Post by sj on Aug 14, 2007 5:57:57 GMT -5
With conversation of recruiting small school vs large school I thought this article from the Dallas Morning News might be of interest. Enjoy.
FORT WORTH – Matty Lindner's TCU bio pretty much sums up what Gary Patterson is looking for when he flaps up the dust around Whitehouse and Hutto and Idalou in search of football players.
Asked about his hobbies, Lindner, a 6-4, 298-pound senior guard out of Comfort, wrote, "I'm just a real simple guy who loves to play football. I like to hunt and fish, and I'm a really good welder. I've been doing it since I was in the ninth grade.
"I can weld anything."
Can't get any more small-town, blue-collar than that, can you? While Patterson's peers are trying to build programs, he's signing kids who can build them.
Or the supports, anyway.
Nobody goes small any bigger. Or better. Mack Brown may have the state's biggest country hit with Colt McCoy of Tuscola, population 714, but no one beats the bushes like Patterson.
TCU's two-deep includes 11 players from 3A schools or smaller, more than any other Division I-A program in the state.
The small-town approach – TCU's roster represents 64 Texas burgs – isn't the only reason the Horned Frogs have averaged nine wins a year under Patterson and made an annual push for BCS recognition. But it's probably 60, even 70 percent.
Get this: Patterson actually has a formula for how many of Lindner's types you can have on a team, which we'll get to in a moment.
First, though, consider the intangibles that small-town football players typically bring: hard-working, loyal, usually versatile, having played more than one sport.
So why don't more coaches recruit them? The smaller the school, the smaller the pool of talent, meaning there's usually no more than one or two per school, and you're not getting much bang for your buck on visits.
Many small-town players haven't played big-time competition. Most haven't been exposed to sophisticated weight training. Some play several positions without mastering any.
All things considered, it's enough to scare off some coaches, who can better spend their time competing for blue-chippers.
But Patterson can't always go head-to-head with Brown or Dennis Franchione or Bob Stoops. He has to scare up finds in unlikely places.
Example: Tommy Blake, a senior, is a 6-3, 252-pound All-Mountain West defensive end who had 16.5 tackles for losses last year and 36.5 for his career. But back at Aransas Pass, he was a running back, and a good one, too.
Patterson never wanted Blake as a running back, though. He knew all along he'd turn him into a defensive end.
Similar story with Brian Bonner, an all-conference safety and returner. Coming out of Beeville, where he'd passed for 1,412 yards and rushed for 1,179, he was a quarterback.
But since the day he hit campus, Bonner has been a defensive back.
"Never practiced one day at quarterback," he said.
Players change positions in any program. But kids from small schools or towns do it more often, especially at TCU.
Patterson leans toward running backs, though he doesn't like to sign anyone, other than a lineman, who needs to add more than 30 pounds to change positions. Ask them to put on more than that, he figures, and they lose too much speed.
TCU safety Brian Bonner (right) was a high school quarterback at Beeville. Character also becomes an issue when asking small-town recruits to make so many changes. Patterson counts on high school coaches to tell him who can handle it.
But don't think that recruiting a roster full of guys from out in the sticks will get you noticed. If you're going to be competitive, you need difference-makers, premier athletes whose work ethic, grades or personal issues may be questionable.
You can take those risks, Patterson says, as long as you don't allow them to make up more than 40 percent of the roster.
"If you ever let it get 50-50, you're in trouble, because you're no longer in charge anymore," he says.
Judging by the paucity of police reports involving TCU players, Patterson is holding to his ratios.
And the talent? Texas Football ranked TCU's latest class just fifth among the state's 10 Division I-A schools. But it also ranked the 2002 class fifth, and look how that turned out. The magazine's five-year review reranked TCU second behind Texas.
If a similar review holds true in five years for the class of 2007, Frog fans should thank Texas' small towns, which produced more than a third of the latest class.
FORT WORTH – Matty Lindner's TCU bio pretty much sums up what Gary Patterson is looking for when he flaps up the dust around Whitehouse and Hutto and Idalou in search of football players.
Asked about his hobbies, Lindner, a 6-4, 298-pound senior guard out of Comfort, wrote, "I'm just a real simple guy who loves to play football. I like to hunt and fish, and I'm a really good welder. I've been doing it since I was in the ninth grade.
"I can weld anything."
Can't get any more small-town, blue-collar than that, can you? While Patterson's peers are trying to build programs, he's signing kids who can build them.
Or the supports, anyway.
Nobody goes small any bigger. Or better. Mack Brown may have the state's biggest country hit with Colt McCoy of Tuscola, population 714, but no one beats the bushes like Patterson.
TCU's two-deep includes 11 players from 3A schools or smaller, more than any other Division I-A program in the state.
The small-town approach – TCU's roster represents 64 Texas burgs – isn't the only reason the Horned Frogs have averaged nine wins a year under Patterson and made an annual push for BCS recognition. But it's probably 60, even 70 percent.
Get this: Patterson actually has a formula for how many of Lindner's types you can have on a team, which we'll get to in a moment.
First, though, consider the intangibles that small-town football players typically bring: hard-working, loyal, usually versatile, having played more than one sport.
So why don't more coaches recruit them? The smaller the school, the smaller the pool of talent, meaning there's usually no more than one or two per school, and you're not getting much bang for your buck on visits.
Many small-town players haven't played big-time competition. Most haven't been exposed to sophisticated weight training. Some play several positions without mastering any.
All things considered, it's enough to scare off some coaches, who can better spend their time competing for blue-chippers.
But Patterson can't always go head-to-head with Brown or Dennis Franchione or Bob Stoops. He has to scare up finds in unlikely places.
Example: Tommy Blake, a senior, is a 6-3, 252-pound All-Mountain West defensive end who had 16.5 tackles for losses last year and 36.5 for his career. But back at Aransas Pass, he was a running back, and a good one, too.
Patterson never wanted Blake as a running back, though. He knew all along he'd turn him into a defensive end.
Similar story with Brian Bonner, an all-conference safety and returner. Coming out of Beeville, where he'd passed for 1,412 yards and rushed for 1,179, he was a quarterback.
But since the day he hit campus, Bonner has been a defensive back.
"Never practiced one day at quarterback," he said.
Players change positions in any program. But kids from small schools or towns do it more often, especially at TCU.
Patterson leans toward running backs, though he doesn't like to sign anyone, other than a lineman, who needs to add more than 30 pounds to change positions. Ask them to put on more than that, he figures, and they lose too much speed.
TCU safety Brian Bonner (right) was a high school quarterback at Beeville. Character also becomes an issue when asking small-town recruits to make so many changes. Patterson counts on high school coaches to tell him who can handle it.
But don't think that recruiting a roster full of guys from out in the sticks will get you noticed. If you're going to be competitive, you need difference-makers, premier athletes whose work ethic, grades or personal issues may be questionable.
You can take those risks, Patterson says, as long as you don't allow them to make up more than 40 percent of the roster.
"If you ever let it get 50-50, you're in trouble, because you're no longer in charge anymore," he says.
Judging by the paucity of police reports involving TCU players, Patterson is holding to his ratios.
And the talent? Texas Football ranked TCU's latest class just fifth among the state's 10 Division I-A schools. But it also ranked the 2002 class fifth, and look how that turned out. The magazine's five-year review reranked TCU second behind Texas.
If a similar review holds true in five years for the class of 2007, Frog fans should thank Texas' small towns, which produced more than a third of the latest class.
