Recruiting has gone down, 3 star will absolutely not bring home a Nati

Fully agree but please say natty not nati lol. Our defensive recruiting is woeful at best. If we don't get it together we'll be 9-3 or worse next year and likely not be in the playoffs. House should've been fired already.

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Recruiting has gone down, 3 star will absolutely not bring home a Nati

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Good thing this class has the most 4 stars in the country then. Y’all are some uneducated dipshits acting like we have a class full of 3 stars

What was your drink of choice tonight

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Member since May 2023

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Pump the breaks newbie.

The place where we need to focus and continue to focus is the lines. BK being an OL guy has done what he needs to on the the OL. We've had better recruiting on the OL in the past few years than we've had in the previous 30.

The DL has been difficult, but what are you supposed to do when you go out and make a good hire for your DL coach and he gets sick and can't perform his duties. It is what it is, but help is on the way. Just wait until ESD is finished and the bowl games are all done and you'll see what you need to see to get the issues corrected.

You can't fire a bunch of coaches right before signing day. That would be sabotage to the recruiting class. Just relax and let the people that know more about all this stuff do their jobs. If we get to signing day and we are outside the top 10 on classes, then bitch. Until then just chill and watch the chips fall as they will. Class rankings right now don't matter because too many pieces are still in play.

I love when people pull bullshite out of their arse and say it like it’s gospel.

We have 17 4 stars committed

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LSU recruits itself with the NFL talent

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bullshite. If this was indeed the case there would be no struggle, no effort needed to get "NFL" talent to come to LSU. This has never been the case. Plenty of resources, time and effort go into each and every of the recruits that LSU pursues. The LSU brand is strong and that helps, but it is not the end all, be all.

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I'm personally sick of the people who think stars don't matter because it absolutely 100% does matter.

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I am personally sick of people who look at lists compiled by a bunch of geeks before same has been finalized (there will be additional updates) and draw solid conclusions.

To-wit:

Just last year alone Whit Weeks was a 3 star #40 - #60 ranked LB going into an all star game in January of 2023. His performance at practice for same and in the game moved his rankings to 4 star top 10 LB in the class. Did he become a different player at the all star game or did the amateur talent evaluators finally get to see him in a setting that truly illuminated his skill-set? Did he become a better player when some internet website moved his rating from 3 to 4 star?

Going into the all star game Womack was a 4 star with the potential to be moved into the 5 star range and his performance justified the same movement in the rankings. Did he magically become a better player at the all star game or were the early evaluations off to a degree?

Over the course of last season Heard started as a three star recruit on the "recruiting" sites in the summer when he was initially pegged as the #57 OT in the country, then his ranking slowly climbed in each updated ranking to ultimately reach a pinnacle of 5 star, top 5 OT in the final updates. Did he really get that much better over the course of the season or did the intel on him get better?


(Full transparency: currently I have subscriptions to two such "recruiting" websites and have been a subscriber to all of the major recruiting sites dating back to the maxenfinger.com and davecampbell.com days. Before the internet it was the pre-season rags from Lindy's, Athelon, etc.)

That said, I have many issues with the "rankings", but that is a much longer discussion. Just a few quick points:

1. Look at the massive amount of downgraded players (HS rating to Transfer rating) for the players in the Transfer Portal (well over 80%). Example: Laterrance Welch 93-94 HS ranking, 85 transfer portal ranking. Did he magically become a worse player or was his HS ranking incorrect?

2. LSU and UF have the same team score currently on On3, yet UF has 20 recruits and LSU has 27. UF has two 5 star and LSU has 1. Same amount of 4 stars. but LSU has seven additional 3 star commitments. This illustrates the over importance that these sites ascribe to 5 star players. 1 5 star = 8 3 star players. No. One 5 star may very well hold down a single position out of 11, whereas the 8 players provide more depth of field.

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#12 class does not cut it.

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What I'm saying is that BK will not win a Nati here unless he starts pulling in Top 5 to 7 classes FOR 3 STRAIGHT CLASSES.

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Well since On3 has LSU at #6 on its current On3 only team rankings combined with the 2022 and 2023 overall classes finishing in your desired range, BK is well on the way to "Mission Accomplished".

TL/DR version: Take the earlier versions of the rankings with a grain of salt and the same can be said for the final updates. The correlation between team rankings and on-field performance is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy as the final updates to rankings more closely correlate to the coaches evaluations and the individual player's offer sheet. That is why you see the "Bama Bump", yes - the "LSU Bump", the "Ohio State Bump", oh hell, the "Power 5 Bump".

I think a lot of this is skewed with Texas and OU now being in the SEC, which drops us from 5th in SEC to 7th....

Also, NIL plays a large role in this. Georgia, Bama, and Florida are paying an average of 125k+ in NIL deals for their players while LSU is averaging just 62k per player. It seems the hesitancy on our end is legislative because NIL is such a mess. Every state is passing laws while NCAA is trying to put a lid back on something that can't ever be contained again, at least not by them.

Interestingly, per On3, LSU does have 3 of the top 10 NIL valuated athletes (Liv Dunne, Jayden Daniels, and Angel Reese) in all of NCAA. They hopefully are pushing that narrative. Hailey Van Lith is also one of the top NIL athletes in Washington state, even though she plays at LSU, because she has such a strong following from her home state of WA.

Bottom line....we need to do a better job at NIL if we want to see top level athletes come in regularly, year in, year out. That said, with what CBK and staff are doing with the 2025 class so far, they are maximizing their resources to pull quality talent to meet the needs of this team. Don't let 3 stars labeling get you down. Just look at teams ranked above us. Some have even more 3 stars than us committed. They just have at least a 5 star committed as well. That said, be careful with 5 star gazing. How did that work out with Denver Harris and Arik Gilbert? Sometimes those 5 stars have some ego issues or other off field circumstances that plague them at the next level, which negate them from ever benefitting your team. So, what did you gain in the end? While you chase the 5 star, you may miss out on a Justin Jefferson. So, don't fret. Root for the kids we get and trust in Frank and the boys. They are building us back up.

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Also, NIL plays a large role in this. Georgia, Bama, and Florida are paying an average of 125k+ in NIL deals for their players while LSU is averaging just 62k per player.

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I believe those are just estimate potential NIL numbers. Not actual. For example if we land Underwood for ‘25 our average NIL per player will jump because Underwood’s NIL potential is high. And it’s not LSU or BK pumping out NIL money. It’s booster and advertisers.