Monday Column: On Babies, and Football Recruiting

Recruiting services are here to stay, and that's not a bad thing. Plus: The cost of being a walk-on

Good morning from the center of the universe. We've been away for awhile - even missed "signing day" - but for a good reason. See, I've got a new center of my little universe.

Her name's Mary Elizabeth McKewon, and she was born approximately 12 hours after the Giants overthrew the Patriots' tyrannical hold on the NFL with a 17-14 win in the Super Bowl. My wife, Molly, speculated that Mary finally decided to introduce herself after the official end of the football season - the only sport my wife really loves.

Mary's pretty cool, honestly. When she opens her eyes, though, she looks utterly confused. She's figuring things out about this odd place called our apartment, yet remains bewildered as to why in the world she's in it. She likes to eat. Loves chewing on blankets, sleeves, pacifiers. Sleep? Not really. Doesn't cry much, though; Mary just seems dazed and confused. Makes a lot of faces. Likes ruining outfits with spit-up. Burps like she just downed a hoagie. Her hair's long enough to stick a butterfly clip in it, and her eyes are slowly becoming the color of my wife's - that is, the sea green hue of the Indian Ocean, just before an earthquake.

Yep, cool kid.

So you always read those "what will I tell my kid about sports?" columns when a new one enters the world. With Mary? Well, we watched Roger Clemens perjure himself on Capitol Hill. "See," I told Mary as she examined the yellowing ceiling spackle, "your first lesson in absurdity of sports." Pretty inauspicious.

Based on the perfect fists she likes to make with her hands, maybe she'll be a prizefighter.

If I was going to pick one sport for her, it'd probably be golf - a sport of balance, practice, patience and sublime pleasures. I'll expose her to the joy of watching a well-struck drive fade...and fade...and fade...until it flirts with the imaginary out-of-bounds line created by those stubby white stakes.

Anyway - got free advice? Let it flow. Be advised, though - I will not entertain any suggestion to rub the nipple of Mary's bottles with a snort of whiskey, whether she's a colicky baby or not.

***

Moving on. Signing Day for Nebraska football.

Kudos to NU Coach Bo Pelini for refusing to discuss any recruits by name when he unveiled the class. That's precisely the bit of cold water this process needs.

"There’s no sense in singling kids out," he said. "Everybody knows about them, you can read about them. They are a part of our program, and they are part of the team. That’s how we’re going to approach it, and they know that, they signed on for that."

Whatever these kids did in high school, whoever they were - the chalkboard's been wiped clean now. Tabula rasa. The first recruit could become the least. The least could become the first. Some of these guys will never play. A couple will be studs. And it's too soon to project any of them into any of it.

Recruiting services - we'll talk more about them in a minute - do a good job of trying to quantify the talent of prospective recruits, but their work is generally just an educated guess. What else can it be? Injuries are important. Coaching, too. What if the guy falls in love during his freshman season, then gets his heart broken a year later? What if he gets in a drunken brawl? Lost in the circle of thought?

The X factors are innumerable. The prospects of any man in the world are fragile. How much more so the career of a college football player?

"There’s a tremendous amount of unknowns, but that’s part of the beauty of coaching," Pelini said. "You have to get them. You have to put them inside your culture, and what you believe is important, and try and guide them in the right direction, and try and eek out as much of their potential as you possibly can. That’s the challenge that we all took on when we got into this profession.”

The words do not fall out of Pelini's mouth with an actor's eloquence. But don't mistake that for incivility. His entire press conference - I listened to it well after the fact, near dawn, as Mary slept next to me in her car seat - is a model of practical wisdom. Pelini acknowledged the fervor surrounding the day, then spent his time being respectfully honest about the foolishness of it. Unlike Bill Callahan, who'd downplay the hype before cheerfully pumping up his selections, Pelini stuck to a simple, quiet reality. If only fans would pay more attention.

That's not to say recruiting isn't crucial. Like the NFL Draft, it's the core of a team's success. Great material directly correlates to great creation. To achieve the "Indian Yellow" of "The Girl With a Pearl Earring," the painter Vermeer had to use the urine of cows fed exclusively by mango leaves, a rare, expensive process so, uh, "inbovine" that it was outlawed in the 1900s.

So, yeah, it matters.

Pelini's class seems rooted in speed, big skill players and gifted high school tacklers. A wealth of guys from SEC country (we're not counting Florida, which belongs to three major conferences) and Texas, where, it should be known, a faster (if less sophisticated) brand of football is played than in Callahan's favorite stomping ground, California. At first glance, the class is light on defensive tackles. Three guys - three pretty big guys - were recruited as running back. Let's see if those positions pan out for the signees; the Huskers have two major talents in sophomores Quentin Castille and Roy Helu, neither of whom are going anywhere.

***

Highlight tapes found on recruiting sites, including those run by Rivals and Scout, are helpful in providing a glimpse, however brief and shallow, of the potential. Some of the highlights are laughable - I learned long ago to dismiss the shots of running backs galloping untouched for 80 yards through inadequate defenses - and others reveal talents that will be a limited use on the next level. The highlight tape of one Nebraska receiver recruit, for example, consists mostly of bubble screens and seven-yard out patterns that turn into long catch-and-runs for touchdowns. Nice to see, sure. An accurate take on what a college receiver will actually have to do? Not really.

Still, these tapes - and the efforts of recruiting services, for a small fee, to enlighten a fan base on the "future of the program," - are to here to stay in college football. And that's not a bad thing. Ten, 15 years ago, maybe it was, as the fledging industry was populated with people more interested in lobbying kids than gaging their talent and interest. But the business has become more sophisticated. Camps are run that help kids get their names out. Team sites freely share information under the umbrella of a larger parent company. The sites related to Nebraska are open and explicit about the questions they ask and the boundaries they erect. Most sites respect the wishes of families. They reach out to local coaches. And, no matter what a coach might say, they're useful to a staff trying to determine who's recruiting whom, and what the pitches are.

Some members of the mainstream media balk at their existence, but that doesn't stop those outlets from quoting their "star rankings," does it? Whether the rankings rise to the level of "expert" is debatable - especially when they try to project, in any way, a kid's NFL potential - but the bigger sites don't claim to be perfect. Mostly they're professionals and dedicated, ethical volunteers invested in the process. A big fish in the pond of new media. Evolution of this game called sports journalism. Get on board.

If there's a chink in credibility armor of recruiting services, it's that, despite indisputable evidence to the contrary, they tend to be ebullient about any given player in a signing class. In a great class, maybe 60-70 percent of the signees become contributors on a winning team. A lot of teams would settle for half of them developing into part-time or full-time starters. Recruiting services - which purport to know more about these kids than anyone else - could do a better job of indicating weaknesses in teams' recruiting strategies, or questionable recruits based on health, character, high school competition, etc.

Might that mean sacrificing a little of the seemingly unfettered access they have to kids and parents who enjoy the full-court press of positive publicity? Maybe. A little. So what? Mel Kiper survives, doesn't he? Intended or not, some of the individual team Web sites seem to function more as PR firms for the football program - and the kids - than the independent news organizations that they are. Ultimately, fans would appreciate the more even-handed approach.

***

Pelini, and the media, made a lot of noise out of the "revival" of the walk-on program. To reiterate: Callahan used walk-ons, too. He just didn't actively court them the way Pelini's staff did in 2008. The coach has vowed to treat them the same on the field as the scholarship players.
"Nobody's been promised a thing," Pelini said.

Which isn't quite true. The scholarship players have been promised something: A scholarship. And that's worth a lot. One could even argue that Pelini signed a few guys who, had they resided in Nebraska, might have been courted as walk-ons. Because they were from other states, however, a scholarship was needed to bring them to Lincoln.

Why? College is expensive. Real news flash, right? Still - for a resident, it's about $13,000 a year at UNL. For a non-resident, it's about $23,000. Nebraska has more than a few kids paying full freight to walk on at NU when they could have gone somewhere else for free. Some of these players might get academic scholarships. Some might get financial aid. Still - it's a pretty big financial sacrifice, and not one that should be taken lightly. It's not 1986 anymore. Asking kids to assume financial hardship to have a chance at playing on special teams is romantic, yes, but not necessarily in a kid's best self-interest. It'll be interesting to look back at this initiative in four years and see if it bore any more fruit than it did under Callahan. It'll certainly expose more families to the cost of higher education.

***

Watching Nebraska basketball is actually painful. The team tries so hard, but lacks the sheer ability to shoot and score. The Huskers have little room for error, and they play like it. NU is often so tough-minded and aggressive on defense that seems to leave it, oh, gassed for each offensive possession. Only point guard Cookie Miller seems to have genuinely improved as the season has progressed, and that weak non-conference schedule has not helped the Huskers in a number of close Big 12 Conference games.

Coach Doc Sadler is a honest, self-effacing man, and that plays well around here. He'll be scrutinized for his decision to redshirt freshmen - including forward Alonzo Edwards and guard Brandon Richardson - who could've built depth and added points to a talent-starved offense. He should be - he's scrutinized himself. In doing so, though, remember: Defections/dismissals in recent years have sapped the squad of needed juice. Joe McCray, Jamel White, Marcus Walker (who averages 18 points a game for an awful Colorado State squad) are all guys who, under better circumstances, would be upperclassmen at NU right now.

As for Creighton...life with freshmen can be a long tough, journey. The 28-point loss to Bradley was probably the season's low point, but underclassmen are resilient. The Bluejays have the potential to make a run in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, and then be a top 20 team in 2008-09. And P'Allen Stinnett? He can either be the defining player in the "second" era of Coach Dana Altman, or the second coming of Terrell Taylor. Up to him.

Email Samuel McKewon at sam@ne.statepaper.com

 

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