I LOVE this hire. This is a guy who has been a coordinator at some of the best power conferences in the country in Baylor, UCLA, and Texas A&M, and has completely turned two schools around as head coach in only two years each (Eastern Ilinois and Bowling Green).
Plus he runs one of the most explosive offenses in the country, something that is desperately needed in the Carrier Dome.
The ONLY concern I have is his recruiting base. Does he know the northeast?
I'll be interested if he can get any of his Bowling Green guys to come to Cuse. They have a big 6'4 3-star WR recruit that was offered by other MAC schools and Iowa. Could be a nice pickup for our offense. Would also love to see Dieter (#4) for Bowling Green transfer for his grad year at SU. Led the team with 89 catches for 957 yards this year. Bowling Green has 17 Wide Receivers listed on their roster – all sizes and shapes. We have 10. I would imagine that any player that can spell “pass” will be looked at for possible conversion to WR.
I think recruiting will be fine under HCDB. Although he wasn't really at BG long enough to make a full opinion on his recruiting. Offensive players should want to play in this offense though. Babers was recruiting coordinator at Baylor, and as a HC his teams have recruited heavily in Florida and PA. He is on the East Coast too so he should have some more recruiting ties in places where Syracuse may be interested in. The recruits will come. See Baylor. It's ridiculous what they are pulling down there. It can happen to is too.
He will have to bring a couple of assistants in with recruiting contacts in our prime recruiting areas or the first few years of recruiting classes are going to be filled with nobodies. HCDB's success with recruiting, in our basic recruiting area, will be predicated on who he brings in as assistants. If we are lucky, we might pick up a commit or 2 on the Offensive side. He will need assistants who can recruit the area. We also need a DC who is a respected coach and runs an aggressive/successful D.
If comparing Babers to Frost, of course Frost lands bigger recruits, he's at Oregon, Babers is at Bowling Green. Much, much easier to recruit to Team Nike than to a MAC team in the middle of nowhere. I'm not expecting top 10 classes, but somewhere in the 25-40 range would be ideal.