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Recruiting rankings: Fire Carroll Saturday, Feb 9, 2008 By Harry King LITTLE ROCK - Lloyd Carr is out of work and Pete Carroll should be. Neither one of them won the national championship last month although their schools were the only ones with recruiting classes ranked in the Top 10 each of the past four years, and expectations create a heavy burden. Carr's Michigan finished 9-4, including a bowl victory over Florida. Carroll's USC completed an 11-2 season with a rout of Illinois. Carr exited Ann Arbor on his own and Carroll's record is brought into question solely tongue-in-cheek. Normally, a mid-week column in early February would meet the quota for recruiting-related rhetoric, but there will be plenty of time to get to the difficult back half of Arkansas' basketball schedule and the established series for 3-year-olds at Oaklawn Park doesn't begin until Feb. 18. So, I figured a review of the Scout.com recruiting rankings from 2004-07 might yield another indictment of those who see the signees through rose-colored glasses. Instead, it shows that you can extract data to support one side or the other. No. 1 in the final AP poll, LSU had three classes in the top eight and another in the top 20. No. 2 Georgia had three classes in the top six and one in the top 20. No. 3 USC has already been mentioned with classes ranked 1-6-1-2. Certainly, those three results suggest that we pay attention to the Top 25 recruiting classes that regularly rolled across the bottom of ESPN the other night. Ditto for the bottom line on the other schools with three classes ranked in the top 10 - Oklahoma, Texas, Florida and Tennessee were 13th or better in the final AP poll. During the previous four years, only the Sooners' '07 class was ranked outside the top 25. Corroborating the position of the pooh-poohers are No. 4 Missouri, No. 6 West Virginia and No. 7 Kansas. From '04-'07, those three schools showed up a grand total of once in the Top 25 - West Virginia's '07 class was No. 18. On the field, those teams were a combined 35-5 last year. Make of that what you will before dwelling on the fact that Scout.com put Bobby Petrino's group under the microscope and came up with No. 23, a few notches better than any of Houston Nutt's last four classes. Still, that same service makes the Razorbacks No. 6 in the Southeastern Conference - behind all of the cream other than Tennessee. Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida and Auburn are Nos. 1-5 and all of them are on the Arkansas schedule in 2009. It is no surprise that Petrino signed up skill players with highfalutin resumes. His reputation for offense, he admitted, opened the door and I suspect Arkansas fans will quickly latch onto the catch-phrase of brother Paul, the offensive coordinator. Succinct and explicit, FTS - "Feed the Studs" - is tailor-made for signs and shirts. Unwilling to be specific about the names, I believe Petrino's players will rewrite the Arkansas record book when it comes to passing and catching. Anthony Eubanks' four-year career record of 153 receptions could be obliterated in three years and Barry Lunney Jr.'s 180 completions in one season will be old news by the end of 2010. How that translates into Ws and Ls is much more in flux, and that all-important answer will be a couple of years in the making. For those who can't wait, the basketball thing is immediate and it begins this afternoon with Ole Miss in Fayetteville. Arkansas should win and head into the second half of the schedule at 6-2, the same as Western Division-leading Mississippi State. The Razorbacks' season will be shaped in the five games to follow. Arkansas is on the road against Tennessee (7-1), Mississippi State, Kentucky (5-2) and Alabama (2-6), with only a home game against LSU. In fact, the Razorbacks have only three home games in the final eight. MSU also has a three-five split, home and away, beginning with a game at Auburn this evening. ------- Harry King is sports columnist for Stephens Media's Arkansas News Bureau. His e-mail address is hking@arkansasnews.com. |
