This recruitment hurts a lot. He was a top ten recruit from New York. Top ten recruits mean a lot and they mean even more when they're from that city, especially when he would have been the biggest feather in Ollie's recruiting cap, especially when everything indicated that he was ours, and especially when we lose him to that guy.
I'm not delusional. The optics make this one a no-brainer from an outsider's perspective. Cal has churned out stud after stud, while Ollie is still in that precarious zone of uncertainty. It's tempting to be romantic and dismiss all of that, but his family - future or present - is being fed by him and nobody else.
That said, I have no warm feelings for him. He seems like a great kid, but there are a lot of great kids out there, so now he's moved to the back of the line in my distribution of good will. Won't change my life much in the grand scheme, but pain is pain, and I felt my heart sink just a little bit when he put on the Kentucky hat. There's no sense in pledging to being a bigger person when you're just reacting how any human being would. It sounds good to say "I wish him the best" but not everybody can be successful playing this game and so at this point I hope he's not one of them.