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Football: Gabe King
By Jonathan Okanes
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 12:20 pm in Football, off-season stuff.
I exchanged a couple of e-mails with Gabe King’s coach at South Eugene High School, Travis Johnson, who says King is still deciding between Cal, Oregon and USC. He doesn’t expect King to decide before the end of the month.
King is ranked at the No. 30 overall player in the country by rivals.com
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January 21st, 2010 at 1:08 pm
What’s going on with the CAL recruits?
January 21st, 2010 at 1:59 pm
well, I guess that is the best they can do when you are 8-5.
January 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
ucla has plenty of top 100 candidates. they finished .500.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Gabe, we’d love for you to become a Golden Bear!
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:33 am
@ Rollonubears-
UCLA can sell excitement and that they are on the upswing, just like Tedford could in his earlier years. He can’t sell that now that we have had 3 straight disappointing years and were absolutely manhandled in all 5 losses this year. Why would you pick Cal right now if you could instead choose SC, UCLA, Oregon, heck even UW? Many wouldn’t and haven’t.
On one of the two biggest recruiting weekends of the year, we got thumped by SC, the team looked shell shocked for the second game in a row and essentially gave up – and ALL the recruits saw it and several were quoted in articles talking about how surprised (read disappointed) they were. Heck, guys are now de-committing from Cal and to go to Fresno State … what the … ?.
There are serious doubts about Cal. There are just way more attractive options right now when you are a highly regarded player and have many options. This will come back to haunt Cal on the field in the next 2-3 years. And fon’t forget that Cal has had subpar recruiting classes the past 2 years.
Cal is lucky that haven’t lost more recruits- I am holding my breath. Most of the ones they have are very good, they just do not have enough of those yet, and may have to drop down a level or two in quality to get bodies in here.
Now, if they can land Gabe King, and/or Ego Ferguson, and/or Owamagbe Odighizuwa, and/or Sean Parker – etc. that changes things. Interesting though that they are all on the defensive side of the ball, as are all of this year’s top committed recruits. Top offensive players seem to not want to come here.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:38 am
PS- Cal QB recruit Austin Hinder was downgraded from a 4 star to a 3 star in the final Scout.com rankings. He dropped from about the #13 ranked QB in the country to now 26th. Rated more highly are Nick Montana (UW), Brett Nottingham (UCLA —> Stanford), Seran Mannion (Oregon St.)- all of which Cal either never offered or never even bothered to recruit.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:36 am
Dan is quite the optimist, lets just hope recruits don’t read these sites or keep getting yelled at by old blues at games during visits (U$C game)…
Gabe we’d love for you to become a Bear, as your class is growing stronger by the week.
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I have to believe that the team’s recent performance is not the only factor that recruits consider in making their decisions. Guys who are only interested in college as a transition to the NFL are going to be looking at schools that do not require a heavy academic commitment. As another poster pointed out, that would explain someone choosing Fresno State over Cal.
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
The thing is, I don’t think most fans know why recruits pick teams.
You’ll be surprised at why a recruit would go somewhere. Sometimes its something as trivial as, “they were Nike. I’m a nike man, not underarmour” or “my GF is going there”…or they are persuaded to go somewhere because of personal motivations by their parents. These are 17 year olds making decisions…think about your own decision to go to college…would you have dropped Berkeley out of contention b/c they didn’t get as many Nobel prize winners that year as you thought?
Also, a lot of very good players have the attitude that they are the difference maker (hey, they have been all their life on their teams, why would it change now). They see a good team rebuilding and they say that they can be the difference maker to get the team to a championship. Isn’t that a good attitude? Would you rather have that player or the player that will change his decision based on a swing of 1 or 2 games during a season.
I’m just saying…leave it to the coaches who have actually scouted these guys and have intimate knowledge of our needs.
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:07 pm
No, Dan is quite the realist. Many, many of the players the Cal coaches have recruited, and obviously wanted, as they offered them scholarships months ago, have decided to go elsewhere after having Cal as a favorite or front runner. Chris Martin is the exception, and they got him becuase he wanted to come back home. Many of those recruits who were strongly considering Cal quit considering Cal as the Bears got killed by 5 teams this season and looked dazed and confused doing so. Cal is now forced to go after recruits that are barely or not even on their radar. Kaelin Clay is case in point- not one Pac 10 school has offered him.
Also, I really doubt that recruits read these blogs and would actually have their decisions be affected by what fans write on a newspaper blog- I love how people write here that if there is criticism toward Tedford or the program on these blogs that Tedford might leave or kids will be dissuaded from going to Cal. Please.
Kids are discouraged from going to Cal from watching them get crushed by the other teams that are recruiting them. Kids want to play, they want to win, they want to be on TV a lot in big time games, they want to have fun and they want a chance to be their best. A lot of recruits unfortunately now see better opportunities at many other programs where there is optimism and confidence. I don’t blame them.
There is optimism in a lot of programs that compete with Cal for recruits. There is no doubt that is true-how about for starters we throw out SC, UCLA, Arizona, Oregon, Oregon State, UW and let’s throw in Boise State too. There is not optimism at Cal right now. The team has underachieved the past 3 years, and played in low level, irrelevant bowls in all three.
It is not a stretch to see Cal not even qualify for a bowl next year. It is not a stretch to picture Cal finishing ahead of only WSU and ASU next year. Tedford himself admitted that the season was disappointing and unacceptable. How does me saying that make me wrong or pessimistic? Tedford, who is very private, reached out to JO out of character because this season was not good, given Cals’ talent, expectations and ability to play much better and he wanted the fan base to know he felt that way. I happen to strongly agree with him. He said things need to be fixed. I happen to agree with that. He is now paying the price as he is unable to complete this recruiting class with the quality of recruits that they want but are now unable to lock down given the way the season went.
Once again, the prior 2 recruiting classes were subpar given Tedford’s earlier classes. So you will have lesser talent and lesser depth across 3 classes, or about 65-70% of the roster. I wouldn’ty worry about that as much if Cal had Mike Riley or Chris Peterson or maybe Steve Sarkisian coaching, as I know they would get the maximum results out of the talent. Tedford has not come close the past 3 years to doing that. He basically admitted that for this past season.
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:38 am
You’re not a plant for Stanfurd, are you, Dan?
Notwithstanding the incisive comments you make, ESPN now ranks Cal’s recruiting class among the top 25 (#22). CruzinBears is right, as always. Gabe King would be a terrific addition to the Cal lineup, and I believe the Bears will turn things around once there is some STABILITY in the coaching staff. There has been too much turmoil over the past 2-3 seasons, with three different OCs and a new OL coach this past season. As for the defense, I think the subpar year can be best attributed to the lack of speed at OLB that failed to produce the kind of aggressive pass rush Cal enjoyed when Follett was around. Things will change for the better, and smart recruits know that.
As for academics, I think Coach Tedford’s Academic Game Plan has reduced much of the angst associated with attending Cal and produced a dramatic turnaround in graduation and retention rates. These young men have more than NFL aspirations on their minds, and the university owes it to them to set them up for success in whatever they do when they leave. If you ask me, I’d rather have a successful and clean program than an elite but dirty program. I may be in the minority here, but that is why I believe that Coach Tedford deserves to stay.