Following in AgAlum’s comments, a big theme was much of the recruiting cycle success was retention - the Connor twins, Simonson, Nova. And, almost all the coaching staff is back. He also mentioned that the vultures will be out in April trying to lure Rex away and how it’s a priority of the collective to help him hold to his commitment to stay.

I find Plough’s comments about the positive parts of NIL (Bain’s opportunity, recruiting tool) refreshing. Sounds like they helped Bains find a great landing spot AND helped set up a financial plan to help set him up for his post football life.

That is a big piece of news regarding retaining Nava and Simonson, they aren’t listed on the roster.

How was the attendance? Were any of the players there also?

He also mentioned that the vultures will be out in April trying to lure Rex away and how it’s a priority of the collective to help him hold to his commitment to stay. — DrMike

It's a whole new world out there in major college football and basketball and, although I understand why athletes feel like they should get paid for their role in the big business of college athletics, it sure has introduced a dog-eat-dog environment where the deep pocketed programs prey on each other and the smaller ones.

no players. All the coaches. Pretty big crowd. Many of the same old faces but many I don’t recall seeing before. Similar crowd size to the first couple Hawkins years. First time on campus instead of El Macero (remodel!?)

Like Mike said, players don’t attend. But looking around the room, there appeared to be a lot of former players. Tim is so engaging, and i think he connects to the younger football alumni more so than some of our previous coaches. The model for this event has always been different than the basketball recruitment gathering. In the latter, its coaches and all the players, where each player gives a brief life overview. The shear size of the football team prevents a similar model. But in the spring, they have a social where many of the players, and all the coaches are present and mingle with the guests. I really enjoy meeting the players. How many football programs let commoners like me mingle with players and coaches and provide opportunity to have lunch with the head coach?
BTW, Tim did mention there will be a night time spring game on a Saturday, end of April. He’s hopeful that there will be a big turnout.

A night time Saturday spring game would be great for attendance. Maybe get lucky and score a baseball game over at Dobbins in the day or what not.

The recruit class rankings were a puzzle to me, and I have figured why they are so nonsensical.
247 sports has two rankings for players, their own, and something they call composite. The 247Sports Team Recruiting Ranking is solely based on the 247Sports Composite Rating.This may work at the top level, but most of the players recruited at the FCS level do not have a composite rating,
So that is why Davis, which is credited with 16 three star HS recruits, is said to have only three in the team rankings.
The only HS recruits contributing to the score are: Drew Cofield, Tyler Parker, Christian Knoos
Ridiculous.

With a reasonable ranking system based, are we top 3, top 5?

That would take more expertise than i have.
But you can’t rate teams based on a metric that has so few qualifying players. For example they give Montana no points, although they have 17 commits and a player 247 rates at 87. Montana State also has 0 points with 23 commits. I don’t believe Montana State or Montana had bad recruiting years
Sticking with the Big Sky, Sacramento is clearly the best recruits, Davis is probably second, better than NAU because of the higher ratings of players by 247sports themselves that don’t have composite scores, and Davis’ much more numerous and better transfers.

Aziz Altuwaijri's profile on hudl shows him as a 6'5 290 OT/OL from Corona del Mar HS in SoCal.

We really farmed Socal this year. Is it bc Plough is from the area?

247's metrics are hard to make any real conclusions from when we're talking about 3 star athletes. It's very hit and miss how players develop in this range. It's different when you're talking about programs landing 4 and 5 star athletes.

The Aggies had a very strong recruiting class for the FCS. Sac State had maybe the best recruiting class that's ever been seen for a FCS program. It'll be interesting to see how Marion puts it all together.

It is worse than the unreliability of the star rankings, the issue is they only use the score derived from averaging other entities assessment, That is all well and good, except the other entities don’t rank that many athletes , so their team ranking methodology ignores them.
For example Montana State has 23 commits, 14 three star, but none of them have a composite ranking, so Montana State gets zero points and ranks 202. Absurd.
https://247sports.com/college/montana-state/season/2025-football/commits/

The absurdity is using ranking services that really only cover the top 500 prospects in any class as a metric to evaluate FCS recruiting. ESPN focuses on the southeast. Rivals and On3 are spotty. 247 has good coverage in the west. But even at 247 the whole point is to provide content to their subscription sites. In the west that’s primarily SC, UCLA, UW and the Arizona schools. The top 250 or so prospects are covered by the national recruiting analysts. These aren’t the guys that end up in the Big Sky, and the Big Sky is a good conference. On the 247 formula anyone above an 84 that goes FCS has had his non-committable fbs offers dropped and isn’t a priority for 247 to reevaluate. Davis has had a bunch of these guys on the cusp. There has also been significant grade inflation over the years. Anyone in the 247 database starts with 3*.

Yes, but it would be simple for 247 to just use their own ranking of players to rank recruiting classes of FCS teams unless they don’t believe in their own rating.
Avoid the absurdity of ranking teams on the basis of whether they picked up 0 to 3 players with a composite rating, ignoring the rest of the class and then having publications like Hero sports write articles about that. If Montana States’ 23 commits is rated among the worst in the country, maybe the methodology doesn’t fit the use case.

DrMike That is a big piece of news regarding retaining Nava and Simonson, they aren’t listed on the roster.

Big news indeed, and good news.

247 uses the composite for marketing purposes. It was a smart move. They became the official metric because of it, while others only published their own ranking. You can use their ranking tool to sort to your liking. Whether Hero sports is sophisticated enough to understand this (they’re not) is not 247’s problem. And again, the ranking services are projecting guys based on an NFL evaluation at the individual level. These are not constructive methods to predict success at the FCS level let alone evaluate a recruiting class, which really should be measured relative to roster construction and scheme.

He's listed at 6'6 340. That's a big boy! Picked the Aggies over offers from New Mexico, New Mexico State, Sac State, and Coastal Carolina! GO AGS!

Yes!

Ty Richardson, our transfer from Tufts is a grad student. That is impressive considering he graduated from Menlo school in 2023. Kid doesn’t waste time.
He only played 14 games over two seasons at Tufts and this last year was selected on 3 All American Teams. He and his year older brother, currently a wide receiver at USC went to Tufts as their mother is an alum. Was on Spring roster.

28 tackles last year, and six Interceptions for DIII Tufts.

How does someone graduate from a prestigious university in basically a year and a half? Football eligibility wise he has two years and a redshirt year remaining.
He was mentioned positively by Plough in both of Plough’s Spring football press videos conferences, so he is a definite contender for playing time here.
His X timeline shows he had offers from multiple FBS and FCS schools, UMASS, New Hampshire, Youngstown, Western Michigan, Kent State, etc.

It gets better. He majored in Biopsychology for the Jumbos.

Baffling. Maxed out AP classes in HS, summer school credits, then who knows. Seems light at 175.

I'd rather have a kid like this transfer in from D3 than more than 1/2 the guys Sac has coming in.....

Yes. It turns out he has an older brother at Tufts (Econ), who is now a WR at USC. What an outstanding pair.

Just saw that on Twitter.....amazing family.

Dad ran track at Riverside?

Sac offered him. How could he pass that up?