Jamal Takes a Shot at the Recruiting Services...

Stars Don’t Mean Jack   Like many Spartan fans I was hoping that Mark Dantonio and his staff would land Nick Perry. He would’ve started right away and

Stars Don’t Mean Jack

  

Like many Spartan fans I was hoping that Mark Dantonio and his staff would land Nick Perry. He would’ve started right away and been a combo LB/DE that reeked havoc all over the field. But we didn’t land him. Or a few other highly touted players. My response to that: So be it, it’s their loss.

  

As a reader said when you look at the “Spartan 21” you don’t see a lot of “wow” recruits, a.k.a 5 or 4-star guys. In this day and age of recruiting everybody is in a rush to grade a kid and label him this or that but I can promise you a handful of these nationally ranked 5 and 4-stars won’t live up to all their hype. It’s just the law of averages. So why are so many people worried about the lack of big names in Dantonio’s class? Now Tyler Hoover, Fred Smith and Charles Burrell are supposed to be the cream of this years crop, with all three of them expected to contribute immediately. So who cares what their ranked, if a head coach of a big 10 school and his staff say a freshman is good enough to come in and play in such a physical league then that’s good enough for me.

  

While some coaches such as Pete Carroll at USC, Nick Saban at Alabama, and a few others have the luxury of selling prestige and playing for schools that produce many NFL players, that doesn’t necessarily make them great coaches. Now I know that those two have won national championships, but to me a great coach doesn’t just win, he develops the talent he has. Since Pete Carroll has been at USC I can only name a few big name players of his that has been successful at the next level: Carson Palmer, Lofa Tatupu and Troy Polamalu (the jury is still out on Matt Leinart, and Reggie Bush is NOT an every down back in the NFL). So I would rather have a coach who can take a 3 star kid and coach him into a great player with great technique and I think Dantonio is one of those coaches.

  Last year MSU went 7-6 with players that couldn’t get on the field under the previous regime and many other schools didn’t even want. That was a true testament to the coaching ability of Dantonio and his staff: He took lowly-rated guys and led them to a bowl game. So when Mark Dantonio stands in front of dozens of cameras and reporters and promises that this player or that will succeed at MSU, I’d believe him.