Which Newly Hired Head Coaches Possess the Biggest Recruiting Upside? Is it Riley, Kelly, Cristobal?

In the world of the elite college football programs, more often than not the recruiting juggernauts reach the College Football Playoffs with the recruiting efforts of their head coaches being a prime factor.

Brian Smith | Mar 17, 2022

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Go ahead, try and beat Ohio State, Alabama, or Georgia on a neutral field. You better bring good players. Lots of them.

Recruiting matters and those are three of the truly dominant recruiting machines in the college football world. They are also three of the programs also favored to reach the College Football Playoffs every year. It's not a coincidence.

Regardless of coaching acumen, the teams that trend towards the top of the recruiting heap usually tend to have the best teams. A former coach in Tallahassee used to talk about this very subject.

“He who gets the best players usually wins.” ~ Bobby Bowden, Florida State Head Coach, 1976-2009.

Considering Bowden’s career head coaching record stands at 377-129-4, he knew a thing or two about what was needed to get the ‘W.’

Now it's time to break down the first three of six major college football’s coaches that changed head coaching jobs, or stepped into a head coaching position. Some of these coaches are known recruiters, some need to step up their game, and there’s one individual that’s just hard to figure out.

Note: Class rankings will be taken into consideration for the following remarks, but so too will personal interactions with recruits over the last several seasons in regards to how top prospects discussed these specific coaches. Being a recruiting analyst, the off-record conversations are where the real information is found with regards to who’s truly a top recruiter or not.

Lincoln Riley, Southern California

There’s much to like. Riley has consistently been in contact with top recruits since he was the head man in Norman, Okla. He does not just pass off the job to other coaches on his staff like many coaches do (see below). Now that he’s moved to Los Angeles (a reported 147 million reasons help the move go smoother), there’s good reason to believe the same recruiting effort will yield even better results. Los Angeles is likely more appealing for most recruits as compared to Norman, but it’s still the person making the phone call or sending a DM on Twitter that matters most.

Riley’s style of coaching also plays into the conversations. A wide-open offense that’s shredded defenses even in the SEC is appealing to top wide receivers and quarterbacks above all else. For the class of 2023, that’s what Riley has done with already securing the commitments of three elite recruits for the Trojans.

Wide receiver Makai Lemon, slot receiver Zachariah Branch, and quarterback Malachi Nelson are all committed to play for the Trojans, and all three have a chance to be ranked in the nation’s top 50. Nelson might be the best prep player in the country for Los Alamitos (Calif.) High School. That’s a great start for Riley and Southern California, and there’s more to like than even normal considering the situation.

Lincoln Riley

Lincoln Riley & Caleb Williams

UCLA is mediocre, Arizona State is in turmoil, Stanford has been bad for the past few seasons, Washington has fallen off, California is solid but not great, and even Oregon is somewhat up in the air with the coaching change it underwent. There’s reason to believe that Riley could do very well on the recruiting trail the next few seasons. Here are the good and the bad for Riley.

Good News: The competition out West is relatively weak, as noted above. If Riley and his staff truly stay focused, there’s a chance to have top 10 recruiting classes every year and even have an overall No. 1 recruiting class just by staying out West and dominating the recruiting scene. To reach those top two or three recruiting classes each year, however, Riley will need to dig in even more. Signing two or three top-notch prospects from SEC country and/or back East like New Jersey or Pennsylvania is what made Pete Carroll’s run incredible for the Men of Troy.

Bad News: There’s not much to dislike about Riley’s recruiting acumen, nor the situation Southern California sits in within the Pac 12. As long as his teams start winning relatively quickly, there’s good reason to believe Southern California will once again see it’s name in the top five of the recruiting rankings within the next couple of years at the latest. Just need to find a way to bridge the gap on the field the first season or two because the Trojans really lack depth along both lines and the defense might need to at least have two classes to build championship depth. No coach is perfect as a recruiter, but Riley is about as good as the Trojans faithful could hope for while Southern California looks to rise back to college football prominence.

Grade: A-

Brian Kelly, LSU

This is the hardest person on the list to define. It’s a bit of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Kelly wants to recruit he’s as affluent, accommodating, and precise as any man in college football. He truly is.

But how often does that happen?

Talking to those close to the Notre Dame program during his tenure brought about serious highs and serious lows with recruiting. Same with actually communicating with recruits that were targets of the Irish. Sometimes he was absolutely energized and wanted to recruit like it was the last thing he would ever do on planet earth. Other times, Kelly would bypass calling a recruit altogether.

The latter shall not do.

It’s also important to note that recruiting at Notre Dame takes a deft touch because of academic admission standards being higher there, to a degree, and there’s a totally different job ahead of him while leading LSU.

Can Kelly adapt to an entirely different culture and group of people? Those same people that within the state of Louisiana borders have about as good a per capita rate of placing players into the NFL as any state or area in the country. If Kelly truly takes on the challenge of scouring Louisiana for top talent, he can be a home run recruiter. That’s up to him.

Good News: The move to Baton Rouge probably did Kelly some good. Notre Dame is a grind in many ways for a head coach. Now at LSU, Kelly can recruit more locally and still sign as much if not more talent than he did at Notre Dame. To maximize, however, he needs to want to recruit as much as he just does it out of necessity. This is where rubber meets the road. He seems energized. If that continues, look for LSU to rise back up in a few years.

Bad News: Too many stories of Kelly passing on the chance to call and interact with recruits directly. That’s been the label on Kelly as a recruiter for more than a decade. He’s hot, then he’s cold, with recruiting. Even missing on a single top recruit in the SEC West can be the difference between 8-4 and 11-1. Let’s see if Kelly’s recruiting consistency is better in Baton Rouge than it was in South Bend.

Grade: C+

Mario Cristobal, Miami

If a person connects with a reporter or someone in the recruiting industry that knows Cristobal personally, some of the following definitions will likely be tossed about: A good listener, intelligent, easy going, cordial, a nice guy. Those same words are also why Cristobal is a really good recruiter. Those words and the fact that he, like Bowden, knows that recruiting wins more often than not.

.@gregolsen88 caught up with good friend @coach_cristobal to learn some gems of what he looks for in a recruit 🌟 pic.twitter.com/bKYLyzNg9F
— Youth Inc. (@YouthInc) March 16, 2022

Considering that Oregon was consistently coming to the Deep South and pilfering recruits while he was the Oregon Head Coach, yeah, that says something. Cristobal gets after it on the recruiting trail, and his assistants will do the same or be finding a new place to work.

As for returning to his alma mater in Miami, he’s also a local guy that played Miami (Fla.) Columbus. He knows the streets of Miami. Cristobal understands that he has to get “The U” back to actually signing top Dade County talent, especially from the Public League. That’s been a major issue for Miami for the better part of 20 years as many of those players headed out of state to play at LSU, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, etc.

During that same time span, Miami has failed to have even a single season with fewer than three losses. That’s hard to fathom, but true. The last team with two or fewer losses came in 2003 when the Hurricanes finished 11-2. To get back to that, recruiting is the key, and it starts in the neighborhoods where Cristobal grew up.

Good News: Could there be a more natural fit? Cristobal, the former local prep star that signs with and starts for Miami along the offensive line, ends up being the Hurricanes Head Coach. That’s almost too good to be true. He already has his assistants hitting the phones and recruiting the state of Florida hard, especially in their own backyard. He’s known as a true closer, so Miami fans will know soon enough if Cristobal is the truth or not.

Bad News: He’s inheriting a program that’s just found ways to lose when it absolutely should have won. Can he get the program headed in the proper direction fast enough to fend off the SEC contenders like Alabama, Texas A&M and Georgia that were absolutely killing Miami along the recruiting trail the past few years? The Miami roster is solid, but it has holes. If Cristobal is unable to win quickly, i.e. nine or more wins in year one or year two, he may not sign the top prep talent that’s expected. That’s college football coaching in 2022, with recruits tending to be very fickle and impatient. Elite players tend to sign with programs that are winning now.

Grade: A-

Tomorrow will be a look at three more coaches: Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame, Billy Napier at Florida, and Brent Venables at Oklahoma, for Part II.

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