Food for thought on Offers...

[HwkFn4Life]

Was curious about something and had to do a bit of research. It doesn't take a genious to figure out that Iowa is typically always battling the border state schools for recruits, meaning whenever Iowa offers a kid, typically Wisconsin and Illinois and so forth are in as well. Majority of our recruits probably fall into this category. I have also noticed, and it has been stated on here before as well, that Zook and Illinois seem to throw around scholarship offers like baby nurserys throw around diapers. Seems like every kid in the Midwest has a scholarship offer from Illinois. So I did some research to see (at this point in time...) just how many scholarship offers each Big Ten school has out to kids, both committed and uncommitted kids.

Results
Ohio State - 78 Offers
Wisconsin - 79 Offers
Northwestern - 81 Offers
Penn State - 85 Offers
Iowa - 116 Offers
Michigan State - 141 Offers
Nebraska - 143 Offers
Minnesota - 144 Offers
Michigan - 155 Offers
Indiana - 166 Offers
Purdue - 185 Offers
Illinois - 280 OFFERS!

Now obviously a school like Ohio State can't extend 280 offers cause there are tons of kids that would commit instantly when Ohio State offers, I get that. But that is a rediculous number, and kids have to begin to realize that during the recruiting process that they will offer just about anybody. Here is amazing Illinois fact #2. Out of 280 scholarship offers currently out, only 19 of them are kids from Illinois. Thats really throwing up the wall around the state! They have offered 43 kids from the state of Georgia (SEC Country) but only 19 from Illinois. Now I'm no recruiting whiz, but I would think that in a fertile football state like Illinois, they should be putting more focus on in state kids. However, having said all this, this is just a small nugget into why Iowa is having the success it has had lately in the state of Illinois, and as long as Zook and company are still around, I doubt it will change.

 

[ArizonaHawkeye88]

This is good info. It would be interesting to know how many scholarships each school can take in Feb.. I know that Nebby has to take a lot less this year than last.

 

[GoHawks24]

I wonder if a lot of that is due to Zook coaching at Florida and those being the areas he recruited, has ties to, etc.

 

[HwkFn4Life]

I wonder if a lot of that is due to Zook coaching at Florida and those being the areas he recruited, has ties to, etc.

If that is the case, that just seems like bad recruiting principles. They face a lot of the same issues that most Big Ten schools do when trying to recruit southern kids. Regardless of what any recruit says, location is a factor in every kids decision, and for prolly 95% of them, its a main factor. It just makes sense to recruit your own state very well, especially when it is a state that produces plenty of football talent. Were not talking North Dakota here, Illinois has plenty of talent.

 

[latrans]

I find it interesting that Iowa falls into the middle of the pack on this stat and that Wisconsin gives nearly as few as ohio state. I wonder if this is a one year anomaly or if this trend holds up over time?

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

I find it interesting that Iowa falls into the middle of the pack on this stat and that Wisconsin gives nearly as few as ohio state. I wonder if this is a one year anomaly or if this trend holds up over time?

Wisky gave out around 140+ offers in 2011.

There are likely a few reasons for the smaller number of offers this year ...

- They're coming off of success [a great season, great placement of players in NFL, visited the Rose Bowl] which puts them in a position of power. They are getting hyped and a lot of guys high on their board like them.

- Their team is still relatively young ... thus, they don't have all that many spots to fill

- Their recruiting needs could be pretty particular, so they could be opting for a pretty targeted recruiting approach.

 

[okeefe4prez]

I wonder if a lot of that is due to Zook coaching at Florida and those being the areas he recruited, has ties to, etc.

Zook has limited ties. The recruiter on his staff was Mike Locksley. He left a few years ago and their recruiting has fallen off a cliff bince then, though I think Scheelhause was a nice grab post-Locks.

It's pretty amazing how those top programs like OSU, Wisky, NU and PSU make so few offers.

 

[big10fan]

didn't the ole zooker used to offer schollies to every 5 star? thought i saw that somewhere, that he was very much geared toward what the recruiting rankings said.

 

[homerHAWKeye777]

Zook has limited ties. The recruiter on his staff was Mike Locksley. He left a few years ago and their recruiting has fallen off a cliff bince then, though I think Scheelhause was a nice grab post-Locks.

It's pretty amazing how those top programs like OSU, Wisky, NU and PSU make so few offers.

That's not completely accurate. The bigger thing that has hit the Zooker's recruiting has been the fact that the Illini have floundered in recent years and that he's clearly on a hot seat. A guy isn't going to be quite so keen to pull the trigger for a coach who might be gone in a year or two.

Also, Locksley primarily recruited a single region ... the DC/Baltimore area. Thus, his departure only hurt PART of their recruiting. Of course, they also lost Mitchell and that then hurt their recruiting in Missouri.

Zooker also lost one of his DC buddies ... and that guy had connections to Florida.

 

[okeefe4prez]

That's not completely accurate. The bigger thing that has hit the Zooker's recruiting has been the fact that the Illini have floundered in recent years and that he's clearly on a hot seat. A guy isn't going to be quite so keen to pull the trigger for a coach who might be gone in a year or two.

Also, Locksley primarily recruited a single region ... the DC/Baltimore area. Thus, his departure only hurt PART of their recruiting. Of course, they also lost Mitchell and that then hurt their recruiting in Missouri.

Zooker also lost one of his DC buddies ... and that guy had connections to Florida.

Locks landed Zook's biggest coup, Rejus Benn. I couldn't remember the dude's name, but he used to have co d-coordinators and one of them was the FL pipeline guy, too, but a terrible coordinator. Maybe it was Mallory or something, I can't remember.