2018 Recruiting Thread
- Thread starter MilesBarkley
- Start date
LJ's schtick is pretty well rehearsed especially the racial elements.
Finally googled "Urban Meyer" and "social media." This should end the debate and help everyone understand what we're up against.
Ohio State football: A deep dive into the expensive expansion of the Buckeyes recruiting department explains dominance
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/06/ohio_state_buckeyes_football_i_1.html
...
OSU coach Urban Meyer has said recruiting is the "lifeblood of this program" a million times. He'll say it again the next time there's a microphone in his face. But now Ohio State is putting money where Meyer's mouth is by investing what will be millions of dollars the next few years. ...
Meyer has the reputation as one of most demanding coaches in college football, but even Meyer understands there are limits to what one person can do. So Ohio State invested in its recruiting department.
What was once a two-man recruiting staff of Pantoni and Greg Gillum in 2012 is now a 10-person staff. This has turned into an NFL-like operation.
Great recruiting leads to winning -- this, somehow, used to be a debate -- and Pantoni is pulling the strings. This GM can't draft players or sign free agents, but Pantoni can recruit. Now he has help.
The most recent addition came Sunday when Andre Robinson was hired as an assistant director of new and creative media.
The nine others, including Pantoni, earn salaries that add up to a combined $617,213.98, according to employment information obtained by cleveland.com. ...
"We're having tremendous recruiting success," Meyer said, "but we aren't doing it without that staff."
Seven years ago when Jim Tressel was the coach and Meyer was at Florida, the recruiting coordinator position was just assigned to one of the nine assistants. For Tressel, it used to be tight ends coach John Peterson.
Now you have GM Pantoni -- who has his fingers in everything from prospect communication to coaches' travel to visit itineraries to film breakdown -- and an entire team dedicated to film breakdown, videos, graphics, marketing and social media.
The recruiting department quadrupled in people and payouts.
Athletic director Gene Smith didn't even hesitate to pay up.
"You can have the greatest head coach and the greatest coordinator, but you know the old saying: 'Great players make great coaches,'" Smith said. "Understanding what was happening nationally, understanding just the way it's changing and the way young people pay attention, it was critical for us to have those people. ... I think it's important for us to look at where we are, see the future and put in place the infrastructure to support it."
Yes, Clemson has a top-notch creative team (from which Ohio State has learned); Michigan's Jim Harbaugh is pushing the limits with satellite camps, sleepovers and trips to Rome; and Alabama has more analysts than NASA. But this financial investment isn't the norm. Ohio State is pushing limits.
With its new staff, Ohio State's recruiting department has four points of emphasis. You can jump to later sections of the story by clicking the links below or you can just scroll through.
1. The staff breaks down film of every play of a prospect's career...
2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
3. The staff still emphasizes traditional on-campus visits and the personal touch
4. The staff drives home that OSU's program is about life after football
2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
If Pantoni wanted a recruiting graphic three years ago, he would have had to send an email to one of the three sports designers employed by the university. Their offices were not in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, but on the other side of Olentangy River Road in the Fawcett Center. He'd get them whenever they had time. There were only three designers for all 36 sports.
Three years ago, there was no official Ohio State Football Twitter account. There were no videos. There were no graphics tailored to specific recruits. There was no marketing.
This is the area that's undergone the most change.
Now Ohio State football has an entire squad of smart, creative, ambitious and talented videographers and designers. The three names you have to know are Zach Swartz, Sammy Silverman and Kenton Stufflebeam.
"The area that's just changed so much is the creativity beast," Meyer said. "I would be disappointed if we aren't the best in the country now. We definitely weren't a couple years ago."
Ohio State has a marketing plan for everything. Take Friday's career fair in Ohio Stadium for example: Swartz was walking around with a video camera recording players talking to employers and interviewing people to discuss how helpful the program is for life after football.
What do you think that turned into? A SnapChat story and a marketing video posted on Twitter.
Everything this graphics team does has a plan -- a constant, relentless and thorough sales pitch for Ohio State.
Silverman and Stufflebeam have had an endless supply of mind-bending concepts that nobody on Ohio State's staff -- not even Meyer or Pantoni -- could draft. Swartz, Stufflebeam and Silverman also interact with the coaching staff to get a better idea of how to personalize graphics for players.
There's an entire database dedicated to organizing information ranging from what career a player wants, to his favorite music or color. No detail gets left behind.
"When it comes to our personalized graphics, we don't always just want to send a kid a picture of him wearing an Ohio State jersey and holding a Heisman," Swartz said. "We want to really individualize these graphics and cater to exactly what they like. It's personal. We want to get to know them. If a kid wants to be a cop one day, we want to know that and build a graphic around it."
For example, taking the album cover from the latest hip-hop album and turning it into a recruiting graphic. You may not get it, but prospects do.
Or how about selling Ohio State's NFL Draft success? Check out what they made for cornerback commit Sevyn Banks:
That's just one of the thousands of graphics these guys are releasing every month.
"It's invaluable," Pantoni said. "Kids are visual. ... The video, the graphics is what really gets their attention.
"What do they do all day? The same thing we do: Stare at their phones and social media. A lot of this stuff is really powerful. Some of those videos capture what words can't, what we can't describe."
Not one of the positions or strategies discussed in the article includes hiring an internet hack to indiscriminately inundate recruit's twitter accounts with trash talk about other schools. The reporting in this article discusses a very controlled, well thought out messages to be sent to recruits. They are not going to hire internet trash talking hacks to help with their recruiting. If they pay these hacks, the hacks become their agent / employee and they become responsible for everything that hack does. It would almost certainly lead to recruiting violations unless the trash talking is as controlled as the videos that they send out.
Finally googled "Urban Meyer" and "social media." This should end the debate and help everyone understand what we're up against.
Ohio State football: A deep dive into the expensive expansion of the Buckeyes recruiting department explains dominance
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/06/ohio_state_buckeyes_football_i_1.html
...
OSU coach Urban Meyer has said recruiting is the "lifeblood of this program" a million times. He'll say it again the next time there's a microphone in his face. But now Ohio State is putting money where Meyer's mouth is by investing what will be millions of dollars the next few years. ...
Meyer has the reputation as one of most demanding coaches in college football, but even Meyer understands there are limits to what one person can do. So Ohio State invested in its recruiting department.
What was once a two-man recruiting staff of Pantoni and Greg Gillum in 2012 is now a 10-person staff. This has turned into an NFL-like operation.
Great recruiting leads to winning -- this, somehow, used to be a debate -- and Pantoni is pulling the strings. This GM can't draft players or sign free agents, but Pantoni can recruit. Now he has help.
The most recent addition came Sunday when Andre Robinson was hired as an assistant director of new and creative media.
The nine others, including Pantoni, earn salaries that add up to a combined $617,213.98, according to employment information obtained by cleveland.com. ...
"We're having tremendous recruiting success," Meyer said, "but we aren't doing it without that staff."
Seven years ago when Jim Tressel was the coach and Meyer was at Florida, the recruiting coordinator position was just assigned to one of the nine assistants. For Tressel, it used to be tight ends coach John Peterson.
Now you have GM Pantoni -- who has his fingers in everything from prospect communication to coaches' travel to visit itineraries to film breakdown -- and an entire team dedicated to film breakdown, videos, graphics, marketing and social media.
The recruiting department quadrupled in people and payouts.
Athletic director Gene Smith didn't even hesitate to pay up.
"You can have the greatest head coach and the greatest coordinator, but you know the old saying: 'Great players make great coaches,'" Smith said. "Understanding what was happening nationally, understanding just the way it's changing and the way young people pay attention, it was critical for us to have those people. ... I think it's important for us to look at where we are, see the future and put in place the infrastructure to support it."
Yes, Clemson has a top-notch creative team (from which Ohio State has learned); Michigan's Jim Harbaugh is pushing the limits with satellite camps, sleepovers and trips to Rome; and Alabama has more analysts than NASA. But this financial investment isn't the norm. Ohio State is pushing limits.
With its new staff, Ohio State's recruiting department has four points of emphasis. You can jump to later sections of the story by clicking the links below or you can just scroll through.
1. The staff breaks down film of every play of a prospect's career...
2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
3. The staff still emphasizes traditional on-campus visits and the personal touch
4. The staff drives home that OSU's program is about life after football
2. The staff puts out more than 500 graphics and videos per week on social media, which advances strategic marketing
If Pantoni wanted a recruiting graphic three years ago, he would have had to send an email to one of the three sports designers employed by the university. Their offices were not in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, but on the other side of Olentangy River Road in the Fawcett Center. He'd get them whenever they had time. There were only three designers for all 36 sports.
Three years ago, there was no official Ohio State Football Twitter account. There were no videos. There were no graphics tailored to specific recruits. There was no marketing.
This is the area that's undergone the most change.
Now Ohio State football has an entire squad of smart, creative, ambitious and talented videographers and designers. The three names you have to know are Zach Swartz, Sammy Silverman and Kenton Stufflebeam.
"The area that's just changed so much is the creativity beast," Meyer said. "I would be disappointed if we aren't the best in the country now. We definitely weren't a couple years ago."
Ohio State has a marketing plan for everything. Take Friday's career fair in Ohio Stadium for example: Swartz was walking around with a video camera recording players talking to employers and interviewing people to discuss how helpful the program is for life after football.
What do you think that turned into? A SnapChat story and a marketing video posted on Twitter.
Everything this graphics team does has a plan -- a constant, relentless and thorough sales pitch for Ohio State.
Silverman and Stufflebeam have had an endless supply of mind-bending concepts that nobody on Ohio State's staff -- not even Meyer or Pantoni -- could draft. Swartz, Stufflebeam and Silverman also interact with the coaching staff to get a better idea of how to personalize graphics for players.
There's an entire database dedicated to organizing information ranging from what career a player wants, to his favorite music or color. No detail gets left behind.
"When it comes to our personalized graphics, we don't always just want to send a kid a picture of him wearing an Ohio State jersey and holding a Heisman," Swartz said. "We want to really individualize these graphics and cater to exactly what they like. It's personal. We want to get to know them. If a kid wants to be a cop one day, we want to know that and build a graphic around it."
For example, taking the album cover from the latest hip-hop album and turning it into a recruiting graphic. You may not get it, but prospects do.
Or how about selling Ohio State's NFL Draft success? Check out what they made for cornerback commit Sevyn Banks:
That's just one of the thousands of graphics these guys are releasing every month.
"It's invaluable," Pantoni said. "Kids are visual. ... The video, the graphics is what really gets their attention.
"What do they do all day? The same thing we do: Stare at their phones and social media. A lot of this stuff is really powerful. Some of those videos capture what words can't, what we can't describe."
No big deal. Getting inside the mind of a recruit is not a novel concept. Just the method and the means. So let Stufflebeam and Silverswartz bang out onto the internet all the B.S. money can buy. At the end of the day we will get the 'Penn State-type' kids. What's in the heart and between-the-ears in immeasurable. Urban Meyer knows that and it concerns him. I thank you.
Of course not. I'm merely stating that if the head recruiter is spending all of his time talking to mom, that means to me that the kid is already on board, and mom isn't. That is merely my interpretation.
The good news is that Mom is smart, and she's from New Jersey, so she may well remember Schiano from the Rutgers days. She's probably wise enough to know Schiano's history and his act, and hopefully doesn't swallow it all hook, line, and sinker.
It's a win as long as Oweh doesn't pull trigger this weekend. Getting him back for a game in Happy Valley, I'll take my chances.
That'd be a stupid way to decide your college choice, the outcome of 1 football game.
There seems to be a lot of overthinking here regarding Oweh and Parsons. I'm a bit guilty of it too. But I guess that's what the board is for, in part.
I guess I'm just curious as to why, if Chaos spent 20 minutes talking to Mrs. Oweh (which id wager has happened ) it doesn't mean the kid is on board with PSU?
Odd way of looking at things IMO, but to each his own. No big deal ...
Never said it was or wasn't.... but if all things are equal, imo it's easy to see how that could sway a 17/18 year old kid
I know cup you weren't saying he should, but yea I guess kids get caught up in the moment
My point is, mom is sold on PSU, particularly because of the academic angle. Kid is sold on football angle of OSU. Now, it's up to the OSU recruiters to convince mom that they really do take education seriously at OSU. Hence, on this visit, they focus on mom, because the kid is already on board.
Just my unconnected, non-insider take on it.
I think most of these defensive line targets will decide way before the Ohio State game.
Really, winning head to head did SO much for Pitt vs Penn State? Check our class vs theirs!
Are penn st and Pitt equal in terms of program status? No. Not even close.
So it's not a valid comparison.
Again I'm not saying it's the best way for a kid to choose. But imo you'd be naive to believe that if 2 stud recruits view PSU and osu equally, we are both 8-0 ( or whatever the records would be). And we beat osu and go on for another division title, that it won't have an impact
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I think some like Parsons will be looking at the whole season rather than one game if winning the national championship is important to them.
The Michigan game hasn't hurt Penn State, but winning the B10 certainly did help Franklin.
That's exactly my point. There are so many other factors kids consider. Head to head match ups are just one of many factors kids consider.
I could sure use a bat signal right now.
Lol Franklin and company have us all spoiled....
Haha, yeah, would be a perfect celebration gif for verbal threads.
A classic there, Judge. I never tire of it.
Head to head match ups on the team they are going to commit to -- is a factor.
Yeah it may be for some kids but it's a stupid and immature way to make a life long decision. Academics fit and comfort level, playing time, relationships with coaching staff and other players, geographic proximity, excitement level with the program, and long-term being part of the University family would be major factors to me. Probably missing some others but the result of one game wouldn't and shouldn't be a key to the decision. Hell if the team I was going to commit to lost I'd have the attitude that I'd change that result and take great pleasure in making that happen.
Four-star defensive end Jayson Oweh continues to praise Buckeyes defensive line coach Larry Johnson, and he has called his looming Penn State-Ohio State a "tight" one, according to 247Sports. The visit to Columbus was "great" for both Oweh and his mother, he said.
