What separates Stoops from Blake
Published: 7/26/2008 7:22 PM
Last Modified: 7/26/2008 7:22 PM
We haven't heard much from Trev Alberts since Lou Holtz replaced him on the ESPN college football set (one of the worst downgrades in TV sports history by the way). Still, the former Nebraska linebacker occasionally sounds off on either CSTV or CBS' website.
Here, for example, was Alberts' recent take on the difference between Bob Stoops and John Blake:
"I would like to think it's still more important to understand Xs and Os than to be a good recruiter. Let's take, for instance, Bob Stoops.
"Before he arrived, Oklahoma was a bad football team and in a few short years he turned them into a national championship team with the same players John Blake brought to Norman. Stoops just coached up. Same can be said for Georgia. You can see a tangible difference Mark Richt made when he started coaching the Bulldogs after Jim Donnan. They've played on a different level.
"Coaching ability is more important because recruiting is such an inexact science. All those top-notch classes do not mean those players are actually going to be All-American-type players. You just go back and take a look at some classes from a few years ago. Nebraska, for instance, had one of the best classes a few years ago and now it's panning out to be a pretty poor class. It's just really hard to tell how a kid is going to turn out.
"I think you can hire recruiters and hire the people to help you recruit, but you better start out by finding a fundamentally sound Xs-and-Os coach."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
