The unofficial online home for fans of the Old Dominion University Monarchs. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(04-05-2024 09:15 AM)Monarchist13 Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:48 AM)monarx Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:28 AM)The Flagship Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:15 AM)ODURallyFox Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 07:55 AM)The Flagship Wrote:  What is the recruiting budget and how does it compare to our peers?

I have no idea. But it cannot be good, whatever it is. You should ask your pal Woody on that.

So you raise a concern over something that you have no information on?

I'll give you a bit: We spent more than twice as much on football recruiting in the year ending June 2023 than JMU did.

Do you still want to question the athletic department's financial investment?

This is good to know, and Im glad to hear the school is not only matching the investment of our conference peers but exceeding it. Though it does bring up the question that keeps arising in so many of our athletic efforts. Why do we continually invest more and have worse results than the competition? In this case its an in-state rival as well, so even accounting differences between states shouldn't be the bulk of the answer. Do you think it just comes down to their old staff was better at recruiting and coaching than ours? Seems we're pretty equal on funding, facilities and everything else.

There’s a variety of factors at play between these 2 schools. The most obvious is schedules. We’ve been playing the toughest non-con schedule by far in the league the last 2 years. JMUs non-con doesn’t really compare.

Learning to win is a huge part of becoming a good football program and it’s easier to do that against what they are facing versus what we have to go up against. This type of scheduling made sense for us when we were in the expansive and weaker CUSA. But moving into the toughest division in G5 football makes one wonder if it’s time for a new non-con scheduling philosophy.

If we switched schedules, do either teams finish with the same record? Doubtful.

Now to the second point. Roster building and recruiting from a position of power.

Bobby left us with an a mediocre FCS roster with a handful of decent players coming off a 1 win year. It takes time to build back from that. Then we had COVID, which put us further behind the 8-ball. Last year, we finally started to see Ricky’s players get to an upperclassmen level and we saw marked improvement against the conference.

JMU on the other hand hasn’t had a down period they’ve been faced to recruit with. They also didn’t have to recruit while having to explain why they didn’t play during COVID.

They’ve essentially been recruiting from a position of power since they moved up.

Now I don’t want to take anything away from what they’ve accomplished. It’s impressive what they’ve done. But this stuff matters and is a factor between the success of the two programs.

JMU still recruited well, despite not being eligible to compete for a conference championship for a couple of seasons, and not being eligible for a bowl two seasons ago. They have had obstacles to overcome too - lets not kid ourselves here. Also, looking back on the COVID year, it did set us back and it was not a good decision to sit out that season. But that is just my take.

But now posters are telling me that we are outspending JMU by a lot, yet are results are way more poor. And 247 Sports has us in dead place for the 2024 recruiting cycle. If we our outspending our peers by a lot, we should be doing better than dead place.

(04-05-2024 09:24 AM)ODURallyFox Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 09:15 AM)Monarchist13 Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:48 AM)monarx Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:28 AM)The Flagship Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:15 AM)ODURallyFox Wrote:  I have no idea. But it cannot be good, whatever it is. You should ask your pal Woody on that.

So you raise a concern over something that you have no information on?

I'll give you a bit: We spent more than twice as much on football recruiting in the year ending June 2023 than JMU did.

Do you still want to question the athletic department's financial investment?

This is good to know, and Im glad to hear the school is not only matching the investment of our conference peers but exceeding it. Though it does bring up the question that keeps arising in so many of our athletic efforts. Why do we continually invest more and have worse results than the competition? In this case its an in-state rival as well, so even accounting differences between states shouldn't be the bulk of the answer. Do you think it just comes down to their old staff was better at recruiting and coaching than ours? Seems we're pretty equal on funding, facilities and everything else.

There’s a variety of factors at play between these 2 schools. The most obvious is schedules. We’ve been playing the toughest non-con schedule by far in the league the last 2 years. JMUs non-con doesn’t really compare.

Learning to win is a huge part of becoming a good football program and it’s easier to do that against what they are facing versus what we have to go up against. This type of scheduling made sense for us when we were in the expansive and weaker CUSA. But moving into the toughest division in G5 football makes one wonder if it’s time for a new non-con scheduling philosophy.

If we switched schedules, do either teams finish with the same record? Doubtful.

Now to the second point. Roster building and recruiting from a position of power.

Bobby left us with an a mediocre FCS roster with a handful of decent players coming off a 1 win year. It takes time to build back from that. Then we had COVID, which put us further behind the 8-ball. Last year, we finally started to see Ricky’s players get to an upperclassmen level and we saw marked improvement against the conference.

JMU on the other hand hasn’t had a down period they’ve been faced to recruit with. They also didn’t have to recruit while having to explain why they didn’t play during COVID.

They’ve essentially been recruiting from a position of power since they moved up.

Now I don’t want to take anything away from what they’ve accomplished. It’s impressive what they’ve done. But this stuff matters and is a factor between the success of the two programs.

JMU still recruited well, despite not being eligible to compete for a conference championship for a couple of seasons, and not being eligible for a bowl two seasons ago. They have had obstacles to overcome too - lets not kid ourselves here. Also, looking back on the COVID year, it did set us back and it was not a good decision to sit out that season. But that is just my take.

But now posters are telling me that we are outspending JMU by a lot, yet are results are way more poor. And 247 Sports has us in dead place for the 2024 recruiting cycle. If we our outspending our peers by a lot, we should be doing better than dead place.

There’s two more important distinctions between the 2 programs. JMU until this offseason has had continuity at the OC role and they’ve hit on QBs.

This year is the first time we will have OC continuity since Bobby and QB continuity. Hopefully Grant can keep improving and become that guy. But we have had very little luck at the position since David Washington graduated and because of that, it’s easy to see why we’ve struggled.

(04-05-2024 10:23 AM)Monarchist13 Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 09:24 AM)ODURallyFox Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 09:15 AM)Monarchist13 Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:48 AM)monarx Wrote:  

(04-05-2024 08:28 AM)The Flagship Wrote:  So you raise a concern over something that you have no information on?

I'll give you a bit: We spent more than twice as much on football recruiting in the year ending June 2023 than JMU did.

Do you still want to question the athletic department's financial investment?

This is good to know, and Im glad to hear the school is not only matching the investment of our conference peers but exceeding it. Though it does bring up the question that keeps arising in so many of our athletic efforts. Why do we continually invest more and have worse results than the competition? In this case its an in-state rival as well, so even accounting differences between states shouldn't be the bulk of the answer. Do you think it just comes down to their old staff was better at recruiting and coaching than ours? Seems we're pretty equal on funding, facilities and everything else.

There’s a variety of factors at play between these 2 schools. The most obvious is schedules. We’ve been playing the toughest non-con schedule by far in the league the last 2 years. JMUs non-con doesn’t really compare.

Learning to win is a huge part of becoming a good football program and it’s easier to do that against what they are facing versus what we have to go up against. This type of scheduling made sense for us when we were in the expansive and weaker CUSA. But moving into the toughest division in G5 football makes one wonder if it’s time for a new non-con scheduling philosophy.

If we switched schedules, do either teams finish with the same record? Doubtful.

Now to the second point. Roster building and recruiting from a position of power.

Bobby left us with an a mediocre FCS roster with a handful of decent players coming off a 1 win year. It takes time to build back from that. Then we had COVID, which put us further behind the 8-ball. Last year, we finally started to see Ricky’s players get to an upperclassmen level and we saw marked improvement against the conference.

JMU on the other hand hasn’t had a down period they’ve been faced to recruit with. They also didn’t have to recruit while having to explain why they didn’t play during COVID.

They’ve essentially been recruiting from a position of power since they moved up.

Now I don’t want to take anything away from what they’ve accomplished. It’s impressive what they’ve done. But this stuff matters and is a factor between the success of the two programs.

JMU still recruited well, despite not being eligible to compete for a conference championship for a couple of seasons, and not being eligible for a bowl two seasons ago. They have had obstacles to overcome too - lets not kid ourselves here. Also, looking back on the COVID year, it did set us back and it was not a good decision to sit out that season. But that is just my take.

But now posters are telling me that we are outspending JMU by a lot, yet are results are way more poor. And 247 Sports has us in dead place for the 2024 recruiting cycle. If we our outspending our peers by a lot, we should be doing better than dead place.

There’s two more important distinctions between the 2 programs. JMU until this offseason has had continuity at the OC role and they’ve hit on QBs.

This year is the first time we will have OC continuity since Bobby and QB continuity. Hopefully Grant can keep improving and become that guy. But we have had very little luck at the position since David Washington graduated and because of that, it’s easy to see why we’ve struggled.

Not only just QBs. They have arguably had one of the best and most dominant defensive line units in the conference, if not in the whole country. They made their FCS to FBS transition look absolutely seemless, seemingly with much less. Cignetti was an FCS coach and seemingly had no issues making the transition up.

Our current coaching staff clearly whiffed on some QBs previously, and it took them seemingly forever to actually recruit one out of high school. Their biggest hit so far has come from a portal transfer from an FCS program. Not picking on Grant - just stating the reality of things. I really hope Grant takes the next step this year and does great things.

If we are in a position of outspending our peers as other posters have pointed out to me, we should not be whiffing this frequently on players. Our staff has also overhauled the roster completely the last two seasons.

M13, I hope you understand my concern on the recruiting correlation not adding up to results on the field. I do not like hearing that ODU is outspending others, and ultimately getting deadplace results on various recruiting sites and clearly whiffing on QB prospects.

2024 is a big year for this staff. Its put up or shut up time. Our fanbase deserves a WINNING season at bare minimum.