Monday, December 1st, 2008

Nystrom: Have faith in Mangino

Jayhawks’ recruiting class ranking will not necessarily reflect team’s potential.

Mangino has proven that he is a good recruiter and an even better player developer.

By Thor Nystrom

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

A random Kansas football fan is going to stumble across ESPN today and see the Jayhawks’ 2008 recruiting class ranked in the mid-30s or lower during a Signing Day wrap-up show. That fan is going to be disappointed/angered/annoyed that Mark Mangino couldn’t attract a higher rated class to Lawrence after a 12-win season and Orange Bowl victory.

Don’t let it be you.

Mangino has earned my trust. He gave us a mountain of empirical evidence last year to question the validity of the rankings; winning the Orange Bowl with a roster full of lightly recruited prospects.

He is the smartest guy in the room. Parallels can be drawn between Mangino, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, and New England coach Bill Belicheck. Beane, the subject of the book “Moneyball,” taught the baseball establishment a new way to win. Operating in a small market, Beane focused on acquiring players whose actual value wasn’t recognized by the free market. Belicheck was able to do the same in his early years with the Patriots. His first Super Bowl championship in New England had a roster full of late-drafted players and discards from other squads.

Of the same ilk, Mangino has eschewed normal modes of evaluation, in this case large recruiting bases, and trusted the ability of his coaching staff to spot talented players that fall through the cracks. In other words, a two-star recruit isn’t always a two-star recruit.

Aqib Talib, Anthony Collins, Joe Mortensen, Dexton Fields, Ryan Cantrell, Russell Brorsen and Chris Harris (who started most of this season as a freshman defensive back) are a few of the two-star recruits that Mangino rode to the Orange Bowl. There are more.

When Bill Parcels left the New England Patriots for the New York Jets in 1997, he cited a lack of control over personnel decisions, famously saying, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” Working at the University of Kansas, Mangino has never had great facilities or program prestige to sell to elite prospects, but he does have full control over his personnel. As such, nobody in the nation is better at filling their shopping cart full of Salisbury steak and still serving filet mignon.

This year will probably be the highest ranked class Mangino has ever pulled in. As of Tuesday afternoon, Rivals.com had it rated as the 36th best in the nation. There are no one- or two-star recruits amongst the 20 Jayhawk commitments listed on Rivals. Instead, the class has 18 three-stars and two four-stars.

Don’t fret. Mangino hasn’t changed his stripes with success. My guess is the higher ranked class is due to two factors:

1. The Jayhawk coaching staff can now compete against schools like Arkansas and Texas A&M for recruits instead of merely picking from their leftovers. An Orange Bowl will do that.

2. I truly believe that these Web sites are giving Mangino a high level of respect. It is well known that Web sites often boost a player’s rating based on who is interested in him. That is the reason that Florida State had an incredible run of high recruiting classes when these Web sites came to prominence. The thinking went like this: if Florida State, a school that can choose from across the country what athletes they want, shows interest in a player, that must mean that player is good. This unfairly inflated recruiting rankings of several prestigious schools. Now we have a corollary. Guys like Mark Mangino and Wake Forest’s Jim Grobe have proven they can win without four- and five-star recruits. This must mean one of two things: either these two guys are among the very best evaluators in the country or they are among the very best developers in the country. And the truth of the matter is that they are probably both.

That means that if Mangino shows interest in a guy that the Texas Longhorns bypassed, it is now less an indictment on the prospect than it is of the program. This player might have been a two-star recruit a few years ago, but now he is a three-star. This is precisely the reason that the Top 10 ranked recruiting classes today will not mirror the Top 10 final rankings in four years and why you shouldn’t lament Mangino’s failings as a recruiter. Have some faith.

— Edited by Patrick De Oliveira

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