Nice pick-ups

What was looking like a ho-hum football recruiting class for Wisconsin got a lot better around the holidays, with commitments from Beau Allen and Sherard Cadogan. Both guys figure to have a shot at playing right away, given our losses at their positions.

Allen is a 6-3, 292-pound nose guard/defensive tackle from Minnetonka, Minn. Not only did we steal him from the Gophers, but Allen had offers from Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Stanford and UCLA. Looking at pictures and video, his size look legit, although he appears to have lots of room to improve the nature of his weight.

Most people, my included, figured defensive tackle would be a weak spot this year, but Jeff Stehle, Dan Moore, Patrick Butrym and Jordan Hein played well enough that our run defense led the Big Ten. Four of our top five DTs are out of eligibility, so Allen will get a shot to play if he's ready.

Cadogan is a teammate of quarterback recruit Joe Brennan, and my favorite thing about them is that they're from New Jersey. We've done so well there historically and went away from the Garden State for awhile, and I'm really happy with the inroads we've made with this class.

Cadogan was named New Jersey's defensive player of the year, but while he has said Wisconsin coaches will let him play both ways, it's likely he'll play tight end, or at least start there. We've got a lot of promising young defensive ends, and an opening to be the #2 pass catching tight end behind Lance Kendricks, so either he or Warren Herring could play as true freshmen. He picked UW over Michigan State, Pittsburgh and West Virginia.

One last thing I like about these kids: their GPAs. Cadogan's is a 3.8, and he wants to major in engineering; Allen has a 3.3 GPA.

James White has a 3.5 GPA and plans to major in accounting, but I'm guessing he won't play much right away. White is a running back from Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas who committed to us yesterday over Michigan State, North Carolina State, and Clemson. If that high school sounds familiar, it's because freshmen Conor O'Neil and Dezmen Southward are also from there.

Also, if you're a high school football geek, you'll recognize Aquinas as the team that won the mythical national championship last year and is annually chocked-full of college prospects. Establishing a pipeline to that high school would be a very good thing. Linebacker Vinnie Mauro and tackle Jermaine Barton are teammates of White also considering UW.

A good few weeks on the recruiting front ...

Negative feedback loop

Lately, the downbeat economic news that has become so unavoidable has begun making mention of the economy being in a negative feedback loop. It's fairly easy to understand: businesses struggle, which leads to job losses and less consumer and business spending, which means to more business struggles, which leads to more job losses and even less consumer and business spending, which ... you get the picture.

That's what it feels like to be a Badger fan nowadays. Forget the basketball team's strugles, if you can. This cold spell has caused many fans to question the future of the program under Bo, by the most successful Wisconsin basketball coach of the modern era. (Read this post on Camp Lambeau, which is interesting, even if I don't completely agree.)

But the comments posted on a recruiting story the other day on Badger Beat really took the cake. The comments on the Madison newspapers' website, as they often are on the Journal Sentinel's blog, are typically ridiculously juvenile and ill-considered.

One poster at the end of the story, cleverly named http://www.firebretbielema.com/, claims that he is part of a group of 50 alumni who have been contacting recruits who orally committed to play at Wisconsin and asking them to cancel their recruiting visits. This poster expects his heroic efforts to pay off with several decommits before now and signing day. All in the name of trying to get our football coach fired.

Really?

Granted, this guy is probably full of crap, but just think if they actually did this. If you were, say, Montee Ball and you got a call from some random guy in Wisconsin, claiming to be a Badger fan, advising you to decommit, your reaction would be Are you friggin' nuts? right?

And if they were successful at sabotaging a recruiting class and getting Bret Bielema fired, and this became a publicly known fact, well that would make the Wisconsin job very attractive for hot coaching prospects, wouldn't it?

This negativity is just feeding on itself. It's to the point where the last two verbal commitments to our recruiting class, Dezmen Southward and Jacob Pedersen, are getting raked across the coals on the Internet by anonymous cowards who aren't impressed by these kids' resumes.

Southward, a teammate of Conor O'Neill at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, the #1 high school team in the country this year, is a raw prospect who chose us over some Big East schools. (On a related note: Conor O'Neal has decommitted and pledged to Boston College and its new coach, sparing Matt LePay much future confusion.) Pedersen, who plays for the UP's top program, had the gall to be recruited by some MAC and Division I-AA schools. Apparently this isn't good enough for the snobs who think every one of our recruits needs to have offers from Oklahoma, Florida, and USC as well.

My advice: take a step back everybody. Deep breath. Remember why you became a Badger fan in the first place. Cheer for the kids and coaches we have and that we're bringing in. Enjoy the wins, don't let the losses bug you too much. Break the negative feedback loop.