A Sea of Blue’s 2015 Football Big Board First Edition

In an effort to better organize, I decided to track recruits from their home state as opposed to position.If you or I know which state a recruit lives in, it is far easier to find him. One reason for this is due to one service calling a recruit an athlete (ATH) while another service lists him as a wide receiver (WR) or defensive back (DB).

While all the recruiting services keep creating new positions so they can rank favored players, I'm sticking to what you and I know from observation, because we know that only some players stick to the position listed by a recruiting service once they are on campus. So I am ignoring the significance of offensive tacle (OT) vs guards (OG) vs centers (OC) and am keeping it simple by calling the offensive linemen (OL). All-purpose back (APB) is another term I am avoiding. Those guys are RBs. Weakside defensive ends (WDE) and strongside (SDE) are just DEs. Middle, outside and inside linebackers (MLBs/OLBs/ILBs) are LBs. Cornerbacks (CBs) and Safeties are DBs. I'm keeping the ATH position since they could wind up on offense or defense.  I'll let the college coaches decide all the position nuances or maybe I'm just lazy. I'll say one thing, keeping track of our coaching staff and their offers has become a difficult task. That's a good thing, though. Right?

Kentucky currently has two commitments which is far behind several big name schools. It seems they aren't taking any commitments right now. Players who have been offered may have to visit and also be vetted for character and academics before a commitment is accepted. Why accept a commitment from a kid who won't be able to enroll and why accept a commitment from a kid who can't keep his act together? Kentucky, under Mark Stoops, will not become just another Last Chance University, no matter how good a player might be. As everyone knows, Kentucky accepts transfers from quality individuals.

One thing you'll notice is we've made offers to many players who are currently under the radar. Some of those will move up the charts IF they attend combines and camps or begin to garner more offers.

The Recruiting Services:

The services are a cottage industry and each member tends to look out for its best interests and agenda. That is why each may rate and rank a player differently. For example, if you don't go to a Rivals camp, you're not likely to be rated highly by Rivals. We've already seen that with Matt Elam. In a debatable pouting gesture, Rivals ranked him as a 3*. Because Elam participated in some 247 Sports events, including the Army All-American Bowl, he was rated a 5* by 247. ESPN and Scout rated him as a 4*. So, you should judge a player's rating with a grain of salt and see what schools have offered the player and decide for yourself. I suggest that you watch his highlight video which I can provide upon request. If you wish to follow any players on Twitter, I can provide his account upon request, if he tweets. If a player is highly rated by ESPN, Scout, Rivals, and 247 Sports and has a boatload of Top 25 offers, you can consider that player as an elite player.

Offers:

The offers shown here may or may not be commitable offers. Only the coaches and a few recruiting gurus know which is which. It is an argument that I don't wish to get into. If a kid tweets that he has been offered, that's good enough to get him on the board. Last year, we had a recruit commit when his offer was not commitable. So, I'll let the experts make the determination that a commitment is legitimate. Usually, Coach Peveto broadcast a "Yahtzee" tweet when a player committed. Since he departed for LSU, I'm not sure how a commitment will be made public.

Mark Stoops has been quoted that he intends to sign 25 players for 2015. He may sign more if there is some unexpected attrition for whatever reason. This first Installment of our 2015 Big Board will be updated as needed.

For the real true blue football recruiting junkie, ask me for a copy of my spreadsheet. It's free and it has links to the player profiles, Twitter accounts and available videos. My e-mail address is posted at the end of this article or you can get it off my profile.

Click on each slide to enlarge.

This board will change as the recruiting cycle progresses. More emphasis will be placed on offers (especially from Top 25 programs) and the Nike Combines leading up to Nike's The Opening . I will explain why in one of my updates. I plan to keep the Rivals ratings. I can live with their bias even though they treated Elam and Denzel Ware badly with their ratings. You might want to follow Patrick Loney at Scout and Justin Rowland at Rivals.

You don't have to set up a twitter account to see some of their tweets concerning recruits and offers. There are others to follow if you are so inclined. Several recruits send one or both tweets about their interest or an offer. If you click on their "handle" (I know, I'm old-school) it will take you to their profile. Just a warning...some of the tweets are NSFW for women and children. You can also go to Paul Nelson's RankByOffers site and gather a lot of football recruiting information. For example, he has a list of the top high schools based on offers and he has a ranking of of states based on offers.

If you have suggestions for improvement, please e-mail me at orlandocatfan@aol.com and I will certainly consider your suggestion or tell you why I can't use it.