Study - CFB team value

[ragtimejoe1]

The effect on recruiting and talent retention of UW's position on a theoretical list that captures where young people want to spend their college years either exists or it doesn't. If you are saying it doesn't matter or doesn't exist....be explicit about that and I'll happily engage with you about other topics where you actually make some sense. I assume that is not your position since that is somewhat ludicrous but feel free to surprise me.

I said above that distance to family can certainly be a factor and located in area mostly devoid of talent can be a hinderance as it relates to the desire to play relatively close to home.

You have to differentiate recruits. Kid has no other FBS offers? I'm not sure this matters. Kid has P5 offers? This also doesn't matter; he's not coming. I'm sure there some gradient in between.

Laramie is hard to recruit to due to lack of sport culture, lack of success, etc.

Now.....assuming that effect exists and goes in the direction that we all think it does. What does that mean? You brought up Urban Meyer and the "what-if" world where he chose to come to UW over Utah back in '03. The compensation was roughly similar...Glenn even made slightly more at that time according to the small bit of searching I did. You made the statement that maybe if we had tripled that number then we would have had a chance at landing him and that he was very selective....both statements that are probably true. Why would it take triple the money (that might be hyperbolic but I'm just using your example) to get a guy to come to Laramie to coach football over Utah at the time? Why would a "selective" coach not choose to come to Laramie? I assume the answers to these questions are real....why are these effects on what it would take to get coaches here real and impactful but not for athletes?

Now, you're going back to pre-arms race. I honestly don't remember what facilities the Utes had. We lacked HAPC, IPF, and whatever else. Utes weren't much in football but did have Majerus and some sports culture going on. I don't know what the total package was the Utes offered including recruiting budget, assistant coach salaries, etc. Theoretically, tripling his salary might of put us in the running.

Meyer may have also got a sniff of the lack of winning culture at WYO and a limit on things like attendance (which contributes to lack of winning environment).

Is it hard to recruit to WYO? Sure. Is it because some theoretical situation where recruits just don't like the town or campus? Perhaps slightly, but mostly insignificant in losing out on recruits.

1) Good relationship and confidence in coaches and now NIL.
2) Position situation
3) Team/sport culture
4) Proximity to parents (especially kids that aren't big NIL cost)
5) Academic program of interest
6) Everything else including how they feel about the town. If 1, 2, 3, 5 are knocked out of the park, the kid is coming regardless of 4 and 6. There are likely exceptions to 4; in some cases that may be the most important sans big NIL.

You said the Why doesn't matter, but it most certainly does. 1,2,3,5 are somewhat in control by people. 4 and 6 are not. It is my opinion there is overemphasis on 6 in order to bury our heads in the sand on 1,2,3,5.

 

[rocket city poke]

On one hand the Bohl tenure produced the most consistent results Wyoming football has enjoyed as a member of the MWC. On the other hand, his refusal to put a seriously good offense on the field relegated the program to near 50-50 ho hum status.

Basketball has floundered in MWC play ever since 2003 with only a spark here and there (3 winning seasons in conference play the last 22 years). Who gives a flying flip about winning 20+ games against Johnson and Wales only winning 4-6 conference games and failing to hold home court pretty much defines most basketball seasons the past 22 years.

The level of mediocrity is equivalent to being happy with a D on the report card. Nothing has really been done to improve the level of competitiveness in the conference in over 20 years. A faint ray of hope here and there once or twice per decade is about all there has been.

In retrospect it’s been tough to get excited about the year after year struggles while watching Utah State win substantially more MWC games in both football and basketball than Wyoming has since 2013. Wyoming manages to stay competitive as one of the better teams in the middle to bottom half of the MWC year after year.

Can’t say I see an imminent big leap in the standings anytime soon. It’s about the missing expectation of winning when it doesn’t happen.

Yes, I have posted before, if you are a Wyoming basketball fan the worst thing that happened was when Burman became athletic director. He invested heavily in football facilities and salaries. THere was nothing in his background as an administrator to suggest he had any idea of how to build a basketball program. THat has become more evident over the past 20 with the revolving door of coaches and lack of innovation.

 

[307bball]

I said above that distance to family can certainly be a factor and located in area mostly devoid of talent can be a hinderance as it relates to the desire to play relatively close to home.

You have to differentiate recruits. Kid has no other FBS offers? I'm not sure this matters. Kid has P5 offers? This also doesn't matter; he's not coming. I'm sure there some gradient in between.

Laramie is hard to recruit to due to lack of sport culture, lack of success, etc.




Now, you're going back to pre-arms race. I honestly don't remember what facilities the Utes had. We lacked HAPC, IPF, and whatever else. Utes weren't much in football but did have Majerus and some sports culture going on. I don't know what the total package was the Utes offered including recruiting budget, assistant coach salaries, etc. Theoretically, tripling his salary might of put us in the running.

Meyer may have also got a sniff of the lack of winning culture at WYO and a limit on things like attendance (which contributes to lack of winning environment).

Is it hard to recruit to WYO? Sure. Is it because some theoretical situation where recruits just don't like the town or campus? Perhaps slightly, but mostly insignificant in losing out on recruits.

1) Good relationship and confidence in coaches and now NIL.
2) Position situation
3) Team/sport culture
4) Proximity to parents (especially kids that aren't big NIL cost)
5) Academic program of interest
6) Everything else including how they feel about the town. If 1, 2, 3, 5 are knocked out of the park, the kid is coming regardless of 4 and 6. There are likely exceptions to 4; in some cases that may be the most important sans big NIL.

You said the Why doesn't matter, but it most certainly does. 1,2,3,5 are somewhat in control by people. 4 and 6 are not. It is my opinion there is overemphasis on 6 in order to bury our heads in the sand on 1,2,3,5.

Couple things.... First, as a bit of a side point, the arms race was definitely going on in 2003. Just because everybody thought things were going on like they had in the '80s at that time does not mean it was. At that point the world of college athletics was long past the point of no return. Second, the point of that example is, to get the best and most likely to succeed people to come to Laramie takes a premium of some kind. For coaches... It probably looks like $$. It would have been better had we gotten Urban Meyer to come to UW over hiring Joe Glenn...and it would have taken more of an investment in him than Utah had to give up. You and I may disagree on "why" of that..but I think we don't disagree otherwise.

Now, back to the topic of getting talented athletes to commit to playing at UW. I don't have every post you have ever made at my fingertips so I made the statement about the reasons not mattering because I thought you didn't even believe that there were headwinds that UW faces relating to where Laramie and Wyoming are located geographically ,culturally and economically. These headwinds lie outside of the more traditional explainers of a bad athletics program that may have to do with coaching ineptitude or just a poorly run athletic department. In the interest of clarity, this seems like a disagreement about magnitude of the effect and not the existence of it.

Lets also set aside one other thing we agree on. Let's not waste time talking about the recruits that don't matter....as you put it the P5 guys and the no FBS offer guys. Nobody (at least not me) is talking about those guys. The bucket of recruits whose choices I'm interested in go to schools like UNM, CSU, NEV, UNLV, SJSU, USU, etc... These are all programs with varying levels of success that are not miles ahead of UW. Imagine being in the late '90s to 2010 or so and having this conversation. That group of teams would have BYU, BSU, and Utah in it as well...but they have left everybody else so far behind that it's a bit unrealistic to imagine keeping pace with them. So, what sets us apart from this current group of also-rans...what are the challenges? If we can correctly answer those questions, we have a shot at dominating that group in the next 10 to 15 years just like BSU, Utah and BYU did.

The mistake that I would like UW to avoid is thinking that having things like coaching compensation, NIL, and facilities that are "on par" with the rest of the conference is good enough. It's obviously not. To get the best coaches and players, we need to blow the rest of the conference out of the water on this stuff. That is the avenue that has the highest likelihood of succeeding. Your "what-if" of offering triple the compensation to a coach that has other options is just such a good thought experiment...and it applies to players as well. We need to be the 900 lb gorilla in the conference. If we are just "keeping up" with everybody...then the factors that PAPoke and I are trying to talk about become what separates us from the rest and we all know how that ends.

UW and the state of Wyoming probably doesn't have the political stones for this type of approach so I am pretty sure it won't happen.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Couple things.... First, as a bit of a side point, the arms race was definitely going on in 2003. Just because everybody thought things were going on like they had in the '80s at that time does not mean it was. At that point the world of college athletics was long past the point of no return. Second, the point of that example is, to get the best and most likely to succeed people to come to Laramie takes a premium of some kind. For coaches... It probably looks like $$. It would have been better had we gotten Urban Meyer to come to UW over hiring Joe Glenn...and it would have taken more of an investment in him than Utah had to give up. You and I may disagree on "why" of that..but I think we don't disagree otherwise.

Now, back to the topic of getting talented athletes to commit to playing at UW. I don't have every post you have ever made at my fingertips so I made the statement about the reasons not mattering because I thought you didn't even believe that there were headwinds that UW faces relating to where Laramie and Wyoming are located geographically ,culturally and economically. These headwinds lie outside of the more traditional explainers of a bad athletics program that may have to do with coaching ineptitude or just a poorly run athletic department. In the interest of clarity, this seems like a disagreement about magnitude of the effect and not the existence of it.

Lets also set aside one other thing we agree on. Let's not waste time talking about the recruits that don't matter....as you put it the P5 guys and the no FBS offer guys. Nobody (at least not me) is talking about those guys. The bucket of recruits whose choices I'm interested in go to schools like UNM, CSU, NEV, UNLV, SJSU, USU, etc... These are all programs with varying levels of success that are not miles ahead of UW. Imagine being in the late '90s to 2010 or so and having this conversation. That group of teams would have BYU, BSU, and Utah in it as well...but they have left everybody else so far behind that it's a bit unrealistic to imagine keeping pace with them. So, what sets us apart from this current group of also-rans...what are the challenges? If we can correctly answer those questions, we have a shot at dominating that group in the next 10 to 15 years just like BSU, Utah and BYU did.

The mistake that I would like UW to avoid is thinking that having things like coaching compensation, NIL, and facilities that are "on par" with the rest of the conference is good enough. It's obviously not. To get the best coaches and players, we need to blow the rest of the conference out of the water on this stuff. That is the avenue that has the highest likelihood of succeeding. Your "what-if" of offering triple the compensation to a coach that has other options is just such a good thought experiment...and it applies to players as well. We need to be the 900 lb gorilla in the conference. If we are just "keeping up" with everybody...then the factors that PAPoke and I are trying to talk about become what separates us from the rest and we all know how that ends.

UW and the state of Wyoming probably doesn't have the political stones for this type of approach so I am pretty sure it won't happen.

I meant more, our arms race wasn't quite yet rolling at that time. If it had been, who knows? Bball was getting rolling, so unfortunate that we didn't capitalize on that.

The problem, as I've said above, is the bolded part. IMO, this is also part of the culture of mediocrity. I'm not going to waste my time going to find all of the quotes, but I've heard Burman and coaches use this as a crutch. I have no doubt that all other things being equal some kid some time said they chose somewhere else because they didn't like Laramie. Problem: there is no quality control or true quantification for that type of data. How often does it truly occur. How is it weighted vs everything else? Can you rule out that it's easier for the kid to say he didn't like Laramie vs he thought coach x was an ass? No.

A "non-NIL or someone that isn't just a bidding war" recruit that feels better about UW coaches, feels better about the position situation, and feels better about the academic program he is getting into, will choose UW even if he likes the town somewhere else better but didn't like the coaches as much, didn't like the depth chart forecast, and didn't like the academic program as much as UW. Arguing otherwise seems just silly to me.

As you astutely point out, the University or the State probably don't have the intestinal fortitude to try to be a 600 lb gorilla which could overcome many if not all of our limitations (in the group of peers you highlighted). In other words, they are accepting of our current situation in athletics as opposed to pursuing avenues to make an true change. Since we are mediocre or worse, that would indicate we are accepting of it. If that's the play, then fine; however, quit (not you) blowing smoke up our ass about everything else or asking for more from taxpayers and students to continue mediocrity (or worse). If that is the play, then it also begs the flipside question, do we need the level of investment we have to be mediocre or worse? Maybe refocus our efforts to dominate cheaper sports (would need to include men's bball) and let football be the mediocre or worse program?

 

[307bball]

I meant more, our arms race wasn't quite yet rolling at that time. If it had been, who knows? Bball was getting rolling, so unfortunate that we didn't capitalize on that.

The problem, as I've said above, is the bolded part. IMO, this is also part of the culture of mediocrity. I'm not going to waste my time going to find all of the quotes, but I've heard Burman and coaches use this as a crutch. I have no doubt that all other things being equal some kid some time said they chose somewhere else because they didn't like Laramie. Problem: there is no quality control or true quantification for that type of data. How often does it truly occur. How is it weighted vs everything else? Can you rule out that it's easier for the kid to say he didn't like Laramie vs he thought coach x was an ass? No.

A "non-NIL or someone that isn't just a bidding war" recruit that feels better about UW coaches, feels better about the position situation, and feels better about the academic program he is getting into, will choose UW even if he likes the town somewhere else better but didn't like the coaches as much, didn't like the depth chart forecast, and didn't like the academic program as much as UW. Arguing otherwise seems just silly to me.

As you astutely point out, the University or the State probably don't have the intestinal fortitude to try to be a 600 lb gorilla which could overcome many if not all of our limitations (in the group of peers you highlighted). In other words, they are accepting of our current situation in athletics as opposed to pursuing avenues to make an true change. Since we are mediocre or worse, that would indicate we are accepting of it. If that's the play, then fine; however, quit (not you) blowing smoke up our ass about everything else or asking for more from taxpayers and students to continue mediocrity (or worse). If that is the play, then it also begs the flipside question, do we need the level of investment we have to be mediocre or worse? Maybe refocus our efforts to dominate cheaper sports (would need to include men's bball) and let football be the mediocre or worse program?

I think we are getting to some general agreement without talking past one another so much.

The bolded section is worth pulling apart a bit though. You are hyper-sensitive to Burman and coaches using the "crutch" of how difficult it is to recruit to Laramie because you have heard it soooo much. You have heard it for a good reason....at least for the coaches. They use it because they hear it. More than one thing can be true...maybe the coaches and AD's are not good and it's hard to recruit at the same time. Coaches at UW have relationships with HS coaches and recruits and when the guys they are recruiting tell them why they choose to go elsewhere they pretty much believe them. As message board posters, we don't have the insight or gut feeling that the people have who are pounding the recruiting trails. I don't want to get into a paralysis by analysis situation....and I for sure am not interested in the one-off recruit who has a comment on this, I'm trying to observer a trend. The tendency to protect oneself from criticism by pointing out the reasons that contribute to failure might be beyond your own control does not mean those reasons don't exist or are small/inconsequential. I would urge people to take those comments for what they are and not be reactive to them.

The second paragraph in bold I largely agree with but I think we could add to it. This example "non-NIL" group of recruits who likes UW and feels good about the academic program of his/her choice definitely exists. That is step one in this recruiting game. This group of recruits, even in this current diminished MWC, will likely not be meaningfully contributing to conference titles right away like an "NIL-recruit" could. Fast forward a couple of years through development and maybe even some good coaching and you now have a person for whom NIL $$ are a real possibility. This doesn't even have to be a fictional example...we've seen it already with players in both football and basketball who didn't hate the program or the coach or the town but saw an opportunity elsewhere. The player that just hates Wyoming for whatever reason isn't coming here in the first place...that is true of every school. But even if the only thing at play is proximity to family, a lot of players from large urban areas that excel at Wyoming as underclassmen can now go back to a program near where they grew up and be a stud for that school...and since Wyoming doesn't produce many difference making college athletes, every athlete here will feel that specific pull. Add the possibility of NIL $$ and you get a real tough challenge to overcome. Now every other school in the new MWC faces this to some degree ... but the cost to overcome it for each school is different. Like the premium Wyoming would have had to offer to secure Urban Meyer back in 2003, this premium, whatever it is, is the specific cost to Wyoming if we want to really compete.

All this to say...If we can't become the dominant funder of athletics (coaches salary, NIL, Facilities...whatever) in the new MWC, Long term good results relative to that group will probably not be achieved. That is a political question the UW and the state seem to want to answer out of both sides of their mouths. I don't think they are "accepting" the situation really.....I think they actually believe that they should get better results at the levels of funding and support that has been previously given. It is a very tough nut to crack...I've long held that athletic spending is a "threshold" type of phenomenon and marginal changes within a level of spending doesn't change much. If you want to move the needle you have to change levels.....and you can throw a lot of money into things without crossing those thresholds.

 

[Brew_Poke]

No post, thought better of it.

 

[Brew_Poke]

The idea that location from a social life/metropolis/night life, etc. is a big influence on recruits is mostly ridiculous. Could it influence a decision? Maybe slightly but certainly not a big one.

Location from a perspective of playing close to home? Sure. That is probably a big one. Laramie is in a location that is mostly devoid of recruits for hundreds of miles. That's the location limitation. Take every characteristic of Laramie and place it within 200-300 miles of recruiting hotbeds, and all the recruits don't like Laramie nonsense is out the window. We're bordered by the SD, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and CO. Not exactly fertile recruiting grounds much less in our home state.

Clemson to Atlanta is 124 miles, to Charlotte is 133 miles, just as isolated. Clemson has about half of Laramie's population.

 

[Brew_Poke]

Of course it's harder to recruit to Laramie, for all the reasons PAPoke has talked about. There are certainly strategies to overcome that handicap, used by us and other schools in a similar boat, and every so often you see the success of those strategies. But that's spotty. The whole issue would have been overcome if UW had at some point turned into a premier football or basketball school. I mean, have you ever been to South Bend? Good God.

But we never got there, not even close.

Happily, that no longer matters. Now, if you want good players to come to your school, all it takes is money to pay them. Laramie's disadvantages become completely irrelevant when you give a kid a good good chunk of change.

I have no idea about what our NIL program looks like or how much cash it can distribute. I also don't know where/if we'll get the money to disburse under a profit-sharing program. I finally don't know what it would take every year to assemble a competitive roster. (We could be in the Sweet Sixteen every year with a billionaire who wanted it to happen...I'm looking at you, St. John's.)

I do know that is the college sports world now: decide who you want to compete with and then figure out the market for the players you need to do that. If we can't or won't, there's nothing wrong with that. We just will need to lower our expectations.

 

[doreno5]

I'm not old enough to know much about the 70s, 80s, and early 90s of college football. So, I am probably missing some historical context.

That being said, I don't really think these athletes were ever truly "college students".

True but not all sports . The "student-athlete" has long been more of a myth than reality for men's football and basketball but I met lots of athletes in other sports when I attended UW.

 

[PAPoke]

Clemson to Atlanta is 124 miles, to Charlotte is 133 miles, just as isolated. Clemson has about half of Laramie's population.

Laramie:

• ~85% white, small Hispanic, and Native populations
• Around 1% Black
• University enrolls a little over 10,000
• Average Lows November - March in the 10s

Clemson

• ~18,000 people
• ~74% white, ~10% Black, ~7% Asian
• University enrolling over 20,000
• Average Lows November - March in the 40s
• Literal lakefront property on campus

I know where I'm going if all things are equal.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Clemson to Atlanta is 124 miles, to Charlotte is 133 miles, just as isolated. Clemson has about half of Laramie's population.

Draw a 500 mile radius around each and evaluate # recruits in the circle.

Besides, it's too long winded to follow above but we're talking more g5-level recruits. wsu is about to find out about isolation without a p5 label.

 

[LanderPoke]

Where, exactly, do you think I'm wrong? I'm still waiting for the dialogue.

To an easterner , any school out west, other than a few, like CU or USC or UCLA, is exactly like another. If you told an easterner if their kid’s choice is between Wyoming, Montana state, csu, Utah state and New Mexico they would consider them all equal and would not care about any equally.

 

[laxwyo]

It's all for naught until there's some kind of mechanism is implemented for parity.