I concede up front that I know little about recruiting, but from what I can tell the players on our radar are not ranked very high at all (with the exception of Henderson), and some aren't ranked at all. They have no offers from schools we should be competing with, instead we are battling the likes of Florida International. I don't see these players helping us win a Big Ten title. Are we going after players with speed and athleticism and hoping to turn them in great players? I think it's crucial that we have a very very good recruiting class this year to make up for the seniors we will be losing. Brewster said on the radio this past Sunday, that we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 signings, which means we have about 16 slots left. I'm hoping for a few more 4 stars before this over. We are number 36 in the Rivals Team rankings and 48 on Scout. This isn't going to get it done. Someone help calm my nerves.
I'll give this the old college try since we are, after all, talking about college football. There are very few schools around the country can simply look at a list of top prospects, check off the guys they want, and then close the deal in that kind of systematic way. Needless to say, we're not one of them. In fact, I don't think too many coaches rely heavily (if at all) on ranking services when deciding who they want. Rather, the job of evaluation comes from examining film and watching a kid perform in person.
Would I love to have a whole bunch of five-stars and high level four-stars? Absolutely. But those honors are generally reserved for the big dogs (ala...USC, Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Florida and so on...). The vast majority of schools need to sign a few four stars, the occasional five star and then rely on good three and two star players to help make things happen.
In our case, we already have one high level four star (OL Jimmy Gjere) and another pretty good four star in Lamonte Edwards (either RB or LB, but its looking more like an LB). We have another high level four star in RB Dontae Williams coming to visit along with two more four stars in RB Ethan Grant (a high school teammate of Victor Keise's) and RB Josh Huff coming for a look see. After that, we are the leaders for Marquise Hill (who has a bunch of very good offers and is listed as an athlete, but could be a WR) and are amongst the leaders for DL Antonio Ford (who has a list of impressive offers) and DL Beau Allen (another very good list). Also, the film on Kenny Bell
(who also has the Gophers high on his list and has at least talked to some very good schools) is impressive and I think he can project as another Stoudemire type at some point. Add in a pretty nice list for safety James Manuel (who also is very high on the Gophers) and I think we're in decent shape.
Are we to the point of bringing in the top-of-the-top at every position? Absolutely not. But, the vast majority of teams aren't able to do that either. Certainly, a lot of the kids that are now coming for visits are not the types of kids that would have given us a sniff even five years ago, so progress is being made.
None of this of course guarantees that we'll be winning the Big Ten down the road. That's a big jump considering where we are and where we've been. All I can say is be patient and have a little faith. It takes time for a program like ours to build up enough talent in several classes to say "yeah, I think we realistically compete for the Rose Bowl this year", especially when schools like Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan seemingly have a 40-year head start. For us, it's a process and it won't happen overnight.
Sorry for the long message but hope this helps (if even a little bit!!
).
