After very high hopes for the Raiders in 2013 - they had the preseason Patriot League offensive player of the year, QB Gavin McCarney, and were picked as the preseason favorites to win the Patriot League's autobid - the Fightin' Biddles suffered through injuries - none huger than the dogging ones to McCarney - to fall to a 4-8 record.
If there's one thing that the HooDoos were able to do in an outstanding way with Biddle at the helm, it's getting quality, Patriot League championship-caliber athletes to play football in the middle of frigid Hamilton. The Patsy Point system, too, acknowledges this, with the Gate securing a whopping 73 Patsy Points last year.
In Hamilton, Colgate transitions from Biddle (known to Lehigh fans, heretoforth, as "Bobblehead Biddle") to Hunt. How did Dan Hunt's Patsy class measure up to that of his boss?
THE GOOD
The idea of the Mean Red Machine announcing Biddle's retirement and Hunt's hiring early in the offseason had to have been timed minimize any negative impacts on recruiting. If you're judging Colgate's recruiting by the number of starred recruits in their incoming class, you will be enormously pleased with their haul. (Consequently, if you were hoping that their coaching transition would mean a smaller Patsy Point class, prepare to be disappointed.)
Getting starred recruits to snowy Hamilton is what the Colgate coaching staff does. They've been doing it for years, and the Hunt era has effortlessly continued that trend. That's is not as easy as these Patsy Point ratings would have you believe.
THE BAD
Perusing last year's defensive stats for the Hamiltonians, two statistics stand out:: 97th in FCS in total sacks, and 92nd in FCS in total defense. Those are not numbers that will scare anyone in the Patriot League. Those two numbers would also seem to dictate a recruiting class larded with defensive players, and certainly some of those aforementioned starred players should feature prominently in this class.
But that's just it: in what was a crying need area (and, remember, team needs are determined by the Colgate fans themselves, not some Committee member), what should have been the strongest part of the class was instead was THE weakest. The Committee was shocked at this.
As a result, Colgate left a ton of Patsy "needs points" on the table. It also makes The Committee wonder if this is going to bite the Maroons in some way in future years.
"I know I should have recruited that three-star, 300 lb nose tackle that ended up at Cornell..."
PATSY POINT CALCULATION
QUALITY = 49. Last year, I said Colgate had a massive haul in terms of the quality points of their class. They had 37, and I was marveling at the percentage of their class that were mentioned by the recruiting services (71%).
Incredibly, this year the Raiders actually bested that number by a giant 12 Patsy Point margin.
16/20, or an even 80%, at least had a page at one of the major recruiting services. Even more astoundingly, though, 8 of the 20 were starred recruits at one of the four services.
Where Colgate chopped their wood was by getting the two-star, unconfirmed guys, defined as a player that had a two-star rating at exactly one recruiting service. Seven Maroon recruits fit this bill, which resulted in 35 of these 49 points.
Even more interestingly, this was the first year I included star ratings from the upstart of the recruiting services, 247Sports.com, and three of the recruits were two-star recruits on this site, but not on the traditional scouting sites of Scout, Rivals, or ESPN (though some did have pages on these sites).
If The Committee had not made the executive decision to add 247Sports to the ratings, Colgate would have had, conservatively, ten fewer points in this category.
CLASS SIZE = 3. 20 Recruits. The base size of recruits was reached, and the four extra recruits yielded bonus points.
DISTRIBUTION = 8. Every position had a signed recruit - with the exception of kicker. It's unclear if coach Hunt has the same "we don't need no stinkin' kicker" philosophy that coach Biddle seemed to have at times as head coach, but in any event, it means Colgate scores eight of the nine possible points.
"If you're coming to Colgate, son, you'll have to be perfect converting kicks in this..."
SPEED = 6. Speed information was sketchy for this bunch of maroons, but three recruits did yield measurable speed information that translated into a decent Patsy Point haul.
TRIGGER = 1. The one QB in the incoming class fogged a mirror of most of the recruiting services, and thus earned the class one additional Patsy Point.
JUMBO = 3. If there's a number that might mildly disappoint the Colgate faithful, it's this one. Most years, the future Raider linemen are maybe two cheeseburgers from topping 300 lbs. Instead, of their six recruited linemen, only three met the "Jumbo" criteria - and did so barely.
DL = 0 (of 5). As mentioned, this was an obvious need area for the Maroon, whether judging by numbers, or production from last year. The result was, instead, two recruits, with one of them with a page in the recruiting services. Even if one of the two recruits becomes the next DE Ahmad Russell - and they might - Colgate did not meet the need on an overall level.
Whaddaya mean, no Patsy Points on the defensive line?
LB = 1 (of 4). It wasn't much better at the second announced need area for Colgate, though they at least had a lot more numbers at this position (4) than defensive line. The depth, and the fact that two had pages on the recruiting websites, resulted in one Patsy Point.
OL = 3 (of 3). It's here, where the OL Paul Clasby-esque recruits show up for Colgate. The "Maroon 5" offensive linemen (one guy is listed as a OL/DL, but he counts as an OL for Patsy point purposes) feature two starred recruits, great numbers, and four out of five of them have a page on the recruiting websites. That's a well-met Patsy Point need right there.
(Incidentally, that's a picture of Paul Clasby above, showing that there has always been a history of Colgate and offensive linemen. As far as the Committee knows, Paul Clasby is not a current member of Maroon 5, however.)
COMMITTEE ADJUSTMENT: 0. When you look around in the world and you see the political environment in 2014, you see a politically divided, cantankerous country. The cantankerous Committee is no exception as for what to so with Committee Adjustment points.
One faction looked over the ratings systems suspiciously, sniffling extra loudly at the 247Sports rankings and the extra Patsy Points they wrought. "Inflation," was overheard from one Committee member who looked not unlike Alan Greenspan.
This faction of the Committee put together a proposal to deduct a certain number of Patsy Points due to questions about the new scouting system's reliability - and the unforeseen effects of adding another Rating service to the mix. "Four is greater than three," it was overheard, "and that means more stars, and more Patsy Point inflation. Records might be broken in this incoming class, and it's not because the kids are THAT much better - it's because of methodology."
Then, though, there was another faction, led by a Committee member that looked not unlike Sergey Brin, who thought such talk of Patsy Point inflation to be ridiculous.
"We agreed last month that more data was better," he said, "and 247, though new, is reliable enough for Patsy purposes. In fact, have you seen Scout lately? Is that actually a bastion of scientific fact? Was it ever?"
This difference of opinion didn't result in any fistfights (though it did involve flying staplers), but it did result in a perfect stalemate as to what to do about it. The ensuing gridlock resulted in no Patsy Point adjustment trying to judge the veracity of the publicly-available scouting ratings.
COLGATE - 76
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