Coaching V talent V luck etc

[gofurman]

gf- back at ya. On the size issue. I cringed when I heard CCH say on WCCP that it would be good to get back to playing teams with bodies our size. Really? Like ok we will be fine when we go back to little league. Without looking it up I bet Mercer was bigger than FU on both sides of the ball as is every other SoCon team.

wow - that's an indictment of his own recruiting. To say we want to play teams with guys our size. O U CH. Its our choice who we recruit. If you want guys like Mercer then recruit guys like Mercer !!!!!!!!!!!!!

No. Not an indictment of anything!
You cannot MAKE big guys come to the school. You cannot require admissions to accept people just because they are big good football players. You have to work with what you have.

I don’t see any reason to believe Furman’s admissions are stricter than Mercer’s. Mercer’s SAT numbers are very impressive. It is a similar school. I thought Hendrix was a believer in slightly smaller but more athletic guys. If he now wants bigger, slower guys he could have gone out and got some wherever Mercer got theirs. Bigger more athletic guys play FBS.

I may be proven wrong, but I still think big Mercer (9,000 students) has an easier time with FB student-athlete admissions than little Furman (2,700 students).

Don’t doubt that. But it would be an ACADEMIC thing ( a few they can take that we can’t ). Not a size of student enrollment thing. 20,000 or 2500 students we both get 63 scholarships. Only academics prevent a school from recruiting someone. We do have tougher academics than most. No doubt there

[Furmanoid]

Mercer has about 5000 undergrads, so they aren’t that much bigger. They choose to have grad schools and professional schools and we pretty much don’t. Down the road that will help them with retention of 5th year players, but I don’t see how it matters with admissions. The 50th percentile SAT ranges for the two schools are almost identical with FU about 200 points higher. Both want smart kids, but neither requires the SAT or ACT so admission standards are a little wishy washy really. I think Mercer, Samford and Furman are pretty similar. Wofford, according to our HS coach, has decided to take any good player who is NCAA eligible. The others are who they are.

[FUBeAR]

Mercer has about 5000 undergrads, so they aren’t that much bigger. They choose to have grad schools and professional schools and we pretty much don’t. Down the road that will help them with retention of 5th year players, but I don’t see how it matters with admissions. The 50th percentile SAT ranges for the two schools are almost identical with FU about 200 points higher. Both want smart kids, but neither requires the SAT or ACT so admission standards are a little wishy washy really. I think Mercer, Samford and Furman are pretty similar. Wofford, according to our HS coach, has decided to take any good player who is NCAA eligible. The others are who they are.

Athletics recruiting & Admissions / Academics, particularly for higher academics schools (Furman, Mercer, Wofford, and Samford all fit this ‘label,’ as do VMI & CIT…to some extent) is a highly nuanced arena, well beyond the scope of this message board and well outside the experience/grasp of most of us, including FUBeAR, who post here.

Policies/Philosophies in this arena are going to vary from school to school and change over time. I don’t know, but I doubt the metrics around the scholastic records of 63 Football Players (15-20 or so in each incoming class) have too much of an effect on overall Admissions metrics.

We talked a lot about this topic at the FFPA Tailgate this past week and, as expected, no real consensus conclusions were reached nor epiphanies experienced.

So…FUBeAR will just make these rambling comments, FWIW…

Coach Sheridan & the Football Program were very proud of our graduation rate ‘back in the day.’ We had 3 or 4 really, really smart young men on the Team every year, but FUBeAR speculates that over 80% of the Players on those Teams would not be admitted to Furman today.

Most of the Players on those Teams were 1st or, at best, 2nd generation College students, who went to and played public high school Football. Most of the young men on those teams, if they weren’t talented Football Players, if they attended college at all, would have gone to local State U, at best. The socioeconomic demographics at Furman (geography excepted) of the rest of FU’s student body was not all that different than it is today.

The Football Players brought diversity (racial, but on a larger scale, another type of diversity) to Furman’s campus. To put this in plain language…then & today (less so, but still mostly) Furman’s student body was a bunch of rich, (perhaps) nerdy, mostly private school kids from families with Professional (Dr’s, Lawyers, and Accountants, etc.) parents. The Football Players were public school kids from working or middle class families and, once there (or perhaps before), realized that graduating from Furman was a potential game-changer for their life arc. The Football Players also knew that Football was Job#1 because if that ‘went away,’ no way could they afford to stay in school at Furman or perhaps anywhere. They also, in general, were just inclined that way. Football 1st, Books 2nd (maybe).

So, the Players of that era sought out the easiest majors, the easiest classes, and the easiest Professors. Stay eligible & scramble to find a way to get that Furman degree. We lost a few, to academics, along the way, but not many; and NONE that played 4 or more years. 100% of these non-Furman-type kids found a way to graduate and almost all of them went on to become very successful in their chosen fields. Many were even ‘converted’ academically and went on to become those Professionals that no one in their family ever dreamed possible. Many have become consistent contributors to Furman & Furman Football. You really don’t forget the people or entities who gave you an opportunity to change your life. Y’all probably figured this out by now, but FUBeAR fits this profile…along with almost all of my Teammates…who have, literally, hundreds of SoCon Championship rings among them…and Furman degrees.

Now, I don’t know if the type of young men described could make it through and graduate from the Furman of today, but I have a sense that Furman / Furman Admissions aren’t willing, today, to risk finding that out. So, I believe FU Football is compelled to recruit “Books 1st” young men now who tend to have a different socioeconomic profile…and, maybe, that’s the right call for Furman University. I know the “Football 1st” young men, on 55 scholarships, used to be able to graduate, lead successful lives, support Furman/Furman Football throughout those lives, AND win SoCon Football Championships over Teams with 95 scholarships.

I don’t know, but I have a sense that Mercer, Samford, Wofford, VMI, and CIT Admissions are more willing to accept those types of young men than Furman Admissions may be.


EDIT / ADDENDUM: Certainly not an end-all & be-all, but just 1 data point from a fairly slack data gathering process….but it appears that Furman has about 3x the number of Players from private HS’s on their roster as Mercer has - roughly 45 vs. roughly 15. Whatever that means, in this context, is certainly open to wide interpretation, including that it means nothing.

[Furmanoid]

The thing is, I see no reason to believe Furman is harder to get into than it used to be. You used to need a pretty good SAT. That was the big hurdle. Now you don’t even have to take SAT or ACT (as long as you are rich and don’t need a scholarship). Perhaps they only look at grades now and give private school grades more weight. That could be.

But regardless, the point of admissions standards is to be sure the people you let in can graduate. It isn’t supposed to be about appearing “more selective” in some bogus magazine ranking. If Furman has become so hard that a FUBeAR couldn’t graduate, then the quality of instruction sucks. Who tries to fail their students these days? Pretty much nobody. That isn’t the way it works.

I’ve stopped even bothering to ask Juniors and Seniors if they are considering Furman because they always just laugh at me. Costs too much. There isn’t fear of rejection like there is for Clemson. It just costs too much. But that doesn’t matter for football players so I don’t get it. If admissions are holding back the program, then that is a stupid, unnecessary, self-inflicted wound.

[apaladin]

With that said we have ranked high in recruiting the last few years but it hasn’t shown on the field. Coaching?

[FUBeAR]

Deleted post - user error

[FUBeAR]

With that said we have ranked high in recruiting the last few years but it hasn’t shown on the field. Coaching?

2 things….

1) Every time the germ of a thought might come to your mind that FCS Recruiting Rankings are, in any way, accurate or predictive, slap yourself & recognize they are a complete fallacy and absolutely meaningless. Fun, maybe, but that is their ONLY value.

2) Every Head Coach, every year, at every level of College Football, says they had a strong Recruiting Class and got the Players they really wanted & needed. Some of them mean it. Some of them hope it’s true. Some of them know they are being less than honest. Most don’t really have any idea and won’t know until those Recruits have been in their programs for at least 2 years.

[FU3]

There has been a whole lot of money dumped in this program the in the past 6 or 7 years. Facilities for an FCS program are top of the line. Additional money has been donated to make our coaching salaries very competitive. Even more money has now been spent on new turf as well for game day experience. I may be in the minority here but I think this is the most talented team that CCH has had( he has alluded that this is his belief as well). Our issues IMO revolve around the inability to develop a QB and any sort of an identity or scheme on O.Both issues have been pretty apparent for a while and need to be addressed if we are going to really get better.

[apaladin]

It will all be ok. First basketball game is 6 weeks from tonight.

[The Jackal]

Mercer has about 5000 undergrads, so they aren’t that much bigger. They choose to have grad schools and professional schools and we pretty much don’t. Down the road that will help them with retention of 5th year players, but I don’t see how it matters with admissions. The 50th percentile SAT ranges for the two schools are almost identical with FU about 200 points higher. Both want smart kids, but neither requires the SAT or ACT so admission standards are a little wishy washy really. I think Mercer, Samford and Furman are pretty similar. Wofford, according to our HS coach, has decided to take any good player who is NCAA eligible. The others are who they are.

As an alum of both schools, Furman and Mercer share some similarities and a lot of differences.

Mercer's undergraduate population is roughly double Furman's. They almost as many grad students as undergrads on campuses spread out throughout Georgia. So, it's a much bigger school.

Granted, most Mercer grad students (in my experience) are not connected with Mercer athletics unless they were also a Mercer undergrad.

[Furmanoid]

Mercer has about 5000 undergrads, so they aren’t that much bigger. They choose to have grad schools and professional schools and we pretty much don’t. Down the road that will help them with retention of 5th year players, but I don’t see how it matters with admissions. The 50th percentile SAT ranges for the two schools are almost identical with FU about 200 points higher. Both want smart kids, but neither requires the SAT or ACT so admission standards are a little wishy washy really. I think Mercer, Samford and Furman are pretty similar. Wofford, according to our HS coach, has decided to take any good player who is NCAA eligible. The others are who they are.

EDIT / ADDENDUM: Certainly not an end-all & be-all, but just 1 data point from a fairly slack data gathering process….but it appears that Furman has about 3x the number of Players from private HS’s on their roster as Mercer has - roughly 45 vs. roughly 15. Whatever that means, in this context, is certainly open to wide interpretation, including that it means nothing.

Don’t most of our private school guys come from big private schools that compete against public schools? If so it seems like it wouldn’t make a difference. If not it could make a massive difference.

[FUBeAR]

Mercer has about 5000 undergrads, so they aren’t that much bigger. They choose to have grad schools and professional schools and we pretty much don’t. Down the road that will help them with retention of 5th year players, but I don’t see how it matters with admissions. The 50th percentile SAT ranges for the two schools are almost identical with FU about 200 points higher. Both want smart kids, but neither requires the SAT or ACT so admission standards are a little wishy washy really. I think Mercer, Samford and Furman are pretty similar. Wofford, according to our HS coach, has decided to take any good player who is NCAA eligible. The others are who they are.

EDIT / ADDENDUM: Certainly not an end-all & be-all, but just 1 data point from a fairly slack data gathering process….but it appears that Furman has about 3x the number of Players from private HS’s on their roster as Mercer has - roughly 45 vs. roughly 15. Whatever that means, in this context, is certainly open to wide interpretation, including that it means nothing.

Don’t most of our private school guys come from big private schools that compete against public schools? If so it seems like it wouldn’t make a difference. If not it could make a massive difference.

Competition level of private vs. public HS’s is 1 variable. There are others, possibly, worth considering.

[Furmanoid]

Can you elaborate? I’m curious. I went through part of our roster and our “stars” seem to be a mixed bag, some private school, some public. I wonder if geography is more important than public/private. I would hope that our staff analyzes all this.

[FUBeAR]

Can you elaborate?

see post #43868

[Furmanoid]

Can you elaborate?

see post #43868

OK, yes if admissions truly are stricter now (even without the one truly objective metric, testing, that used to weed people out), and if we are only getting your “books 1st” kind of kid, then that may be really hard to overcome.

I only sort of half way know one guy on the team. He was probably a top 5 or better academically among the fb starters and about the 3rd best player. The top two probably would have been screened out by FU for grades. But I remember sitting through awards night and our Furman guy got none of the zillions of academic recognitions handed out (he did have perfect attendance though). So I know he’s smart (daughter was in class with him) and I know he was a serious student which I think did cause friction with his peers. But he is not an egghead by any means. Pretty sure he’s football first.

But I did find one thing weird. Kate remembers him sweating about his SAT because Furman told him he had to make a certain score (not the 900 required by NCAA). Non athletes applying to FU don’t even have to take an SAT! How does that make sense?