CHRIS PETERSON ON RECRUITING OKGs

The following comes from Don Yaeger's wonderful book, "Great Teams."  Here are a few segments from University of Washington football coach Chris Peterson on recruiting:

"In the business of recruiting, everybody falls in love with the tape.  But you must remember to fall in love with the kid, not the tape.  We really tried to hone in on the OKGs because not all of the really good guys get the same attention."

What are "OKGs?"  Coach Peterson coined it to refer "our kind of guys."

Yaeger went on to write about specific areas that Peterson looked at to gauge if they were indeed OKGs:

"We just try to do as much history as we can, talk to the kid and the people who surround him," he said.  "We want to tell the recruit what we are all about and find out what they are all about.  I tell them that our place is much harder than other places and our standards and expectations are different than a lot of programs."

Yaeger also said that Peterson "paid close attention to the core GPA of a potential player, because he believed that score painted a picture of that recruit."