what is going on in oxford? (1 Viewer)

JimEverett

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Good chance of a top 5 class.
Maybe 5 five star players?

What the hell?
Just lucky circumstances or is freeze a recruiting machine
 
Freeze is very good


but, lucky chance.

Take away Nkemdiche and Treadwell and its a good, but normal recruiting class. A somewhat better Orgeron class which makes sense since Freeze was Orgeron's primary recruiter as Freeze learned how to college recruit under O. Given that we won more games then O ever did,it'd make sense Freeze would have similar but somewhat better success. Probably top 15, probably not top 10, definitely not top 5.

However. We have Robert Nkemdiches brother. So we got him. We also have Laquon Treadwells best friend, Anthony Standifer. So that got Treadwell on campus during the season, where he met Nkemdiche. Nkemdiche and Standifer recruited Treadwell. And then at the Army All-American game, Treadwell and Nkemdiche recruited other key players (Tunsil, Daniels, etc).

So a fair amount of luck factors in. Credit due to Freeze for exploiting the value of recruits recruiting recruits. Recruits have unlimited contact with other recruits, recruits spend more time nationally together then ever before due to all-star games, social media gives them significantly more contact, etc. But Ole Miss fans shouldn't misunderstand what happened here. Robert Nkemdiche is the undisputed #1 recruit in the nation and has been the entire year. Other recruits have gone wire-to-wire as #1 (Clowney notably), but in this age of social connectivity, every national recruit knows it. Nkemdiche being recruiting for Ole Miss gives other recruits "permission" of sorts to consider Ole Miss. And it snowballs. When you talk about Ole Miss legitimately having a top 5 recruiting class, Ole Miss winning the SEC isn't insane. If Ole Miss continued to have top 5 recruiting classes.

Sadly, I don't think Ole Miss has any more players with a little brother who is the best recruit in the nation.
 
Freeze is very good


but, lucky chance.

Take away Nkemdiche and Treadwell and its a good, but normal recruiting class. A somewhat better Orgeron class which makes sense since Freeze was Orgeron's primary recruiter as Freeze learned how to college recruit under O. Given that we won more games then O ever did,it'd make sense Freeze would have similar but somewhat better success. Probably top 15, probably not top 10, definitely not top 5.

However. We have Robert Nkemdiches brother. So we got him. We also have Laquon Treadwells best friend, Anthony Standifer. So that got Treadwell on campus during the season, where he met Nkemdiche. Nkemdiche and Standifer recruited Treadwell. And then at the Army All-American game, Treadwell and Nkemdiche recruited other key players (Tunsil, Daniels, etc).

So a fair amount of luck factors in. Credit due to Freeze for exploiting the value of recruits recruiting recruits. Recruits have unlimited contact with other recruits, recruits spend more time nationally together then ever before due to all-star games, social media gives them significantly more contact, etc. But Ole Miss fans shouldn't misunderstand what happened here. Robert Nkemdiche is the undisputed #1 recruit in the nation and has been the entire year. Other recruits have gone wire-to-wire as #1 (Clowney notably), but in this age of social connectivity, every national recruit knows it. Nkemdiche being recruiting for Ole Miss gives other recruits "permission" of sorts to consider Ole Miss. And it snowballs. When you talk about Ole Miss legitimately having a top 5 recruiting class, Ole Miss winning the SEC isn't insane. If Ole Miss continued to have top 5 recruiting classes.

Sadly, I don't think Ole Miss has any more players with a little brother who is the best recruit in the nation.

That is a very realistic assessment.

Ole Miss is having a great class, but so are LSU, Alabama, Texas A&M, Florida and Georgia.

If you figure 4 and 5 star players to be your blue chips, Ole Miss looks to end up with a dozen or so while the rest of these teams will have 15 to 20 blue chips this year. You have to have these types of classes year in and year out to compete for titles.

The equalizer for Ole Miss in the 2013 class is they have two of the elite players in the country. College recruiting is kind of like the NFL draft in that the value of the top five or so players in the draft is way, way more than the next twenty or so. The cream of the cream can make an entire team better. Andrew Luck made a decent Stanford team a contender. Julio Jones made Bama and Atlanta better. Nkemdiche could be the type of player that elevates the Ole Miss defense to the next level.

The last player Ole Miss had that made the whole team better was Eli Manning and not coincidentally Eli's senior year he took an average team by SEC standards and made them a contender. That is not to say Ole Miss did not have other good players that year, but it does show how one guy can be a difference.

You can take a dozen or so blue chips in a class like this and build a good team around them. One downside of blue chips is they leave early and you miss out on the three star guys who redshirt and become fifth year seniors. LSU loses eleven underclassmen and will pay for it this year. A fifth year three star 23 yr old kid who has been in a college conditioning program for five years is often better than a five star 18 year old. This dynamic is helping teams who end up with a class of soild three star types who are willing to redshirt and wait their turn to start.

It is a fine class for Ole Miss and it will help level the field for Freeze. The long term test is can Freeze do it year after year because Alabama, Florida and a couple others do. Winning will help. If Freeze does win more, with his recruiting success, the Ole Miss alums better start saving their coins. The price for top college coaches, as discussed in another thread on here, has gone up quite a bit. Get ready for the headhunters.

Competition is great for the fans and football in general. Ole Miss getting better maks the game with LSU harder for us LSU fans, but also adds a team to the mix that can hang a loss on the other big guys.

I do think the recent trend of kids going pro early is equalizing the playing field for teams that cannot load up with NFL early entrants. These teams can compete if they recruit wisely, that is, if they can recruit solid kids who are not quite good enough to leave early. LSU is paying a steep price this year for recruiting so well in the past. I think LSU will have a lot of good, young talent on the field but will be one of the more inexperienced teams in the SEC.
 
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Man, what are the chances ? A thread in which EVERY post is well written, insightful, and informative. (well, maybe until this post :aargh: )
Congratulations guys.
 
You would have to be naive to think that any of the top teams (LSU included) are compiling those classes without some "funny business" going on. Most SEC teams are doing it. We can't assume that just because UK is usually getting 3 and 2 star players that they aren't doing the same things that everyone else is doing. We usually cry "cheating" because of jealousy, myself included. To that point, I don't think OM is doing anything the rest of the teams aren't doing.

Nothing you can do at this point but to give Freeze credit. From what I've learned he's been regarded as a top recruiter for a while. You can provide all of the extras to recruits that you want but if you aren't winning or don't have a solid pitch outside of that you're still not going to put together a good class. We have to assume he's legit until proven otherwise.
 
Freeze is making quite a name for himself, therefore he won't be in Oxford for very long.
 
Freeze is making quite a name for himself, therefore he won't be in Oxford for very long.

Freeze is an interesting guy in an interesting position at Ole Miss. Some politicians that have not been in politics very long have an advantage in that they have not much of a voting record for their opponents to take a shot at. Freeze has that advantage in coaching, he has never done much coaching at the division 1 level and does not have much of a coaching record to judge either way.

His first year he was 3-5 in the SEC and could have been 5-3 but for narrow losses to A&M and LSU. His teams were not competitive in losses to Texas, Georgia and Alabama. He lost to Vanderbilt which is never good even though Vandy had a very good team this past year.

Ole Miss looked great in their bowl game and overall their fans were very happy with Freeze. He got a raise to 2 mil per year and an interesting clause in his contract that give him a 100k bonus per SEC win. :scratch: Coaching can be a tough business where one coach can get fired two years out from a national championship and another get a 500k raise for a 3-5 conference record.

Coaching is but one thing a coach does. If we are to give Freeze a B grade for the moderate success he had improving a program that was in shambles the year before, he gets an A+ for his recruiting. No doubt college athletic directors have noticed that.

2013 will be a big year for Freeze and Ole Miss. If he can get a big win over LSU or Alabama coupled with competing for the SEC West his stock will go through the roof. That is good and bad for Ole Miss as the headhunters will come a calling. The rebels may have to go through the pain of being held up by a coach for big bucks.

The good news is that I do not see any of the big SEC programs looking next year and aside from that, having people chase your coach is a good problem to have. It means you are winning.

The early returns on Freeze are very good, but the jury is still out. Color me impressed so far. Ole Miss will be an interesting team to watch next year. Four of their first five games are on the road this year at Vandy, Texas, Alabama and Auburn. Then they get six games at home. Whoever represents them on their scheduling I bet did not get a raise. 3-5 in the SEC again wont get him another raise. 5-3 gets him a cool half mil bonus.
 
Hats off to OM's staff, great work. I too agree timing is everything and you need 22 players, ST standouts and depth to compete for a NC and win in the SEC. I think they better do something with this class or coaches like Saban, Miles, Richt, etc will tell future recruits, "look at all that talent, what happened....". Add another class similar to this next year and I would say OM is rolling. One class/year might make a team, but you need more to make a program.
 
Hats off to OM's staff, great work. I too agree timing is everything and you need 22 players, ST standouts and depth to compete for a NC and win in the SEC. I think they better do something with this class or coaches like Saban, Miles, Richt, etc will tell future recruits, "look at all that talent, what happened....". Add another class similar to this next year and I would say OM is rolling. One class/year might make a team, but you need more to make a program.

We had 1 senior graduate. Next year we only have only 5-6 projected senior starters (and thats assuming no younger players take jobs) While most of the freshman are not going to be year 1 impact starters, there is plenty of time to develop. I would say there is an easy 3 year window of 8-10 wins without even stretching at all. Whether we can end up competing for an SEC title spot is, obviously, beyond reasonable projection, but you have to assume Ole Miss will be a tough out even for LSU and Alabama over the next three years.

Beyond that is up to future recruiting, player development, coaching, other soft projection factors that we could argue all day about and have no real idea still.
 
In regards to st dude (clipping quotes is a pain on the ipad) and the last half of his post:

We put Nutt in the top ten in the country for one season and a cotton bowl win. We tried to be more conservative with Freeze, and were able to do so due to his inexperience, but we have the financial wherewithal to make such a commitment again.

Of course, granted, "top ten" in the country in coaches salary only gets you top half of the SEc necessarily, but Ole Miss can hold Freeze from all but the most elite program offers given it all. For a Florida or USC to come knocking Freeze would likely need to have outstanding success, as in sneaking into an SEC title game or the like. If he does that in three years, congratulations Coach Freeze, you did right by Ole Miss and yourself and we wish you the best.
 
Whether we can end up competing for an SEC title spot is, obviously, beyond reasonable projection, but you have to assume Ole Miss will be a tough out even for LSU and Alabama over the next three years.

I know I have given Ole Miss (and MSU for that matter) a ton of flack over the years, but as an LSU fan, I'll even go out on a limb further than you here. And just to show you I'm not being arrogant here as I'm shining a huge spotlight on my own team's flaws in the process.

I think ya'll have a 60% to 65% chance of beating LSU next year. I'm seriously concerned about both our lines now given the mass-defections and our abundance of depth has vanished. In the SEC, if you have shoddy line play, you're hosed.

With that said, despite the amazing SEC class, I still say this year's signing class for ya'll won't even sniff Atlanta before they graduate/leave. Yes, ya'll should be competitive, but so what? Competitive doesn't get you hardware.

I really, really like your coach. I'd even have put him into the "discussion" for SEC coach of the year. But one of two things is going to happen. Either he continues to progress Ole Miss to where they can compete for the West title or he doesn't. The second he starts getting anywhere near Atlanta, someone else is going to hire him. You're just looking at what he makes a year. You're not looking at how much Ole Miss pays annually for the program. In that respect, you're a shadow of what other schools are paying. The bigger schools all have more of everything, so even if you can compete on his salary, that's just a drop in the bucket my friend. At the end of the day, schools like LSU, Alabama, Florida consistently massively outspend Ole Miss in pretty much every phase of the game at that spending matters. The NCAA has all but openly admitted that it's never going to be a completely level playing field. At least Ole Miss is better off than perhaps 10% of the programs in this country, but that's still only good for about third to fifth in the West at best. Sorry dude.

I really like your coach, but I also like Vandy's coach for whatever that's worth. Put either of them in a different conference with a more level playing field, I'm thinking they are going to a lot of conference championships. But this is the SEC, so your only real shot at Atlanta is if you ever get a one-hit wonder like Cam Newton or Johnny Football. Do that and nobody's stopping you. The addition of A&M just made Atlanta a huuuuuuuuuge leap for your program, instead of just a huge leap.

Shoot, even LSU is starting to feel the effects of A&M in the SEC and we friggin BEAT them at their home field last season. We got shafted on the bowl this year and look at this...

Read more: A&M-LSU: A blossoming rivalry - San Antonio Express-News

Compare that to the past three seasons, when LSU signed three Texans each year. According to Rival.com's Jeff Tarpley, LSU made offers to 21 prospects from Texas in the 2013 class, and the Aggies beat out the Tigers for receiver Kyrion Parker and defensive back Tavares Garner from Manvel High near Houston.

About Houston ... while the nation's fourth-largest city is much closer to College Station than Baton Rouge (100 miles vs. 260 miles), it's still situated between both college towns and a recruiting hotbed for both.
 

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