It's that time of year again.  The Seattle Times and Tacoma News Tribune have unveiled their annual recruiting rankings.  If you aren't totally familiar with it, the Times goes with their Blue Chips/Red Chips/White Chips series, looking only at players in the state of Washington, while the TNT rolls with the Northwest Nuggets, looking at the entire region including Oregon, Idaho, etc.  Check out the Times' Blue Chips here, and the Red & White Chips here.  The TNT's Nuggets are here. 

Oh, and no, WSU didn't get any Blue Chips this year.  UW ended up with three of the four selected for this year, with Jake Heaps the lone non-UW player who made their list.  They didn't get any Nuggets either.  Boo. 

The good news is that they did end up with a lot of the Red Chips, with six of 'em (Connor Halliday, Aaron Dunn, Maxx Forde, John Fullington, Jake Rodgers and Blair Bomber).  From a WSU fan perspective, I guess if you wanted to take issue with who the Times put in their top four, you COULD say that they missed on Aaron Dunn, the 9th-ranked tight end in the country from Scout.com and now rated among the top 200 players overall in the country.  But I don't know, I mean there really isn't any point in getting worked up over who should or shouldn't be rated as the top four in the state.  Dunn's credentials are just fine, and he projects nicely as he moves up to the NCAA next year.  I don't think he's going to lose sleep over not making the Blue Chips list....and neither should you.

As mentioned, WSU didn't have any nuggets, but had some honorable mentions with Dunn, Halliday and Fullington.

Read on for more....



We'll take a much closer look at this year's class after signing day, but one "sleeper" to point out right now is John Fullington, the offensive tackle from North Mason high school.  Fullington's the top rated offensive line recruit for WSU this year, but what is that saying exactly?  Outside of the two JC tackles in David Gonzales and Wade Jacobson, he's the ONLY offensive line recruit in this class.  Now, it must be said that he's the only high school offensive line recruit, at least on paper.  You never know who might change positions to the offensive side of the ball, so we'll see how things go in the future. 

But Fullington is an interesting selection.  Good size at 6-6, 270, he's one of those athletic kids who plays hoops and was a tight end, from middle school until his junior year in high school (note - here's a good read on him from the TNT back in September).  He only just flipped to offensive tackle his senior year, this year, and it went pretty well.  But the great news here is that Fullington fits the EXACT type of player WSU is looking for in their linemen - big, strong, athletic frames, kids with good feet who can get out there and use their athleticism, getting themselves down the field and into the second wave of the defense.  Here's hoping there are more Fullington-types in the pipeline, because they are a perfect fit for a fast-paced, no-huddle offense.

One interesting aspect taken from the TNT nuggets is the look at the Northwest Pac-10 schools, and numbers of in-state players compared to the rest of the roster. 

SCHOOL	TOT. ROSTER	IN-STATE PLAYERS	IN-STATE/ STARTERS	IN-STATE/ 2-DEEP	% OF 2-DEEP
Oregon	122	24	2/26	3/52	05.7
Oregon St.	115	33	7/26	16/52	30.8
Washington	104	47	11/26	24/52	46.2
WSU	109	54	14/26	23/52	44.2

WSU has the most in-state players on the entire roster, most in-state players as starters as well, but UW has the most in-staters among their two-deep's.  Now the numbers are skewed just a little bit.  Traditionally, the state of Washington produces more division-I players than you'll see from Oregon.  It's a matter of population more than anything else, as there are clearly more high school football players in Washington compared to Oregon.  But it's also clear that the best team in the last decade from the northwest - Oregon - has by far the smallest amount of in-state players, and just two starters from Oregon. 

That said, is "winning the state" or whatever really all that important?  It's no secret that the top players in the west come from California, in both quality and quantity.  There's a reason USC has been so fantastic in the last decade, and it's because they have flat-out OWNED the southern Cali area for the last 10 years.  There was a good read at SI.com a year ago, about where the top players come from on a year basis.  You read it, you understand why SC was so successful.  Being able to say that you are keeping the best players home, well, it's nice for marketing purposes or message board fodder, but in the end, it really doesn't matter where a kid is from as long as he can play ball at a high level.

Overall, I guess you can take all this for what it is - projections by the different papers as to who will be a player on the next level, and who could/should be roster filler.  And both papers have a long history of getting it right....and like any other recruiting service, there have been some pretty big misses as well.  When you factor in Scout.com, Rivals.com, ESPN, plus the Nuggets and Chips, you still see the difficulty in really figuring out who's going to be something special in making the transition to the college level!

All for now.  Enjoy your morning, and as always, GO COUGS!