In Reply to: Haven't we been through this before? posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on February 26, 2024 at 12:50:51
I don't know how many Chip offered, how many were seriously courted, etc. I consider results a better indicator.
2018 was Chip's first class. He had barely been hired, and several of the commits were secured under Mora. I don't hold this class against Chip at all. He held some Mora commits, and pulled some guys of his own in late. I consider this class in line with traditional UCLA standards. #19 class, 10 4-stars. No problem.
2019 class. Something is wrong. Three 4-stars. #44 class per 247. Three JUCO's. QB signee was a virtually unrecruited 5'10" guy (Griffin). There are at least 2 guys at the bottom of that class that had no business being recruited by UCLA, or at the Power 5 level, for that matter. One was Hayden Harris, the guy who started the School of Mines jokes here.
At this point, there is no NIL. Jarmond has not been hired yet.
2020. Still pre-NIL. Still pre Jarmond. Five 4 stars. Number 31 class per 247. A lot of unheralded guys in this class, a lot of guys who never played. Weird QB recruit with McQuarrie. Chip starts relying on transfers more, as he would the following few years.
Jarmond is hired summer 2020.
2021 was Chip's first class under Jarmond. Still pre-NIL. #25 class per 247. Seven 4 stars. Big transfer haul. Actually a better class on paper compared to the last two.
So, how do you draw from this data that something happened when Jarmond came aboard?
The relevance of the nutrition thing is that Chip had huge bargaining power when he signed with UCLA. UCLA needed him a lot more than he needed UCLA. It appears that he used this to seriously upgrade (at least in price) UCLA's nutrition budget. A huge boost.
Thus, it is incongruous that Chip Kelly could not have negotiated some favorable recruiting parameters if he'd wanted to. Like UCLA was going to say NO to Chip Kelly, who was the top coaching prospect on the table that year?
I know you've said you feel like something happened. Fine. But there's no evidence of it.
As far as Chip being a lazy recruiter. First, I don't think Chip likes recruiting. This is a perception that was shared by many even at the time he was hired by UCLA. He's not a people person, and I think he has a real aversion to begging high school kids to play for him. Chip wants to be in the NFL and now he's having to show love to 16 year olds. He may have expected them to just come to him given his reputation, and when it wasn't as easy as he thought, I believe he thought he was so good a coach he didn't really need them.
So it's not just that Chip was "lazy". I'd say he was lazy, arrogant, and simply averse to doing something he just does not like doing. At Oregon, he took over a program that had a healthy recruiting regimen already in place, along with truly great marketing. He could focus more on coaching. But at UCLA it was incumbent upon him to recruit (personally), hire coaches who were aggressive recruiters, and sell the program to the outside world. It was also important to show some real life those first few years. He did none of these things.