"Dear TwistNHook, you are so dreamy!  Please send a glossy 8x10 headshot to P. Carroll at 3400 Figueroa St."
Reader Rishi writes in saying this:

Ok, that probably wasn’t *that* helpful.  But the point is this, people wanna know about recruiting.  They want to know about what new people are coming into the Cal fold.  Well, look, I’m here to help. 

First thing you need to know about recruiting is two words:  Joe and, to a much greater extent, Ayoob.  Wait, 3 more words.  5 star recruit.  Read those together.  5 recruit Ayoob star recruit.  Now, jumble them up so they make more sense:  5 star recruit Joe Ayoob.

Let’s repeat that again:  5 star recruit Joe Ayoob. 

Yeah.  Ok, I could probably stop here and you’d walk away with a smug sense of self-worth.  I know I would!  But you want to know more about recruiting.  Fair enough.  We here at the California Golden Blogs have some first hand knowledge of some of the pitfalls of recruiting. 

We had our own 5 star hot shot recruit come in here early on.  DHampton was highly recruited coming out of Haas School of Business.  He had *all* the Cal blogs drooling over his stats.  And those online recruiting sites were going crazy over him.  Here is what Scout had to say about DHampton a few years back:

"Types with the smooth grace of a young Bill Simmons."

"Makes Will Leitch look like Will Suck" (Hey, I never said Scout was hilarious).

"A true throwback who harkens back to a younger, brighter day when people blogged for the love of the information, not for the big money contracts."

So, thanks to some contacts at a local car dealership and Berkeley’s finest whorehouse (Cloyne4life!), we were able to lure DHampton to our organization.  TedfordIsGod.com nearly snagged him, but they were transitioning to TheBandIsOutOnTheField.com.  We were able to successfully prey upon the uncertainty in that situation by saying things like "You don’t know what the new regime is going to be like" and "I heard Kevin refuses to hire a monkey for our upcoming monkey knife fight." 

So, we get this stud recruit and what happens?  He does 1 hilariously unfunny joke of a post and then LOSES HIS PASSWORD?!?!?!  Not to get all Wet Hot American Summer on you, but no blogger worth his weight in geldings goes anywhere without his 20 sided password.  5 star recruits especially shouldn’t be losing their password.  And thus was the end of the great DHampton Era. 

Some might say it was epically worse than the Joe Ayoob Era.  Some might say.

But that was last year, you want to know whats going on now.  Well, there’s been a lot of changes.  The most noticeable was the addition of CBKWit to our team.  I was, at this point, going to make a joke about how he was a 2 star recruit who wasn’t given a lot of thought.  Then, the joke was going to continue about how he has panned out at a great level.  And how many players are like that.  Flying under the radar and then exploding onto the scene.  It would have been REALLY funny. I mean REALLY funny.  You would most likely have been fired from your job after your boss found out why you were laughing uncontrollably for 30 straight minutes. 

But when I sent around an excerpt of the DHampton section around the Golden Blogs email list for advice, CBKWit instantly assumed he would play the above-mentioned role of 2 star success story.  That’s Stanford-level of pretense.  And then, to add insult to injury, he bragged about his sexual conquests.  That’s USC-level of pretense!!  All stunningly attractive married men hate it when their ugly single friends brag about sexual conquests.  Because we all know that if we were single, we could be doing a lot better than that!  And that right there, folks, is Cal-level of humility.

So, CBKWit was out. And I have recycled the joke below in a far less funny format than it would have been with CBKWit.  Oh well.  You have nobody to blame, but CBKWit and the endless list of women he doesn’t deserve to nail! 

"CBKWit would never stand a chance with me.  Or would he?" 

Let’s take a break from this tour of internal Golden Blogs politics to look at some other recruits.

Well, what other recruits are there?  One of them is the official blog of Nate Longshore.  That has gone about as well as his season.  Started off with high hopes and then, well, I guess that intense pilates schedule kept him too busy or something.   Didn’t have time to focus on other things, like blogging and throwing 4th quarter touchdowns. 

OskiTalk is another new recruit to the scene.  They have definitely been an impact recruit this season.   They came in and right from the start, they’ve been giving 5 star level analysis!  From just a 2 star recruit.  I don’t think anybody will ever forget where they were when OskiTalk posted about Alex Mack staying.  What a moment! 

There wasn’t a lot of hype surrounding them.  The Conquest Chronicles and Burnt Orange Nations of the world barely gave them a passing glance.  But like Aaron Rodgers, they’ve come out of obscurity to really take the reigns on this blogging thing.  Feel free to contact Conquest Chronicles and Burnt Orange Nation to demand to know why they failed to give OskiTalk more credit coming out of Butte Community College.  To those guys, if the recruit doesn’t come out of one of the big football blogging factories, they don’t give em a second thought. 

Let’s take a look at how some of our opponent’s recruiting has done.  Well, DumpDorrell is in shambles.  They haven’t updated in weeks!  They claim to have "won" the battle, but all I know is that they’ve failed to register NukeNeuheisel.com.  Just another example of a super hyped recruit not quite panning out. 

Then, there’s WSU Football Blog.  They have a consistent schedule of quality posting.  They have several different posters who all give reasonable and rational analysis.   They even have a recruit with the name Hooty McBoob (I guess Busty St. Clair was taken).  Hell, they have great tastes in photos:

"He needs to borrow a feeling." 

But no matter how great their posting may be, no matter how amazing their photos may be, they have one thing holding them back.  They’re Forsett-short.  NAH, JUST JOKING!  It’s a blog, that doesn’t matter at all.  

But they do write about Wazzuu.  And so, that renders them irrevelent.  Moving on.

So, as you can see there’s a lot more to recruiting than star rankings, salacious women, and Ed Orgeron.  Like salacious Ed Orgeron (oh god, there isn’t water hot enough to wash that mental image from my mind)!  People with knowledge of such things (like Ragnarok, HydroTech, CBKWit, and Yellow Fever) tell me that some important dates are coming up or something.  All I know is that we are rapidly approaching the 3 year anniversary of the Joe Ayoob signing day, when he officially entered our lives. 

Speaking of that, I’m still sitting shiv’ah for the 2005 season!  Feel free to join me in my everlasting mourning vigil.   Until that ends, GO BEARS!

PS Kevin, you owe me a monkey knife fight.   

In a very odd story, a high school prospect in Nevada has committed to Cal.  The thing is, Cal never offered the prospect or even been in direct communication with this prospect.

The young man at the center of attention is 6′5 300 lb. Kevin Hart of Nevada (Rivals profile).  He is a 2009 recruit - meaning he can’t actually sign a LOI (Letter of Intent) until February 2009.  But apparently, Oregon and Cal had offered him scholarships very early on and Mr. Hart was ready to pull the trigger and commit. 

[EDIT: Mr. Hart is a 2008 recruit.  HydroTech mistakenly interpreted some information.]

Being that Mr. Hart is the first student at his highschool to be offered a scholarship at a major D1A school, there was apparently a big announcement ceremony with lots of local media present.  Mr. Hart had a Cal and Oregon hat out in front of him, and then donned the cap for the school of his choice: Cal.  

But this supposed commitment struck Scout and Rivals by surprise.  Being in the business of recruiting, they’d know if Tedford & Co. were in contact with said recruit.  They’d know if there was a scholarship offer.  And to their knowledge, there is no scholarship offer. 

So what gives?  A big prank?  Well, not a prank by Mr. Hart, but possibly by someone else.  Someone has got to be playing a big prank on Mr. Hart.  A well played one at that. 

The linked news article above quotes Mr. Hart as saying: "They really sold me … Coach (Jeff) Tedford and I talked a lot, and the fact that the head coach did most of the recruiting of me kind of gave me the real personal experience."  

This quote certainly seems to suggest that someone had been posing as Tedford and calling the young man frequently enough to develop a rapport and relationship.  Such a good faux relationship to cause the Mr. Hart to truly believe he was talking to Tedford and was offered a scholarship.  Amazing. 

Frankly, I feel sorry for Mr. Hart.  Whether the prank was intended merely as a friendly joke or with malicious intent, he’s the victim, and now at the center of attention of a very embarrassing situation.  The local media that was also duped probably isn’t very happy.  The coach who was probably duped too, isn’t very happy.  Most of all, Mr. Hart and his family isn’t very happy. 

How can this happen?  

I don’t know.  Who ever as at the helm of this elaborate prank must know what they are doing.  They must have made the calls as realistic as possible.  Or, the coach was a little negligent in his duty as a liaison to the faux Jeff Tedford. 

When a college football program recruits a player, they contact everyone.  They contact the coach.  They contact the parents.  And the friends.  And the girlfriend.  And the friend’s friends. And the recruit’s teachers.  They talk to everyone.  They want to know if the recruit is a quality kid.  They want to know of prior injuries.  They want to know if he dozes off in class.  If he gives 110% in practices.  What size shoe he wears.  If he’s right or left handed.  If he likes Burger King or McDonalds.  And if he wipes from front to back or back to front.  Literally, they want to know everything.  And I’m serious.  For those of you who have highschool friends who have been recruited, you know this.  My best friend’s younger brother was recruited by Cal and a few WAC schools.  His parents told me about the recruiting process.  About the phone calls.  About the letters.  About the ridiculously thorough background check which occurs.  My point: if a kid is being recruited, the coaches should be in contact with his coaches, friends, and family.  They’ll want to see his recruiting videos.  And he’ll have to divulge everything.  Everyone connected to the recruit will know that the recruit is being recruited, and will have had some sort of contact with the recruiting coach(es).

So did Mr. Hart’s coach get a call from Tedford & Co.?  Did the coach send off Mr. Hart’s highschool videos to Cal and Oregon?  Did Tedford call Mr. Hart’s girlfriend and highschool teachers?  If not.  Then clearly, I think the coach let one slip by him that shouldn’t have.  If yes, then clearly the prankster knows what they are doing.  

Anyways, this whole thing has apparently turned into a criminal investigation now that it has been painfully confirmed that Tedford & Co. has never offered Mr. Hart a scholarship or even been in direct contact with him.

An updated article by the Reno Gazette Journal states confirms that there is no scholarship offer from Cal, that the investigation has become a criminal investigation, and that Cal coaches cannot comment on the situation since Mr. Hart is still a recruitable prospect.