FanPost

Help Grade the 2006 Recruiting Class

February 2006, presented without comment:

Men's Basketball Highlights: Iowa vs. Northwestern (via diweb)

Ugh. Fortunately, some good things also happened in February 2006, one of which was that Adrian Clayborn made his commitment to Iowa official. Let's take a look at the rest of the class, using the same methods employed in our looks at the 2007 class (an epic culmination of Go Iowa Awesome) and the 2008 class (a raging tire fire that led directly to 4-8). Here's the drill:

1. Pre-college information: Recruiting rating, size, geographical location, high school position, other offers, date of commitment, any other information that seems relevant.

2. Performance at Iowa: Statistics, honors, injury history, position changes, games started, etc. If they left prior to graduation, do we have any idea why?

3. Performance after Iowa: For the players who stayed in the program, did they go on to the NFL, the CFL, or arenaball? For those who left, did they have any success at their other schools, or did they fade away entirely?

After all the player threads, I'll post my rough sense of how we would re-rank these players based on hindsight. I'll use the following tiers:

Program changers: guys who are acknowledged as among the best at their position nationally. Most would be high NFL draft picks, but not all. Brad Banks, Riley Reiff.

All-conference/multi-year starters: guys who start and play well for multiple years, and/or guys who are recognized as among the best in the Big Ten when they do start. Christian Ballard, Sean Prater.

Solid starters/pieces: Guys who earn significant playing time and perform well by the time they graduate. Fringe all-Big Ten types- think undrafted NFL free agents, in many cases. Adam Robinson, Allen Reisner.

Contributors: Guys who clearly belong on a major college football roster but are basically replacement-level players. On good/great Iowa teams they contribute on special teams and in rotations, on poor teams they are asked to do more than that. LeBron Daniel, James Vandenberg.

Special teams and garbage time They have recorded statistics but you might not know it. Jack Swanson, Joe Forgy.

No shows, transfers and/or complete misses: Guys who either never made it to campus or never made it past their second year in the program. The guys who make you say "who the hell is that?" when you look at old recruiting classes. Stephane Ngoumou, Joshua Brown. Complete misses would be guys who stay with the program for a significant amount of time but are not able to get on the field in any real way. Johnny Mullings, Zach Furlong.

One additional note: Work is picking up for me, so this may be the last class I can do before the season starts. If anyone else wants to take the reins, feel free; otherwise, we can pick back up during the bye week or after the season.


Unless otherwise expressly indicated by BHGP editors, this FanPost is strictly the viewpoint of the author and is not endorsed by BHGP in any way.