Twitter Tuesday: Rankings, Sam Howell, long-term predictions
Twitter Tuesday is back again this week, as Southeast recruiting analyst Woody Wommack is answering your questions.
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This is a tricky question to answer because it’s not exactly like I’m unbiased in this scenario, so I will answer it in a different way. Do college coaches really care what I think about players? The grand majority of the time the answer is no. If a coach thinks a player is good and I don’t think a player is good, he is going to trust his own instinct on that player’s skillset, future abilities, etc.
However, most coaching staffs do look at rankings and more importantly, lobby for players to be moved up, especially after they have committed to their school. The bottom line is football coaches are competitive and they want to win. That competitive nature applies to recruiting as well pretty much across the FBS level. Coaches want to be No. 1 in their state, No. 1 in their conference, No. 1 in their region and, if possible, No. 1 in the country. That will never change as long as we are the virtual scorekeepers of recruiting wins and losses.
This would be a great question for me to answer if I could see into the future. Of course, if I could see into the future I probably wouldn’t be focused on answering questions via Twitter. Nevertheless, I do feel like we are on the verge of some major changes when it comes to the rules and possible compensation for athletes.
The so-called “Olympic model” is starting to pick up traction among college coaches and I think it won’t be long until college athletes are able to monetize their likeness. This will mean not only getting a cut from jersey sales, but also potential shoe deals and other advertising opportunities. I think it will be slowly integrated over the next few years and perhaps 15 years from now athletes will be able to make a full “salary” off endorsements while in college. It’s my opinion that it’s only fair that if one of their college classmates can make money getting Instagram followers to “swipe up to shop my look” that football players (and athletes in all sports) should have the same opportunities.
This will obviously spill down into recruiting. Some prospects might want to go to bigger schools to have a bigger platform to generate income, or some four-star prospects may choose to go to less traditional powers in order to immediately be a big name from a marketing perspective. It will be interesting to watch as it unfolds.
And for a quick on-field prediction, I don’t think there will be kickoffs anymore. The data seems to be showing more and more that it is the most dangerous play in the game and I think it will be gone.
This is a tough question to ask without doing a lot of research first so I will speak in more generalities. Obviously, the state of Texas is loaded with talent every year and it’s our job to sort it out in rankings form. We feel like we do a pretty good job of that.
Of course, we are never going to be right on every player, especially in the top 25. The same can be said for the schools recruiting in the state of Texas. Marcus Davenport was right there for the taking by several in-state programs but he ended up at UTSA and turned into a high NFL Draft pick.
Every year when you look at the final tally of which states had the most players drafted, Texas will be right in the mix with Florida and California. So do some of the higher ranked and perhaps more hyped players from Texas end up busting and not making it to the NFL? Sure. But I think if you ran the numbers it wouldn’t be wildly different from any of the other major talent-producing areas.
The two of them do have some similar traits as players, including relatively similar builds. But I think at this point it’s a little unfair to compare Sam Howell to a guy like Shea Patterson, who was in the mix for the No. 1 overall player in his class in a deep year at the position. And while Patterson has yet to truly break out at the college level, he’s shown the type of flashes that made him such a highly-regarded talent in the first place.
Howell has the chance to go to Florida State and make a name for himself right away since he will be the first quarterback on the roster hand-picked by Willie Taggart, a coach known for his work with prospects at the position. Howell is near the top of the class this year in terms of quarterback prospects, but I still wouldn’t saddle him with the same expectations, especially right from the start, that Patterson had when he stepped in at Ole Miss.
