New Media, Same Idiots Reading

Yeah. So people are sort of dumb. We're enthralled with this new media, this Web 2.0, 3.0, etc. sort of stuff, where everyone has a voice. Well, I've decided that most people shouldn't have a voice. Not only do you have a bunch of mouth-breathers running around with blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, YouTube videos, myspace pages, or whatever else that people use to make themselves heard, but you have people actually lend credence to it. And oddly enough, this isn't a political posting. Because there are a lot of idiots running around out there with poorly structured ideas. But I'm talking about sports, particularly recruiting.

Gene Wojciechowski's little piece on Kevin Hart (who was the opener in my last posting) offered up some posts from the Cal sports message boards.

"1st DI player to come out of that high school? He must be a superstar at the school." … "I think this qualifies as a KABOOM." … "Yes, I have seen him play. He's pretty good. Has college size, good skills. Good addition for Cal." … "Sounds like a great young man with size and attitude!" … "I think Kevin Hart will be one hell of a sleeper recruit for Cal."

Some of them are OK, particularly the first two. The third one is where things get dumb. You've got people who have no idea how to evaluate talent evaluating talent. And then, you have people who read what they're saying on Rivals.com (or the like) believing it. So what does this say about the people who post on message boards? And more importantly, what does it say about people who build their expectations on those posts?

Here in the Board Room, we're not afraid to go out on a limb and make some predictions. Most of the time, the predictions are at least decent. And (this year aside), we've been awfully good at evaluating the Illini in basketball. But when it comes to evaluating the incoming freshmen, I like to wait until I've had a chance to see them first hand in college-level competition. All I know is that I hear people talk about how great these players are coming in. I hear all the hype from guys who someone saw once, or someone's little brother played against him in AAU ball, or whatever. And it's all essentially useless information.

Looking back at Rich McBride was a top 30 national recruit. I'm looking back at my postings about him. Essentially, he went from a terrible defender to a so-so one who reached too much over the 3 years that the Board Room and his Illini career overlapped. And my observations suggest that he's gone from a spot up shooter to, well, a spot up shooter that's added a mid-range pull-up to his game. Now, doesn't that sound a lot like Trent Meachem? Trent will never be confused with a national top 30 recruit. But if you go back and read the message boards about Richie, what will they say back when he was being recruited? Luther Head certainly was not a national top 25 recruit. But he ended up being a first round NBA pick. Deron Williams? He was a national top 8 to top 12 recruit. At point. Which made him about a top 40 recruit. He was the #3 overall pick in the NBA draft a few years later. And if you go back to the 2004 rankings, you see that at PF, Shaun Pruitt was #20, and some dude named Joakim Noah was ranked right ahead of him at #19. And Sean Williams was a little after at #28. These are rankings at PF, not overall. Williams was a first round NBA pick. Noah was an NBA lottery pick. Think that some guys doing talent evaluation didn't know what they were talking about? They certainly get some right. But boy, they sure do whiff on a lot. And all it takes is some idiot with an internet connection to get the hype rolling.

We've got all sorts of hype about the kids coming in for '09 and '10, but you know what? Let's not listen to all of the idiots out there until we see things first hand. And then you can have this idiot tell you what to think.

-Chairman