Anticipation, hope, shock, letdown, dismay, and joy – just a few of the emotions felt by college football fans and coaching staffs all across the country yesterday as National Signing Day unfolded. Wisconsin fans surely felt all those emotions to varying degrees and we were right here with you with some of those emotions.
However, after taking about 24 hours to process exactly what went down yesterday it’s safe to say that while this wasn’t the biggest class in the world and losing Kyle Dodson did sting I’m happy with the class that we do have.
It’s also clear that Bret Bielema stirred the hornets nest to close out his press conference and that the media took a comment he made about recruiting in general as a case of sour grapes over losing Dodson to Ohio State, something that couldn’t be further from the truth. But more on that later.
For all of those complaining about the class let me ask you this: When was the last time Wisconsin was in the mix for some of the top prospects in the country and won out? That’s exactly what happened with QB Bart Houston, OL Dan Voltz and LB Vince Biegel. Houston was one of the “Elite 11” an honor not to be taken lightly in the QB recruiting circles, Voltz was a top 5 offensive guards nationally and Biegel was widely regarded as one of the top 3-5 linebackers in the country. All had offers from all the country and chose the Badgers. 4-5 years ago, I don’t know if any come here. Biegel is probably headed to BYU, Voltz is probably at Michigan or Ohio State and Houston wouldn’t have even considered Wisconsin an option. That’s how far we’ve come in the recruiting world under Bielema.
There were some who expressed anger and disappointment on this day and most of it was directed at Kyle Dodson, the highly regarded offensive lineman out of Cleveland Heights, OH. He was a one time verbal commitment to the Badgers, but with Urban Meyer at Ohio State and the staff changes here at Wisconsin the home state Buckeyes won out.
While I feel for those who held out hope, it’s clear you weren’t seeing the writing on the wall of his decommitment. I can’t say I blame him for staying home, especially in a recruiting world were kids are going to schools more and more based on personal relationships with coaches than what the overall school has to offer and that’s not totally a bad thing. He clearly had a great relationship with Bob Bostad and that gave the Badgers a leg up, but his leaving was probably the final nail in the coffin that Urban Meyer’s hire started building.
Sure in a perfect world kids would be doing the really smart thing and making sure the full package that the school has to offer is what they want because life doesn’t always work out the way you want it to and there’s always school to fall back on. But, let’s face it, if you aren’t comfortable with the people you’re going to be spending the majority of your time with in college then why go either. That’s the beauty of college, everyone’s experience is different.
But as much as that stung there is the guy we picked up late in the recruiting period, Jake Meador. While he may not have been as highly known to Wisconsin fans as Dodson I’d say being able to pull a one time Ole Miss commit and a kid that most thought was headed to Florida away is a pretty good “last minute” option, huh?
Besides the class being official, the biggest story out of National Signing Day was Bret Bielema “taking a swipe” at the newest OSU coach and about the world of recruiting in general. It started off with a pretty innocent question about Urban Meyer’s hiring and if it was or had changed recruiting in the upper Midwest.
“Well, I don’t think, I hope it hasn’t changed.” said Bielema. “I think the potential to change has been there. And, there’s a few things that happened early on that I made people aware of that I don’t want to see in this league that I had seen take place at other leagues, other recruiting tactics, other recruiting practices that are illegal.”
I’m sure you’ve heard or seen part or all of that response. However, in true sensationalist fashion that’s where what you’ve seen or heard has likely ended right? But it wasn’t all Coach Bielema had to say.
“And I was very upfront and was very pointed to that fact,” Bielema continued. “I actually reached out to Coach Meyer and shared my thoughts and concerns with him, and the situation got rectified.”
Some have taken it as Coach Bielema having a case of sour grapes over losing Kyle Dodson to Ohio State, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. If it was, why did he call Meyer and why did he continue his statement further?
Bielema went on to tell a story about being offered a $450,000 a year contract for multiple years while on Coach Alvarez’s staff (where he made $175,000 on a year to year contract). Obviously he didn’t bite, but the response to him spurning that off is exactly the point that almost everyone has decided to ignore to fit their own agendas. My agenda? The truth.
“…he said to me, ‘you know what the difference between the Big Ten and this conference is?'” said Bielema. “And I said, ‘no.’ He said, ‘in the Big Ten, everybody tells on everybody. In our conference, nobody tells on anybody.’ And that made a huge comment to me. And I’ve been very cognizant of that, encourage our coaches to play by the books, to do things in a certain way.”
His next statement really stayed with me and I think sums up what most “media types” have completely missed.
“If you have to lie, cheat, or steal to get someone here, it doesn’t make a great point once you get them here about how you’ve got to handle them.”
Clearly much of the rest of the media has taken a comment and tried to make it much more than it actually is. When I heard the comment for the first time it wasn’t Kyle Dodson that entered my thoughts, it was the cheating nature of SEC recruiting that did. Maybe I’m off base? Or maybe, just maybe it’s some trying to make hay out of a situation that doesn’t really exist?
To me it’s clear that it was much more about the culture of recruiting that exists in the SEC and the south in general versus the culture of recruiting here in the Midwest. Don’t get me wrong, things aren’t squeaky clean up here, but the Big Ten and Midwest in general is much more like the straight and narrow when you put it up against the SEC where it’s pretty much a worst kept secret that cheating happens everywhere and no one will tell on each other.
If you’ve ever seen the ESPN 30 for 30 show called “Pony Excess” you know where I’m going with this, but that world didn’t end with the death penalty of SMU, it just moved east to the SEC. In fact it’s really becoming a case of history repeating itself and possibly on a much larger scale than what happened back in the heyday of the Southwest Conference. However, that’s a topic for a different time and place entirely.
Overall National Signing Day brings promise and a chance for this small class to really have a massive impact on the future of this program in a way that past classes may not have produced with even larger numbers. Sometimes it’s quality, not quanitity that matters most and that’s exactly what the Badgers have been good at over the past 20 years or so.
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