re: Class of 2015 Recruiting MEGATHREAD - Twilight Edition

We have another banging class and we are up in here bitching about a kid that is in a class that is a 1 1/2 away

first world problems.

Fair warning......I'm going through a lot of personal stuff which is why I have been scarce, it's a huge life change, but a good one

Anyway...Mag's point is right especially at QB, you don't throw away a year of hget ting a guy at that position to tell Eason he can come and be an instant starter. A couple guys at other schools were ranked way higher than Johnny Manziel coming out of HS and Texas could've easily offered and landed JFF and likely seen their program have a meteoric rise again with him at the helm, but they passed. I hate to use him as an example, but QB recruiting in my mind is the hardest position generally to evaluate and it's getting harder and harder with more and more HS offenses switching over to some sort of shotgun spread (and in Barnett's case a spread option) that personifies a kids athleticism and focuses on that and masks flaws.

Early on in a majority of kids careers the most athletic most prepared kid I'm talking in 9th grade sometimes even earlier, is identified and immediately groomed as a QB in most HS cases nowadays unless it is a massive HS who generally tend to have good talent evaluators as HCs. Guys from the state like Jamarcus Russell, Pat White, Phillip Rivers, AJ McCarron, Jameis Winston hell even to a certain degree ArDarius Stewart and BJ Scott, all likely were products of this type of development and pushed to the QB position early on because they stood out. It isn't just who is the best passer or the smartest kid who knows the O anymore, that time has long gone. Blake Barnett is not as good a prospect at QB as Eason, but the ceiling is there that he might get there (again right now it isn't a debate, but Barnett is also very raw but with a ridiculous skillset) and we might look back and laugh at this comparison in a few years. It for sure will help us understand one thing though...how good Kiffin can be (granted he stays at least 3, 4, 5 years) at developing a QB.

Tosses a roll of Tums at Garfield... Recruiting is the lifeblood of a program. It is how a second tier school can possition themselves to go head-to-head with the top level programs. It is one of the chair legs required for the top tier programs to stay at the top year after year.

For most of us (fans) it is something to enjoy speculating about until the pads start popping again. But in truth, we are speculating about a bunch of kids. They grow, they change and the passions that drive them take on varied degrees of importance in their lives. None of us know what they will turn out to be but we can have a little fun trying to project whether or not there is a pot of gold at the end of their rainbow.

Best not to let the recruiting game become anything more than it is. It is important but for us, it should be a little fun to enjoy til the smells, tastes and passion of Saturdays in the Fall return.

Thanks for the effort and time so many of you put into helping us all enjoy the fun side of recruiting.

I must have missed something..did something start on another site or another thread?

C'mon guys. This is an awesome board. The best out there as far as I've ran across and I come here because there isn't a lot of that pointless bickering between people. You guys for the most part post solid info and are not rah rah sunshine pumpers.

Lets try to leave the petty stuff to the other boards and continue to have the most solid Bama Crutin board out there. Thanks TS, Riz, Chatta, Trey and all the other guys that do most of the posting and let me just hang around. Keep up the great work guys!

Look I'm happy Barnett committed. I even posted two donkey gifs when he did.

But that doesn't mean he is better than Eason just because he is committed to Alabama.

Before we move on, I just want to say I agree 1000% with TideSaint on this one.

I said before Barnett committed that when we lost Town, there were only a few kids I would really consider. While Barnett and Waller were the only ones I would left, I won't delude myself to thinking he is an elite QB prospect. The facts are he isn't. He is still adapting to changing his throwing motion and he is very raw.

The reason I didn't want to jump on a QB is because of this Eason kid (or even the other Cali kid) coming out next year. I just don't agree with the "take a QB a year" thing. Especially considering most of them don't even pan out. It is pointless to do something just to do it. While Barnett may develop into something, we have to be realistic.

Coker is a one and done guy. Will Barnett challenge for the job the first year? No. It's going to be between Bateman and Cornwell. Every sane analyst has said he needs a couple of years to develop his raw ability.

To be honest, I really wanted Waller instead of Barnett, because the kids has great throwing mechanics, faster, explosive, rated higher (obviously).

I'm glad we got a decent 4-star kid, however I will be sad we didn't get the better of the dual threat kids left (Waller > Stidham!) and sad we are going to miss out on Eason, because that kid looks the real deal.

BDS:

do we do this every year..what are they doing?

I just now realized how we can add more seats to BDS. Dig down about 50 feet and make a bowl. The sound when the Bama faithful are at full forced would be deafening.