Bubba Starling made the correct decision in choosing baseball

If you don't recruit guys who could go play other sports professionally, then you are limiting yourself on the talent and athleticism that you can bring in.

I wonder how much of this will matter going forward, as it seems like more and more kids are being told to specialize in one sport at younger and younger ages. That's truly the bad part about it, is that a kid may be 12-14 years old and told "You can't play baseball any more because you need to concentrate on being a QB and playing on summer 7 on 7 teams if you want to think about getting a college scholarship".

 
Mavric said:
I think Carl Crawford is who you're thinking of.

I don't have any problem recruiting these guys. Try to get the best talent you can. I see your point about being full at a position but usually we end up with at least one spot open. In this case, it's not like it hurt us at QB. Would have been great to have him but we had Carnes the year before, had Turner is this class and got TA the next year. Not all those guys ended up working out but we had options at the time. Plus we had Martinez so we knew we had a couple years yet.
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Yes, Crawford is who I'm thinking of.

I wouldn't necessarily say it didn't hurt us at QB. Hasn't our depth at QB been suspect for quite a while? Wouldn't it have been nice if we would have had a good back up or someone even better than Martinez or Armstrong?

 
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Mavric said:
It's really not that different than saving a spot for Dez Fitzpatrick or Isaiah Simmons and losing out at the last minute with no time to get a replacement.
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With Simmons and Fitzpatrick, we had time (although very little) to fill the spot. With Crawford and Starling, it's a recruit that looks great on paper in your class, but they never make it to campus. It's like recruiting someone you know probably won't qualify...but....hey....they are a great athlete.

 
BigRedBuster said:
Mavric said:
It's really not that different than saving a spot for Dez Fitzpatrick or Isaiah Simmons and losing out at the last minute with no time to get a replacement.
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With Simmons and Fitzpatrick, we had time (although very little) to fill the spot. With Crawford and Starling, it's a recruit that looks great on paper in your class, but they never make it to campus. It's like recruiting someone you know probably won't qualify...but....hey....they are a great athlete.
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We had "time" but we didn't replace them. Next time, if we're waiting for a guy to announce on NSD, we won't have any time to replace them.

You're fine to feel the way you do. But all you're doing now is quibbling about the semantics. The effect of both situations is exactly the same - we thought we had a chance at a great player so we saved a spot for them but we didn't end up with them or anyone to replace them.

 
BigRedBuster said:
I wouldn't necessarily say it didn't hurt us at QB. Hasn't our depth at QB been suspect for quite a while? Wouldn't it have been nice if we would have had a good back up or someone even better than Martinez or Armstrong?
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You're assuming we would have recruited someone else in his stead. Perhaps we would have. Perhaps not. My point is, at the time, we didn't have a particularly pressing need at QB. Carnes still had a chance to turn into a legitimate backup - some even thought he should be playing in the following years. Turner didn't ever get a lot of a shot at QB but he could have in a pinch.

It's not like we were totally counting on Starling to be our QB for the next four year. It was known even before he committed that he was a likely high draft pick and that, if he was, there is a good chance he would choose baseball. If the coaches were that concerned about it, they could have recruited another one anyway. I don't think they were.

And you're also assuming that we could have gotten a commitment from someone "better than Martinez or Armstrong" had we tried. Yeah it would have been nice. But QB recruiting is a fickle business. You would have thought that getting a prospect like Stanton or Darlington instead would have made for a nice backup but apparently you would have been wrong.

 
Not getting Bubba S, Dez B or Simmons didn't really put a huge damper on the quality of the class although it would have pushed us up the ratings chart a bit. Not getting Crawford did really hurt Solich and the Huskers at the time. One, CC was the QB NU needed and while Jamal Lord did well, he wasn't a solid passer plus it kept him from playing the position he was recruited for which was safety. It would have made our D better,given him more experience, and probably prolonged his pro career.

 
As a baseball guy and football guy, I understand every time why a dual-sport athlete chooses baseball over football. I just wish when is was a player deciding between Nebraska and baseball, they'd choose Husker football, haha.

 
I hoped that the promis he could play both sports would convince him to come here. He made the right choice and all, but ya gotta wonder what would have been different.

 
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