Negative Recruiting

[IrishLax]

Negative recruiting is alive and well

Really good article from ESPN, and especially timely with what is going on with Caleb Kelly and Demetris Robertson.

Some money quotes:

And probably to the disappointment of university administrators everywhere, Coach X said recruiters habitually alter academic numbers to appear more appealing for their school and negatively toward a rival. He said it's easy to add several percentage points to his school's academic progress rate by removing either the freshman or sophomore class from the results in presentations to recruits, while at the same time lowering the numbers of a rival by a few points. The same can be said about overall graduation rates or even placement numbers for specific majors in graduate school programs.

Best quote, and why we heavily police "personal" attacks on players in game day threads and such:

"When you're desperate you'll do about anything," Coach X said. "You'll have your graduate assistants search all over Twitter and message boards for all the negative things they can find out on a school. You have them look up things like what the girls look like at that school. Does that school have a bunch of [ugly girls]? You have them save some of the most negative things fans say about players after games, and ask recruits 'Do you really want to play at a school where the fans treat you this way?'

Obviously, we're not going to censor people's opinions on coaches, unless it's something truly personal and over the top (it rarely is). But just something to think about before creating the next dumb "Is Kelly a good coach!?" or "Kelly to the NFL" thread. Not only are there family members of a half dozen commits (that we know of) who read this board... but here you have coaches talking about how they scour these boards for negativity to send to potential recruits.

 

[MNIrishman]

It's very interesting. I know we say we don't negatively recruit, but I wonder if that's actually true, especially since people neg recruit the hell out of ND. Sure, we may not have very many black students on campus (an example in the article), but we graduate a higher fraction of black players than anyone else. Do schools in the south and Big XII really try to compare their academics with ND? If they do and use nonsense numbers to back that up, I hope we do the exact same thing in return---using real numbers.

 

[Grahambo]

It's very interesting. I know we say we don't negatively recruit, but I wonder if that's actually true, especially since people neg recruit the hell out of ND. Sure, we may not have very many black students on campus (an example in the article), but we graduate a higher fraction of black players than anyone else. Do schools in the south and Big XII really try to compare their academics with ND? If they do and use nonsense numbers to back that up, I hope we do the exact same thing in return---using real numbers.

Coincidentally, ISD had a Ben Davis story up this AM and Wayne Davis said that Notre Dame "...basically, talked Notre Dame". Other then BK mentioning other schools interested in Ben it seems as if the talk is about what Notre Dame can do and not what other schools can't do.

 

[MNIrishman]

Coincidentally, ISD had a Ben Davis story up this AM and Wayne Davis said that Notre Dame "...basically, talked Notre Dame". Other then BK mentioning other schools interested in Ben it seems as if the talk is about what Notre Dame can do and not what other schools can't do.

I just think it's important though, because other schools falsely inflating themselves relative to ND without a chance for correction or rebuttal is dangerous for the student. "This school has almost as good an APR as ND does, so the academics must be comparable." "This school graduates more people than ND does, so the alumni network must be better." "This school has a highly ranked general studies program, so once I graduate, I should be set." "This school has more black people than ND does, so it must be better at setting black students up for success." "Coach said they have a guaranteed spot for me, and that the gray shirt players they've had in the past have been those players' faults. That won't happen to me because I'm going to keep working hard." "All of the boosters said that jobs for this school's players are easy to come by and start at six figures. That's better than what ND is offering." "I want to be a doctor and this school has a medical school attached while ND doesn't. Coach says that'll give me a leg up in admissions." (It won't, by the way, unless you spent all your time working there as an undergrad and you can't do that as an athlete. HOWEVER, 1/5 of ND's students go to medical school and I'm not sure any other school can say that).

 

[IrishLax]

I just think it's important though, because other schools falsely inflating themselves relative to ND without a chance for correction or rebuttal is dangerous for the student. "This school has almost as good an APR as ND does, so the academics must be comparable." "This school graduates more people than ND does, so the alumni network must be better." "This school has a highly ranked general studies program, so once I graduate, I should be set." "This school has more black people than ND does, so it must be better at setting black students up for success." "Coach said they have a guaranteed spot for me, and that the gray shirt players they've had in the past have been those players' faults. That won't happen to me because I'm going to keep working hard." "All of the boosters said that jobs for this school's players are easy to come by and start at six figures. That's better than what ND is offering." "I want to be a doctor and this school has a medical school attached while ND doesn't. Coach says that'll give me a leg up in admissions." (It won't, by the way, unless you spent all your time working there as an undergrad and you can't do that as an athlete. HOWEVER, 1/5 of ND's students go to medical school and I'm not sure any other school can say that).

Yeah, I think this pretty much nails the issue. ND is really easy to neg recruit with misinformation... whether about academics or weather or girls or religion or whatever you want to try sell the kid on.

So I think ND is in a situation where it's bad for them to get into a mudslinging war, especially if its against Home State U. But they also have to be ready and prepared once it starts to fight back... but being on the defensive also has its drawbacks. It's a tough situation to be in all the way around.

The other thing about academic rankings, is that with all of these BS "global" rankings coming into prevalence, it's becoming very easy for crappy schools to point at "real" numbers that say their school is great. It doesn't matter that those numbers mean literally nothing for undergrads, if they're able to say "Notre Dame is the #300 school!" then it can be effective with people from parts of the country that don't usually send kids to Notre Dame.

 

[MNIrishman]

Yeah, I think this pretty much nails the issue. ND is really easy to neg recruit with misinformation... whether about academics or weather or girls or religion or whatever you want to try sell the kid on.

So I think ND is in a situation where it's bad for them to get into a mudslinging war, especially if its against Home State U. But they also have to be ready and prepared once it starts to fight back... but being on the defensive also has its drawbacks. It's a tough situation to be in all the way around.

The other thing about academic rankings, is that with all of these BS "global" rankings coming into prevalence, it's becoming very easy for crappy schools to point at "real" numbers that say their school is great. It doesn't matter that those numbers mean literally nothing for undergrads, if they're able to say "Notre Dame is the #300 school!" then it can be effective with people from parts of the country that don't usually send kids to Notre Dame.

OMG, world rankings are awful. They're nearly 100% research based. Here are the criteria for ARWU: Ranking Methodology of Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2013

As you can see, you can score very highly on that without actually graduating ANY undergraduates. I'd be willing to bet that a national lab without any students at all could beat the pants off ND in that ranking, which is why it's such total BS. That's the one Michigan likes to throw at us, by the way, so if they mention it, be sure to mention that the undergrad population is completely useless to their ranking.

EDIT: We're behind such illustrious undergrad schools as "The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas," "The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center," and "The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai."

 

[NDgradstudent]

OMG, world rankings are awful. They're nearly 100% research based. Here are the criteria for ARWU: Ranking Methodology of Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2013

As you can see, you can score very highly on that without actually graduating ANY undergraduates. I'd be willing to bet that a national lab without any students at all could beat the pants off ND in that ranking, which is why it's such total BS. That's the one Michigan likes to throw at us, by the way, so if they mention it, be sure to mention that the undergrad population is completely useless to their ranking.

EDIT: We're behind such illustrious undergrad schools as "The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas," "The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center," and "The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai."

Michigan is considered one of the top research universities in the world, by any measure. Unless you are Princeton, simply having a medical school makes a huge difference in those rankings. What does a recruit care that Michigan is considered the best place to study cardiology, or whatever?

In the famous Payscale rankings, this year ND comes in at 42, Michigan at 89, OSU at 318, Alabama at 424. Stanford comes in at 7, alas.

That matters more than any research ranking. Heck, the weather is more important to a typical recruit than the ARWU.

 

[zelezo vlk]

In the most recent BGI recruiting podcast, it was heavily implied that a certain member of OU's staff, who has intimate recent knowledge of ND, has been a main driving force behind some negative recruiting against the Irish.

But no names were named. Who could it possibly be?

Seriously though, that shit pisses me off more than Michigan's continued existence. If you leave, you should carry yourself with some self-respect. What kind of an integrity does a man have who slanders and attacks his old employer just because he's no longer there?

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

In the most recent BGI recruiting podcast, it was heavily implied that a certain member of OU's staff, who has intimate recent knowledge of ND, has been a main driving force behind some negative recruiting against the Irish.

But no names were named. Who could it possibly be?

Seriously though, that shit pisses me off more than Michigan's continued existence. If you leave, you should carry yourself with some self-respect. What kind of an integrity does a man have who slanders and attacks his old employer just because he's no longer there?

Kerry wouldn't dare, would he?

I imagine he's probably hating on BVG more than Kelly? Either way, super classes if true.

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

Classless, not classes... Can't figure out how to edit on this phone app...

 

[OCIrish]

I guess Coach Cooks must feel the need to do whatevers necessary to get a leg up in life.......

 

[Legacy]

This where parents, personal goals, visits with interactions with players and students come in. I wonder how often religion is used.

How can you negatively recruit against Stanford? Majors too hard?
"Come to Berkeley."?

Coach X is probably not talking about these type of schools and their recruits.

A favorite image is of Sheldon Day and his mom on Senior Day.

 

[MNIrishman]

This where parents, personal goals, visits with interactions with players and students come in. I wonder how often religion is used.

How can you negatively recruit against Stanford? Majors too hard?
"Come to Berkeley."?

Coach X is probably not talking about these type of schools and their recruits.

A favorite image is of Sheldon Day and his mom on Senior Day.

Negatively recruiting against Stanford would mostly be based on the fact that exactly no one gives a shit about their team. Students go to games because it's an excuse to get drunk. The band sucks and gets its ass banned all over the country. Then you point out that ND and Stanford are very comparable salary-wise when you normalize for cost of living in San Fran (largest alumni concentration of Stanford alumni) vs Chicago (largest concentration of ND alumni) and major (a lot more engineers at Stanford than ND).

Of course, I agree that Stanford is probably the hardest to recruit against. They have a LOT going for them.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Probably EVERY program neg recruits to some degree. It's hard to imagine how any coach could sell his program without at least pointing out some of the advantages his program offers compared to another. There's a huge difference though between "Here are the reasons we believe we're better for you than they are" vs "Here are all the horrible things about that other program."

 

[NDRock]

In the most recent BGI recruiting podcast, it was heavily implied that a certain member of OU's staff, who has intimate recent knowledge of ND, has been a main driving force behind some negative recruiting against the Irish.

But no names were named. Who could it possibly be?

Seriously though, that shit pisses me off more than Michigan's continued existence. If you leave, you should carry yourself with some self-respect. What kind of an integrity does a man have who slanders and attacks his old employer just because he's no longer there?

Most of these coaches are mercenaries and do what they have to do for whoever is writing their check. It's business.

 

[Grahambo]

Be careful when you neg recruit because it can backfire big time. You counter it with facts and statistics and simply rise above it. If other teams do it then that's their decision but if I am a recruiter, I focus solely on what I can do for you, not what X school can't do.