The Florida State Seminoles are in real danger of posting three consecutive losing seasons for the first time since the 1970s, and Deion Sanders thinks he knows why.
The Seminoles legend blamed the school’s recruiting strategy for its recent struggles, arguing that the team has been more concerned with recruiting rankings than intangibles.
“It starts out with recruiting; it starts out with the type of kids,” Sanders said on Wednesday’s “The Paul Finebaum Show,” via Riley Gates of 247Sports. “We’re chasing five-stars and four-stars, and we’re not measuring the heart. It’s no way to detect the heart. It’s no way to understand that. Instead of looking at the made-up highlight tapes, hey man, let’s go look at practice. I want to see a kid practice. Show me the practice tape. Games are the best possible plays he can have. There’s no way a guy was great for three straight minutes.
“Show me how he practices and sometimes we’re losing the understanding because we’re into rankings. We want to say we have the number one class in the nation from that year, just because we acquired several five- and four-stars.”
Maybe Sanders is on to something. According to 247Sports’ team rankings, the Seminoles brought in the third-ranked recruiting class in the country in both 2015 and 2016, followed by the No. 6 class in 2017 and No. 11 in 2018. They’ve continued to slip each year as on-field success has not followed the highly-touted recruits.
Now that Sanders is a college coach himself, perhaps this philosophy will inform his recruiting strategy.
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