I'm not a recruiting guru, but I do like compiling information. Thus, the DTN recruiting board is a little different than others. You have the two recruiting service profiles, so if you're a member of either, feel free to click on for news. The one thing that I do differently, is that if you click on a player's name, it is a Google News link. What I like to do is bookmark this page and during the football season I can follow if a particular player is in the news or making headlines.

Later tonight I'll put a link on the right margin for quick reference.

For those of you who live in Lubbock, I'm sure you've already seen this, but TechTalk did a number of segments on the 2008 recruiting class. For those of you who haven't seen video on some of these commits or seen the video of Dennis Simmons, Ruffin McNeill or Seth Littrell talk about these players then watching these videos will be an excellent way to spend the next hour of your life. This is good stuff if you like recruiting:

• Introduction, Top of Class
• Dennis Simmons
• Ruffin McNeill
• Seth Littrell
• Leach on Doege
• McKinner Dixon
• Recruiting Wrap, Who Are the Sleepers

I've had this conversation running around in my head for quite some time (i.e. a good week) and now there's some news that we can sink our teeth into that gives this discussion a little more merit. First things first, if you haven't been keeping up with the discussion between Roll Bama Roll (plus bonus picture of Britney Snow) and MGoBlog about collegiate teams over-signing players to scholarships, then start now. The basic premise is that certain schools, coaches, etc., will sign too many players for their recruiting class. For example, this 2008 recruiting year Alabama signed more than 25 recruits, which is technically over the limit, which is 25.

To bring this back to Texas Tech, the Red Raiders signed 26 players last year, which meant that there was going to be, at the very least, one player who would not receive his scholarship, whether it be a recruit or perhaps someone on the team would be sans scholarship. Of course, Texas Tech was lucky in the sense that Omar Castillo greshirted and apparently Jacob Amie never qualified. No harm no foul. Of course in 2006, Mike Leach signed 34 players to letters of intent, however, there were also a number of, "just didn't make it to campus," situations or question marks, including the following: Jocques Crawford, Buddy Brumit, Tyler Duggins, Leonard Hewitt, Jonathan Hollins, Daniel Johnson, Broderick Marshall, Franklin Mitchem, Trevor Reilly, Jarell Routt. While Lyle Leong and Adam James both greyshirted. I may have missed one or two, but that's 12 players. Again, no harm no foul. This was probably a situation where Leach knew that there were some risky players, but decided to take the chance on a couple of players panning out.

As a quick aside, this is also Texas Tech's #25 rated class by Rivals.com and the names listed above aren't the only players who haven't panned out to date: Adrian Archie, Ben Davis, Sean Estelle, Dimitri Lott, Ofa Mohetau, and Dan'Tay Ward. That's 18 players who just haven't worked out, for lack of a better word. That #25 class is now at 16 productive or somewhat players (one of those includes Mr. Crabtree). Attrition at it's finest.

Now we have the situations, during the offseason, that should a coach over-sign recruits, it makes his or her job that much easier. There numerous situations where student-athletes just get in trouble. It makes no difference the school, these incidents happen anywhere and everywhere, from Alabama to Missouri, to Texas Tech. No program is immune to these issues. They happen everywhere.

These "incidents" tend to also shake down the roster and provide opportunities for new recruits. So, if you're an opportunitic coach, this is where it can come in handy to sign additional scholarship players when there may not be any room at the time.

Obviously, these incidents can help, but then you also have the situation where coaches may choose just not to keep a player on scholarship. Perfect example of a roster shake-down is Pat Knight threatening the frontcourt players last Sunday (emphasis mine):

On some level, I appreciate PK's honesty and I like the idea of my coach getting the best players on the court. His job is to win, not to baby-sit players who don't perform. Of course, this doesn't take into consideration the athlete who is giving all effort, but just isn't talented enough to be on scholarship. Is it the student-athlete's fault that the coach that signed and recruited should have known that they couldn't play?

I posed the question in the comments section in Tech92's diary, but thought it deserved front page consideration, whether or not it was ethical to take away a player's scholarship if said player doesn't perform on the field? Just in case you were curious, here is the text of a Letter of Intent and a quick look tells me that all it requires is an initial enrollment in a 4-year institution and that you attend the school for 1 year. Something that's somewhat interesting is that the statute of limitations for a LOI is 4 years, you would think this would be the term of the LOI, but it's not. Additionally, the LOI is contingent upon the receipt of financial aid, which includes a written offer with certain terms and conditions prescribed by the university. Having not seen one of those written offers, I'm not sure what it entails, but I would imagine that there are certain rules that the university will require a student-athlete to uphold. Essentially, if a student athlete somehow breaks this agreement, then the athletic scholarship can be rescinded by the university.

So, now I have two questions for you:

• Should a coach over-sign on his recruiting class limit, or better yet, should a coach be allowed to over-sign on the 25 man limit?
• Should a coach or university have the autonomy to rescind a player's scholarship because of the performance on the field or court? I have no dog in this fight, but what if a coach is wrong about the athletic talent of a student-athlete (i.e., can't play), should the student-athlete have to go without scholarship if that's the case?

Texas Tech Football Recruiting:

For those of you who think the recruiting class is pitiful, then please see the DTN spreadsheets first. I don't think this class is bad at all, and if you throw out the kicker ranking (I think kickers are almost always a 2 star rating) and the average gets even higher. The Texas Tech 2007 class had an average Rivals rank of 2.73, the 2006 class was 2.88, and the 2005 class was 2.67. The 2008 class has an average Rivals rank of 3.07.

Once again, I don't know that I'll have the time to give the recruiting class the analysis it deserves. I've got a ton of thoughts running in my head and just not enough time to type everything that I'm thinking. For now, just links:

• Red Raider Sports Armen Williams has a great (and I'm not using this term lightly) discussion with Ruffin McNeill on the defensive recruits. I thought this was great. Loved this. Williams gets McNeill's thoughts on every defensive player and I thought this quote from McNeill summed up how this staff felt after yesterday's defections:
  "The guys that didn't come, I wish them well. It's like we talked about the other day, we were in the office and I said 'you know what? I'm ready to coach the guys that are coming and the guys that already came' and I meant that.

  "Because the way we work at Tech, everybody can't handle that. We work hard in the off-season and during the season and we have a lot of demands on people and some people can't handle that. The ones that are here now understand that. If a guy hesitates then that's his loss not being a part of our nation and our football team and being a part of our fan base. I mean that sincerely and hope them well but these are the ones that want to be here and I want these guys."

  "The theory behind that is the guys that want to come here have been productive on and off the field. Those guys that wanted to come to Tech have been the most productive players. I don't get into the five and four-star thing, we go on what fits our packages and our needs and the guys that have come here are steadfast. Two examples are (McKinner) Dixon and then when (Broderick) Marshall gets here. Those guys stay committed to us and they are ready for the demands we're going to put on them as a staff and as a football team, and not just from us but from other players as well.

  If you read the whole article, you'll know that Ruffin somewhat confirmed what I thought, that he's going to play the best 4 players, almost regardless of position, next year. Give that man some players!

• The official Texas Tech football site has notes on each player as well as a video of Leach being interviewed on the telephone by CSTV folks (IE only and click on link with camera).
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• DMN's Chuck Carlton does an excellent job of breaking down this year's class and had this from Coach Mike Leach:
  "We only signed 16 players and that's just based on what we had available. The most important thing to us was to get offensive linemen and defensive linemen. ... Those are the two most important positions on any football team. If you don't believe me, ask the New England Patriots when they went against the Giants' defensive line."
• The FWST takes a look at Texas Tech's 2008 recruiting class as well as a slideshow of some of the facilities at Texas Tech. Both of these are worth your time this morning.
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• LAJ's Don Williams rounds up Texas Tech's class.
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• SAEN's Dan McCarney says that this class year's class was light on talent, and I'd like for him to show me where that's true. As discussed above, it was light on quantity, not quality. The SAEN staff compiles a capsules on the Big 12 South's classes.

Pat Knight gets his first commitment signing Nick Okorie, a 6-0 guard from South Plains College (FYI: SPC is #9 in the nation and 20-2 for the year - I like guys from winning programs). Okorie had this to say about playing for Texas Tech:

Okorie is a scoring point guard, averaging 16.9 points a game, 3.32 boards and 2.9 assists. The thing that jumped out at me was that Okorie shot 47.4% from the field and 39.8% from behind the three point line.

For a team that struggles to score and has absolutely nothing behind Roberson in terms of a back-up point guard, this is a good pickup for Pat Knight and perhaps very much necessary.

I don't have just a ton of time right now, but I wanted to get out two spreadsheets regarding today's recruits. From reading the comments in today's open thread, there's the thought that the 2008 class wasn't that great.

Both Rivals and Scout are ranking the Red Raiders' class somewhat low (43rd by Rivals and 60th by Scout). Although I don't understand all of the math, I think both scouting services base part of their rankings on volume (i.e. the number of commitments). Well, I suppose Texas Tech was somewhat fortunate in that this team doesn't have a lot of holes to fill this year, so the number of commitments just isn't there.

I created two spreadsheets, which were basically the Rivals and Scout rankings, but I added another column, the average rating rank. By the magic that is Google Documents, here is the Rivals spreadsheet where Texas Tech is 27th and the Scout spreadsheet where Texas Tech is 29th. Based on the Rivals numbers, Texas Tech had an average recruit rating of 3.07 and Scout had an average recruit rating of 2.93. If you look at Texas Tech historically, that's pretty good (I'll have to look up average recruit ratings later tonight).

I'll have more comments on the class tonight (hopefully), but I thought I'd just give you something to think about. I hope you can find tonight's game on television, it's going to be interesting.

Here's your open thread on recruiting. Please feel free to comment on recruits as they sign.

Again, after the dust settles and all of the Letters of Intent are signed, sealed and faxed, I'd love to know from you guys, which 5 players are going to have the most impact next year and which 5 players are going to have the most impact in 3 years.

GO RAIDERS . . . AND GIT YOUR GUNS UP!

A break in Bob Knight coverage, per the DMN Recruiting Blog, Skyline safety Keanon Cooper is now committed to Minnesota. I know that his friends are also going to school there, but I still don't get it.

Well, how about that! Brandon Reid, who was formerly committed to Missouri, has now committed to Texas Tech (link not yet permanent). Reid (6-2/208) wants to compete for the running back position and likes the fact that he's closer to home, which is El Paso. Check out his Rivals and Scout profiles. Here's Reid and LAJ's Don Williams on Texas Tech's newest recruit:

I've always been of the mindset that you want to recruit the best talent possible, regardless of position (to a point) and Reid could end up being the running back that Texas Tech has always wanted or he could look to switch positions if the talent is there. I know that I said that I questioned Webb's interest this morning, but his window is so short and it's pretty obvious that there's some talent on the offensive line. Something just doesn't sit right with me on Webb. Enough about Webb.

Congrats to Brandon and his family and Brandon, welcome to Texas Tech and Git Your Guns Up!

I'm sure that most of you guys have already seen this, but ESPN's recruiting expert Tom Luginbill has his recruiting overviews of the Big 12 South and Billy Tucker has the Big 12 North. This is typically Insider information, so you may want to read this sooner rather than later. Enjoy.