Butch On Recruiting

[Boston_Cane]

A few minutes of searching for Butch Davis speaking on recruiting has already yielded some golden nuggets. I'm splitting this off from my attempted hijacking of the latest Michael Johnson thread...

Here's Butch and some other less interesting coaches discussing the finer points:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=maisel_ivan&id=3871726

"The ability to see a skinny 16-year-old for what he could be at 21 is, as Davis put it, "the craft and the art of evaluation." The trick is to learn what to value and what to ignore...Davis said the facilities that the player has available to him in high school can lay a trap for a recruiter.
"You may be buying the finished product," Davis said. "There's a little bit of that in Texas. Those schools have got more money than God. They have a strength coach, 15 high school coaches. The players have been in the same program since sixth or seventh grade. You get them and four years later they are the exact same player.
"You go to Pahokee, Fla., where a kid eats once a day, his parents may not be around," Davis said. "You get him in a weightlifting program. Two years later, he's three times better than the kid from Texas."

Here's Butch giving an interview to a Redskins blog in 2009, with regard to Skins stars Moss, Portis and Taylor. This is obviously worth reading in full:

http://www.hogshaven.com/2009/8/6/979360/butch-davis-talks-about-recruiting

I'll add more as I find it..

 

[Picksix]

Top Ramen baby!!!

 

[Consigliere]

I think this guy knows about as much as anyone and what he says makes perfect sense. I am shocked that he isn't employed by Alabama for X per year to do football operations. Maybe he should open up his own website on scouting.

 

[User-4525]

Burger King no such thing! Ramen Ramen Ramen!

/ Butch gets it, lets hope our staff does too with current evaluations

 

[DJnitro]

Butch On Recruiting. I thought this was going to be a new CIS segment with big beefy ******* inspired recruiting analysis. Can't say i'm not disappointed.

 

[Heals85]

IMO one of if not the greatest eye for talent and development ever.

 

[JHallCanes]

Golden is off to a good start with evaluations as well. So often the personal sit downs, the looks in the eye, those things get tossed out in favor of highlight tapes and rankings. Butch could see more than that and Golden appears to be the same.

Good stuff.

 

[Fly1]

I have heard Butch say this exact same thing before. It baffles me to this day when I see guys get excited about a high school kid who is 220 that can bench 350/squat 425. I'm not saying the kid can't be a great college or eventual pro player, but that kid has a reduced ceiling. What do you expect....that kid toned up benching 505 and squatting 625!!?!? Some guys that are too developed in high school may not be the best finished product, but at the present they look like the best wrapped present.

Butch is right about one thing....you gotta have hungry players.....players hungry to win/compete/work and players that are literally hungry.

 

[Ernie McCracken]

I have heard Butch say this exact same thing before. It baffles me to this day when I see guys get excited about a high school kid who is 220 that can bench 350/squat 425. I'm not saying the kid can't be a great college or eventual pro player, but that kid has a reduced ceiling. What do you expect....that kid toned up benching 505 and squatting 625!!?!? Some guys that are too developed in high school may not be the best finished product, but at the present they look like the best wrapped present.

Butch is right about one thing....you gotta have hungry players.....players hungry to win/compete/work and players that are literally hungry.

So what are you saying, you want skinny kids that don't work out?

If a kid is 220 and can bench 350 in high school, that's a kid that's dedicated to working hard.

Also, some people put more muscle on than others more easily. The recruitment of Ricardo Williams failed because he couldn't put on muscle as fast as the staff (and Butch) thought he could.

If you have a big, muscular kid in high school, you know his body takes well to weight training.

So sorry Butch, I don't believe that crap for a minute. I say we should go out and get the biggest, fastest, most athletic kids we can find that also know the game of football. Having good coaching in high school is NOT a bad thing.

 

[Torocane]

I have heard Butch say this exact same thing before. It baffles me to this day when I see guys get excited about a high school kid who is 220 that can bench 350/squat 425. I'm not saying the kid can't be a great college or eventual pro player, but that kid has a reduced ceiling. What do you expect....that kid toned up benching 505 and squatting 625!!?!? Some guys that are too developed in high school may not be the best finished product, but at the present they look like the best wrapped present.

Butch is right about one thing....you gotta have hungry players.....players hungry to win/compete/work and players that are literally hungry.

So what are you saying, you want skinny kids that don't work out?

If a kid is 220 and can bench 350 in high school, that's a kid that's dedicated to working hard.

Also, some people put more muscle on than others more easily. The recruitment of Ricardo Williams failed because he couldn't put on muscle as fast as the staff (and Butch) thought he could.

If you have a big, muscular kid in high school, you know his body takes well to weight training.

So sorry Butch, I don't believe that crap for a minute. I say we should go out and get the biggest, fastest, most athletic kids we can find that also know the game of football. Having good coaching in high school is NOT a bad thing.

Yeah! what could Butch Davis possibly know about recruting that you don't.
I mean apart from recruting the most talented roster in college football history.

 

[RyanCane26]

Davis's voice rose as he described why he warns his staff not to engage in negative recruiting.

"Don't ever stoop to that level," Davis said. "There are things you'd love to say to parents or coaches who are naïve. It may help one year but it ends up developing [the reputation] that you don't have anything good enough to talk about at your place."

Yup

 

[JHallCanes]

I have heard Butch say this exact same thing before. It baffles me to this day when I see guys get excited about a high school kid who is 220 that can bench 350/squat 425. I'm not saying the kid can't be a great college or eventual pro player, but that kid has a reduced ceiling. What do you expect....that kid toned up benching 505 and squatting 625!!?!? Some guys that are too developed in high school may not be the best finished product, but at the present they look like the best wrapped present.

Butch is right about one thing....you gotta have hungry players.....players hungry to win/compete/work and players that are literally hungry.

So what are you saying, you want skinny kids that don't work out?

If a kid is 220 and can bench 350 in high school, that's a kid that's dedicated to working hard.

Also, some people put more muscle on than others more easily. The recruitment of Ricardo Williams failed because he couldn't put on muscle as fast as the staff (and Butch) thought he could.

If you have a big, muscular kid in high school, you know his body takes well to weight training.

So sorry Butch, I don't believe that crap for a minute. I say we should go out and get the biggest, fastest, most athletic kids we can find that also know the game of football. Having good coaching in high school is NOT a bad thing.

Yeah! what could Butch Davis possibly know about recruting that you don't.
I mean apart from recruting the most talented roster in college football history.

There's two complete opposite ends of the spectrum here and I don't think Butch 100% agrees with either side.

You don't take a kid or not take a kid based on his squat numbers. Its a part of the equation though.

 

[88]

Every time I hear anything out of Butch's mouth about recruiting it's something eye opening.

I remember hearing him on a broadcast talk about how he always went to the south for defensive lineman (@ UNC). He thought that too many of the body types he coveted were playing basketball up north and knew the pool was much larger in the south.

There's basically a world of potential defensive ends that never play football and go on ending their athletic career as college basketball forwards.

 

[Coach Macho]

Guy is a recruiting guru.