(Written by kencraw)

I’m not a big recruiting guy, but I recognize its importance. All year long when I get questions about recruiting I repeat the same answer: Nothing matters until signing day. Well, seeing how yesterday was signing day, I guess I’d better live up to my word and talk about the one day that matters.

First some fundamentals on recruiting:

Remember that a school gets 85 scholarships. Assuming everyone redshirts and nobody leaves the school, that means you only get 17 scholarships a year. In practice between the handful who don’t redshirt and who leave the University, that means you get around 20 each year on average. Recruiting junior college kids increases that number as well and at times the number can be as high as 25.

In any case, that means you get around 20 scholarship for about 22 positions on offense and defense plus a few special positions (punter, kicker and long-snaper) that you don’t have to recruit every year. What this means is that, special needs aside, you only get one recruit for each position each year and even then, you’ve got to exclude a couple positions. So, the “ideal” 20 looks something like for a 3-4 defense and a pro-set offense:

1 QB, 1-2 RB/FBs, 1 TE, 2-3 WRs, 4-5 OLs, 2-3 DLs, 3-4 LBs, 3-4 DBs

Sure, you can move the numbers by one or even two for the groups and still be OK, but if you get massively out of whack, particularly over multiple years, it’s a near certainty that at some point sports commentators are going to be wondering why the team is so weak in one area or another. Even if over the long haul the numbers are balanced, not being balanced year to year means there will be years down the road after a big group graduates that there may be a big experience/talent dirth behind them, even if there’s a lot of young guys waiting in the wings.

So let’s look at the Bears distribution:

QB: 1 (1 ideal)
RB/FB: 2 (1-2)
TE: 0 (1)
WR: 1 (2-3)
OL: 4 (4-5)
DL: 3 (2-3)
LB: 3 (3-4)
DB: 3 (3-4)

That’s a reasonably good distribution, particularly when one takes into account the current set of players on the roster. The Bears had 8 TE’s on the roster, most of who were young so they really didn’t need any. The one weak spot would be at WR’s where the Bears have 12 overall and 6 underclassmen, I think they could have used the full compliment of 2-3. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty balanced set. Compare this to a school like Stanford, who has been praised for their class with lots of talented/high star players but also has 4 TE’s, only 2 OL’s, 5 DE’s (6 DL’s overall) and only 3 other defenders. I’ve never seen such an out of whack roster, with my limited experience.

The next big factor is immediate needs. While the above balance is very important, and a good mature program will make sure they’ve got balanced classes every year (these are the programs that seem to “reload” not “rebuild”), there are times when things get out of whack for whatever reason and recruiting someone who can come in and play next year is part of the equation. While ocassionally, particularly at some positions, teams can find a polished high school recruit who can come in and play right away, that’s not the norm. Usually what you’re looking for in a high school recruit is talent and potential, even if it is a bit raw.

So generally speaking, it’s hard to find high school recruits who can come in and contribute right away. The alternative is junior college recruits, some of whom are both physically and technically developed enough to contribute right away. At the same time, there is a downside as they’ve only got a couple years to contribute, so it’s pretty important they be ready to contribute now. Cal has had both success and failure with this. Everyone from Ayoob to Bishop.

This year the Bears have 4 junior college recruits:

Ryan Davis, DE
Marksih Jones, WR
Jerome Meadows, LB
Jarred Price, LB

If you think about where the Bears are going to need help in 2009, this is the right group. There is no doubt that LB is where Cal needs the most replacements right away having lost the “big 3” of Follett, Williams and Felder. It’s going to be just as important, if not more important as replacing the “big 3” WR’s from 2007, a position that despite the best efforts of Tedford and Co., was a siginificant weakness in 2008. So 2 LB’s from junior college has the potential to help fill a difficult shortage. Add in that the Bears could use another good WR and that a developed DE wouldn’t hurt either, and it’s hard to argue with these 4 junior college recruits, even if the number is a bit high (I’d put the target at 2 a year).

All of that is said while recognizing the fact that it is a stop-gap mechanism and not the “ideal” way to recruit. But as we all know, football is one by teams that recognize the balance between the theoretical ideals and actual implementation.

While all of this is good, it’s not all great. The Bears lost a recruit at the last minute, that hurt the class (4-star OL Stanley Hasiak from Hawaii who went to UCLA). More importantly (because the Bears also picked up a last minute recruit) the Bears were unable to secure a handful of recruits that would have made the class stellar. Of particular note was Randal Carroll, a 4-star wide receiver who was lost to UCLA, and Devon Kennard, a 5-star DE (would be used as OLB at Cal) who was lost to USC. There were others too, but these were the biggies that were considering Cal late in the game that Cal couldn’t secure.

Of course it is always going to be the case that recruits will chose other schools. Even USC doesn’t get everyone they want. At the same time, it is clear that there are a couple of reasons, facilities being the most glaring and inability to get to BCS bowl games probably being 2nd, that are preventing Cal from getting as many of the recruits as they would like. In the end, this is what is most troubling about this class to me. There’s seems to be a limitation to who Cal can get, at least until the Performance Center is built and the Bears finally get that Rose Bowl.

Overall what this means is that the Cal staff is doing a pretty good job of ensuring that it gets the best, most balanced, solid classes year after year, within the limitations of what the program can get. It’s also worth noting that Cal’s recruits are generally considered under appreciated as opposed to over appreciated, again unlike Stanford who seems to be more in the “star grabbing” mode. There’s no doubt that of 18 recruits there is every reason to believe that all 18 of them have the potential to contribute to the program.

And so “solid” is the word of the day. It’s a solid class, not a great one. It’s more solid that 2007, which was more solid than 2006 or 2005. But it also lacks the “star power” of those earlier classes that gave us a 5-star player in DeSean Jackson in 2005 and 9 4-stars in 2006.

But it is still solid.