Can't blame him for that,.. NFL LB's are scary muthafuckers. He's gonna do great though,.. you'll see.
I think he's being overrated as a return man, and at receiver (he is extra good with dinks and screens though). He's a RB, the 49ers say they plan to design special packages with him involved. I think only Gore will have more carries. James is durable, but you just never know... He has remarkable ability to slip through the smallest gap and break out at full speed. He's also very tough for a little guy, amazingly good on 3rd and 4th down. Harbaugh twice watched James destroy his Stanford team,.. the 49er's Coach knows what LaMike can do.
If you want to say he recruited few superstars at Ole Miss, I'll buy that, but the point is that his players performed higher at Ole Miss than the recent tradition there. As his recruits were peaking as a team, they finished in the top 20 two years in a row, a rarity nowadays for that school. And there's also the short dynasties of USC and Miami that he helped put together. These are what puts him at the top. If you only look at his Ole Miss job, sure he wouldn't seem that great, but when you factor in that he had a huge hand in recruiting for USC and Miami while they went on championship runs year after year, I don't see how one can rate his success as no better than just "pretty good."
Top 25 two years in a row, yes. Semantics because 2009 was at #21. USC and Miami. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier in this thread. Target rich environment that anyone with a decent living room presence can recruit well in. I don't see it as locations you can point to and use as examples to say a guy is one of the best in the nation. Look at Mark Richt and put him somewhere else besides UGA. He's a pretty good recruiter, but he isn't one of the best in the nation. And, BTW, I'm not denying the fact there are a few schools including my own who have a built in advantage.
As for the Ole Miss ranking, I was going by AP, not coaches, but it isn't much of a difference(#20 in '09). But if recruiting at USC and Miami was attributable to location and other offerings, then why haven't USC and Miami always been as good? Their location hasn't changed, nor have any of their other amenities. There were even a number of different head coaches at Miami while he was there, and they stayed good. I agree with the Richt point, but UGA hasn't been good year in and year out like Orgeron's teams have been. He has a good surge of players every 3 or 4 years and then they go back to mediocre. I suppose there's no way to really settle this as you can hardly observe this sort of thing scientifically, but I think Orgeron was the only common item between these two teams other than location, prestige, etc. of the schools, but those haven't changed and their talent levels have tapered off. I can certainly see where you're coming from though. Frank Wilson's performance over the past few years has seriously made me reconsider who I consider to be the top recruiter. Do you think recruiting is the most important aspect of a college football coach, or is the ability to coach the players or manage the game more important?
For every example of one, you can find another to put up against it. Petrino: not a great recruiter but a great play caller. Zook: A great recruiter but was/is an average coach at best.
That's true. I always consider Petrino more of an NFL coach in that respect. He does NOT seem like a people person, but he knows the game. I really think recruiting is the name of the game in CFB, but that's just my opinion. Case-in-point, really is Miles(depending upon your opinion of him). I think he's a great coach with an old-fashioned, OL style, but A LOT of people consider him to be a bad coach, but he wins. I'm sure there are as many counter-examples, though.
