New Duck Football Center not paying off

[Targus]

Excellent point, Stomp. The center is in place so we can land developmental players. We always want to pass on the five stars. Glad the center was around so we could land Ngata, Byrd, Chung, Blount, Davis, James, Paulson, Matthews, Unger, Ward, Paysinger, Rosario, DAT, Huff and others. Without the center, we never would have landed those guys and they never would have developed.

 

[Zalsa]

Uncle Phil should build new Duck Football Ops buildings in Texas and SoCal then

I've watched Helfrich's press conference a couple times now. Throughout the recruiting process coaches aren't allowed to comment on specific recruits so the initial presser is usually filled with good insights into recruiting and the state of the program. Anyway, a little over 4 minutes in MH was asked if distance was a bigger factor in recruiting then the relationships built with coaches. He said (paraphrasing) that overall the #1 determining factor for recruits is distance... guys tend to stay close to home. #2 is winning.

So Oregon doesn't have (& never will) the most important factor in landing guys going in their favor but they've somehow been doing awesome with #2. The kid who grew up in Texas rooting for UT tends to commit to a Longhorn's offer, or at least stay within close proximity to Mom's cooking (see Budda Trey & Juju). Lacking a rich pipeline of local talent, Oregon is after the remaining kids who are willing to leave. While great facilities & coaches help develop talent, it really helps if the kid has the sort of personal makeup to put in the work on & off the field. How much of UO's success is due to them targeting recruits they feel have high character? As Helfrich said early on, a 5* kid is less then a coin flip to turn out, so the Oregon staff tries to "manage the knowns" with the guys they go after. He made light of the recruiting site's big day and congratulated them for turning NSD into a business, but as with Kelly he alluded to Oregon's ranking of recruits being very different. Speaking about their process he relayed the staff has been in over 1,000 High Schools this past year. I'm sure we'll see a few of the 3* guys from this class blossom because they always do. Who's going to be the next Michael Clay, Hronnis Grasu or Johnny Mundt? It's of course impossible to really parse out the factors in recruiting, but I bet the New Ops building is only helping them land & then develop their sort of guys, keeping factor #2 working in their favor

STOMP

So...we basically target guys who won't do stupid stuff off the field, so we target high character guys with average/above average talent correct? I mean, I do understand that logic(plus I do prefer that over getting a 5-star who is a Baby-maker and gets in trouble, see those Bama kids who jumped that one kid and one of them got reinstated because of the "Win at all cost" mind set Saban has) but we do need SOME rough riders.

Plus we could try to target some in-state guys(Alfieri, Scarlett, that one WR who went to Zona) in order to try to keep other schools out. We could try THAT at least.