both really need these showcases. The Texas game was able to gain a foothold right away with the demise of the Hula Bowl several years back.

The New Jersey Assembly will soon consider a legislative proposal to legalize sports gambling in New Jersey. As the article notes, the bill can only take effect with a favorable ruling from the federal Supreme Court on Sen. Ray Lesniak’s lawsuit. Betting would probably be a net positive for the state’s perilous fiscal situation, but any proposal is sure to anger the NCAA and other organizations.

On a somewhat related note, the Star-Ledger is suing the NJSEA to release contract documents.

Randy Edsall: perennial recruiting sourpuss

If there’s one thing you can count on from UConn’s Randy Edsall, is that he’ll use his bully pulpit at every and all opportunities to smother the  hysteria surrounding the college football recruiting process with a wet blanket. That was the case once again last week at Edsall’s signing day presser.

“It’s all very stupid, in my opinion,” he said. “For anyone to go out and rank classes, and to evaluate thousands and thousands and thousands of kids that are 17 and 18 years old, and think they’re going to watch all this film and put a ranking on them, it’s propaganda. And it’s one of the things that’s ruining the game, in my opinion.”

“It’s ruining kids. I just hope some people come to their senses soon and does something about the recruiting process because we’re in this to help young people and this process isn’t helping young people. It’s hurting them.”

Oh Randy. Can’t it be that maybe Rivals and Scout and ESPN do go overboard, and are flawed in many aspects, but that doesn’t justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Rivals.com has a very big problem

The fine folks at Scarlet Nation generally do a bang up job, but the national Rivals.com recruiting service has fallen victim to a weird quirk as of late; one that I noticed a few weeks back when the Rutgers class was ranked shockingly low, despite not looking all that bad. To best illustrate this point, let’s use Wisconsin’s class as an example.  Take a look at who the Badgers signed; it’s not USC, but pretty decent group, right? Scout has it ranked at 33rd. Rivals? No lie, it’s #86. Now, I’ll just use one example here to keep this brief. Ken State is ranked 5 spots higher than Wisconsin on Rivals. They have fewer commits, and a much smaller average star rating. It’s incoherent to suggest that most, if not all Kent State commits wouldn’t immediately flip to Wisconsin if they received an offer from the Badgers.

And yet Kent State is somehow higher, to cite only one of countless ludicrous examples from this year’s rankings. Over the past few days, what purports to to be an explanation of the Rivals team ranking formula has been floating around, and I STILL can’t figure out how Kent State is higher than Wisconsin. The latter’s class is better in any conceivable way. From what I can tell, it looks like the formula is overwhelmingly skewed towards the high end, and seems to group anyone who’s not a top prospect rather close together, even if there may be a fairly big difference between an average major conference prospect, and one who signs with a mid-major.

Point is, something is very, very wrong with the formula when it’s producing some rather absurd results, and it’s badly hurting the site’s credibility. That’s an issue that goes beyond any individual criticism of player evaluations. When someone like Mike Farrell said Rutgers was on the verge of signing its worst class in eight years (even with major targets still on the board, like a Coleman who everyone but Farrell expected to land at Rutgers), that’s demonstrably insane. On occasion, provocative findings, results, or statements can be useful in furthering discussion or future insights. Or, they’re so profoundly bonkers that the very process used in their creation simply must be unsound; the classic reductio ad absurdum argument.

Replacing Gary Emanuel

It’s a blow to see last year’s defensive line coach, Gary Emanuel, depart for Purdue. While Emanuel’s tenure on the banks wasn’t as long as Joe Susan’s, this loss could be just as big. He was far more important as a position coach, although he didn’t matter that much for recruiting purposes (I’d just as much rather have Trivers on the road in Maryland).

Why would Emanuel leave? It could be any of the following:

• Familiarity/fondness for Purdue, having spent eight years there.
• Promotion to co-defensive coordinator, a path that was blocked for him staying put.
• (Maybe) By the promotion, a higher salary.
• Less taxing hours.

Any, if not all of those could have been factors, but it still stings losing an important assistant to a program that hasn’t been doing all that well of late in the Big Ten. Sometimes these things just happen though. Purdue wasn’t looking for a new DL coach before Texas A&M hired theirs. Florida just lost their new defensive coordinator after only a few weeks.

Keith Sargeant mentioned assistant DL coach John Harakal as a potential replacement. Here are a few other names to consider.

Super Bowl Stunner

How did I find this story on NBC’s Indianapolis TV affiliate website, when no one else is mentioning it anywhere else? It’s only from that one source, with not so much of a mention anywhere else, so it was hard deciding whether to link this. That’ll probably help blow the story up, and I’ll very happy to be wrong if this is a hoax.

A Colts player will not face charges over a sex assault allegation.Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said criminal charges would not be filed against Eric Foster, a defensive tackle for the Indianapolis Colts.

An employee at the University Place Hotel alleged that Foster assaulted her the night before the AFC playoff game, where the Colts were staying. Police filed a report, but the prosecutor found no evidence to support the claims made by the employee.

I can only hope that Eric’s exoneration indicates his innocence.

Everyone has their wild Foster stories, but he’s always so affable, and teammates and fans admire his relentless play. Eric’s arguably one of the most admired and beloved Scarlet Knights of all time I thought the worst we’d hear about Eric this week would be his bad dance moves. As far as I can tell Indianapolis doesn’t have an incident report of the allegations online.

Well, that just about overshadowed my already written news post, the rest of which you can read below.

Twenty four new Scarlet Knights

The Rutgers football staff finished off their late flurry of activity with two new verbal commits on signing day. The first, Jacksonville RB Casey Turner, re-affirmed his commitment to Rutgers with an assist from divine intervention. Coach Schiano’s strong faith pays off once again.

“I prayed about it a lot and God told me to make the right choice,” Turner said Wednesday morning at a school-gathering for him and three teammates who also accepted and signed scholarship offers. “My intuition kept saying Rutgers, Rutgers, Rutgers.

“If football didn’t work out there, I’d have a great degree from there. It’s a program on the rise that I hope can win a national championship. I’ll study some kind of business technology or communication, something like that.”

It can be hard saying no to Butch Davis, but God has to be the ultimate recruiting coordinator, no? I think Turner is a fair bit better than the other Jacksonville-native back in the class, Jawan Jamison, so this is a very positive development.

Then, the Scarlet Knight continued to hit Northeast Florida hard with the addition of Ken Kirksey (and his reputed eligibility concerns). The trouble is with these big linemen is that they’re just so few of them; the true blue chippers at the position like a Sharrif Floyd or Will Campbell or few and far between. That’s why teams have to roll the dice on dogs like Richard Ash to see if they pan out. Recruiting and developing QBs and DTs is always a major challenge. Kirksey on his decision:

“All the schools had something I liked, things that were different and some things that were alike. It was crazy,” Kirksey said. “When I took my official visit to Rutgers I felt that family that I have here with this team. Coach (Greg) Schiano, he tells you real things. He’s telling me he will stick with me to the end.”

With 24 signees, will there be enough ships available?. No scholarship estimates had projected anywhere close to that number. The staff does always hold a few in their back pocket. There are questions about a handful of these prospects qualifying, and it’s unknown at this point which, if any, players will no longer count against the 85 limit because of injury.

There’s also the matter of signing what’s believed to be six wide receivers in the class. Positional switches are one possibility, but there doesn’t appear to be any room in the backfield (even with a thin depth chart of returning starters), and limited room in the secondary. Brandon Coleman (something you don’t see very often – a Maryland coach called Coleman the one who got away) certainly has the height to get a look at tight end, and it’d make sense to give another signee such as Jeremy Deering an opportunity to replace Sanu in the Wildcat package next year.

I’ll have more thoughts soon, after I have a chance to watch the presser video, but here are some other links of interest. Holding off on the non-signing day stuff for today. Meanwhile, sit and wonder where exactly that weird post on Scarlet Scuttlebutt went down the memory hole

Chas Dodd (zuh?)

“I’ve heard Chas telling me they will play South Carolina in 2011. I’ve heard Torian tell Marcus they would beat them. It’s just that camaraderie they have with each other, but they will compete against each other,” he said. “Words can’t describe what they mean to this program and (have) done for this program. Hopefully now they are reaping the benefits from it.”

Fred Overstreet

“I told the coaches at Rutgers, ‘You’re getting a gem,” Fenton said. “I’ll put my reputation as a football coach on the line on that they’re getting a great football player and a great person. … That’s how sure I am.”

Gareef Glashen

“I fell in love with Rutgers when I went up there,” Glashen said. “I was most impressed with the fact that they graduate almost all of their athletes.”

Lorenzo Waters

“It feels like heaven on Earth,” commented Teresa Waters, whose son Lorenzo signed to play and study at Rutgers.

Tejay Johnson

He compared himself to 6-2, 215-pound Rutgers standout Mohamed Sanu, who played multiple positions this past year, including quarterback in the Wildcat, wide receiver and running back.

“I’m smaller than him, but faster,” Johnson said by phone.

Dave Milewski and Jawaun Wynn

Jordan Thomas

Chris Fonti (video)

LOST-abbreviated links

Oh, hey, a basketball win over St. John’s? Talent was always there, but confidence hasn’t been. The only logical conclusion is that Fred Hill is secretly dead and has been replaced by the smoke monster. Don’t go about getting any big ideas now. As much as I think Rutgers doesn’t want to buy out Hill, these last two games shouldn’t change anything. By all means though, any additional success at this point is just gravy, so enjoy it. Would be nice if Hamady and Rosario can keep it up.

Hooray, wrestling is ranked 23rd.

Today’s news will be dominated by signing day, with live video coverage on SK.com. The Record is saying that Lodi LB Joe Falato will sign a LOI today and play DE in college.

As mentioned yesterday, Casey Turner’s final call is still up in the air.

Turner is saying he’s still considering Rutgers and will announce his final choice on Wednesday.

He’s singing a different tune though.

“Rutgers did send a letter-of-intent to my school, but I’m 100 percent North Carolina. When I sign, it will be a burden off my back.”

The other known names to watch are Cater and Kirksey.

Brandon Coleman: tap dancing, etc…Susan and Jenkins leaving were no big deal to him. Rashad Knight is coming into Rutgers as a corner. Jeremy Deering is at receiver (video).

Adam Zagoria has a video interview up with Betim Bujari. Should have more stuff up on his site today. Sam Bergen is still rehabbing his ACL injury. Luicci says Pitt made a late run at Taj Alexander; if true, that’s understandable given how hard it is to find defensive linemen. PSU and ND going after Bujari is interesting/reassuring.

How can anyone be mad at Keith Sargeant for his article yesterday? Farrell and Lichtenfels are just hacks, and now they’re starting to backtrack of course. Good comment from Dohn, who actually knows what he’s talking about, at the end of that about the value of taking an official visit. They’re so important.

Kinda have mixed emotions about the whole 96 team NCAA tournament rumors. Rutgers is one team that would greatly benefit from that. Despite the logistical infeasibility, I’ve always been a fan of the proposed “jailbreak” scenario in which the NIT champion would earn a bid to say the Sweet 16 after running through the whole gauntlet.

A decade ago, Tim Tebow’s brother chose a FCS school over Rutgers.

Why do recruits chose Rutgers? It’s nice to hang your hat on 15 student-athletes making the Big East’s All-Academic team.

Mike Vorkunov has the first entry in Kevin Haslam’s running draft diary. Jack Corcoran is also running one of his own. Could only find one mention of George Johnson.

Those Pitt to the Big Ten rumors? Total bunk.

Via Pat Hanlon from the Giants, here’s a picture of Ray Rice and Shaun O’Hara at the Pro Bowl.

Quick hits on the class of ‘10

First off, Rutgers football had a big day in recruiting (basically rendering the Farrell and Lichtenfels comments discussed below moot). Adding strong Rutgers leans Brandon Coleman and Rashad Knight shouldn’t surprise anyone (congrats to Kristian Dyer on the scoops), but getting Jeremy Deering over FSU at his presser just now is definitely a shocker. Makes you wonder what tomorrow has in store, for better or worse.

• Overall, it’s a decent class. My two areas of concern are at QB and the offensive line. Chas Dodd could develop into a decent backup and change of pace option, but Rutgers is thin at the position right now. They were hit by the double edged sword of Tom Savage scaring away competition, and a down year for quarterbacks nationally and locally. The same kinda goes for OL recruiting, where Rutgers had no choice but to take numbers for depth purposes. Bujari’s good; the others are question marks who could go either way. Some will develop and some won’t.
• I really like the class of receivers we’re bringing in, with all of them potential impact players. Tejay Johnson was the best receiver in New Jersey over the past year year. Jordan Thomas combines a good offer pedigree and a terrific senior season at RB. Now he’ll just have to adjust in his switch over to receiver. I’ll have some more thoughts up on the other signees tomorrow once they’re all signed.
• There’s not really cause for concern, even though recruiting did take a step back from 2009. That was largely a function of a very down year for in-state recruiting (Rutgers offered very few of the players that Rivals and Scout considered to be the best in New Jersey). True, the staff did miss out on a handful of prospects I thought they’d land, but no big difference makers. The (very) good news is that the 2011 class in New Jersey is absolutely loaded, and Rutgers looks to be in great early position there. They’re being aggressive once again, and their targets are reciprocating the interest. RU is set to do very well next year, although quarterback recruiting remains the biggest question mark.
• Well, I was going to do a post about the 2010 Rivals NJ rankings, but JCB pretty much beat me to the punch with a thoroughly definitive take. The bottom line? Rutgers only wanted eleven of who Rivals called the thirty best players in state (Scout’s list is equally as bad). While the writers at Scarlet Nation, Scarlet Report, and State of Rutgers know what they’re talking about, the likes of Mike Farrell and Bob Lichtenfels are pretty much full of it in all respects. They can go back to cheerleading for Boston College and Pitt respectively. Are you really going to trust their judgment over the staff, and knock Rutgers for not going after certain players instead of chasing star ratings?
• The big news in the East this year was that, as was evidenced by early buzz, Penn State absolutely cleaned up – blowing its regional competition like Rutgers, Pitt, and Maryland completely out of the water. They had an absolutely banner class. If there’s anything marring signing day for the Nittany Lions, is that they still have some trouble competing with other programs that are hotter on a national level. First it was USC, then Notre Dame, and now it’s Florida preventing PSU from truly having a perfect class. Speaking of which, Florida’s ‘10 class may very well be the best of any program in any year, at least in the past decade.

2/2 Recruiting Update

Signing day’s tomorrow, and there’s an awful lot going on besides the Cater stuff mentioned here yesterday. More to come shortly…

Over the weekend Rutgers added OL Robert Forst (Art’s younger brother), who previously had been committed to Delaware. Can’t imagine Dan Foose is too happy about that. Does this mean that Vicioso won’t qualify?

Florida DL Djwany Mera chose Rutgers over Illinois. He visited over the weekend along with several other prospects. DB Gareef Glashen flipped from Syracuse to Rutgers. I linked to an article a while back about Glashen planning to visit, but tried not to make a big deal out of it because I’ve just about had it to here with Syracuse as is, 99% of RU fans don’t care.

Finally, there was a surprise yesterday with the addition of pass rusher Fred Overstreet. I’m familiar with the name, but hadn’t heard him linked to Rutgers at all until now.

He just returned from an official visit to Rutgers this past weekend.

It’s a happy ending to what turned into a frustrating month for Overstreet. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound Overstreet also owned Division I offers from Purdue, Minnesota and Syracuse. The Orange’s offer fell through when Syracuse assistant Stan Drayton, who has been recruiting Overstreet, left for Florida in early January. Fenton said the other two schools were pressuring Overstreet to commit early and subsequently pulled their offers when he didn’t.

Those updates are on the heels of the week’s developments. RB Casey Turner decommitted from Rutgers for UNC. His dad was trying to push Turner to Arkansas in December, but that was a surprise considering UNC added blue chipper Gio Bernard earlier in the day. It’s just our luck that Rutgers now has a thin depth chart following Brooks’s transfer, but in its recruiting manages to run into two schools even worse off at RB. Turner said that UNC is his final decision, although you have to wonder what all that talk about visiting UCF is about. By the way, this may be related to the fact that Brandon Gainer ended up going to UCF as a package deal after all.

That was a blow because it came out the same day that the Cater situation really started to get weird, and right after Mustafa Greene committed to N.C. State. That was a close call that came down the wire. Greene’s was interested in playing in front of his family in Brooklyn, but he could very well start as a true freshman with the Wolfpack. Turner was very underrated, and I loved Greene’s physical running style too, even though it does make him somewhat injury prone.

So without those two, the fallback option at RB was Jawan Jamison, who quickly chose Rutgers over Wake Forest when the staff was ready to accept his verbal. He was high on Wake’s board, and South Carolina liked him as a fallback if they didn’t sign Marcus Lattimore. Decent prospect with as good a chance as anyone else, and provides some needed depth at the position as Rutgers primes to go after bigger local names in 2011.

“The coaches tell me that I remind them of Ray Rice,” Jamison said. “We’re built almost exactly the same. They actually think I’m further along than he was then, because of my ability to catch the ball out of the backfield. Seeing what he did at Rutgers definitely increased my interest in the school.”