Recruiting goes in cycles, within a calendar year, in a calendar year, along multiple years. Always cycles.
There was some discussion about recruiting going back to about 2008 or so in the offseason. 2007, was our strongest recruiting class to date IMO, backed up by the results on the field. I went through some basic numbers, based on the NLI recruiting cycle and process that led to signed NLI's, going all the way back to the 1999 season. We had two full cycles from 1999-2008, where we brought in very large classes - I don't remember the exact years, where we hit peaks, when the class size via NLI was at it's largest, followed by a predictable, decline in numbers until the next full cycle. Based on those numbers, just to keep the trend going, we needed the 2010-2011 recruiting cycle needed to produce another peak, high number in NLI recruits, to follow the trend. Edsall left after the Fiesta Bowl, with a recruiting class that had less than 10 players I think, Pasqualoni came in, kept essentially the same coaching staff in place, and scrambled to keep those few recruits and add a few more.
We've been playing catch up ever since, in just basic NLI cycle numbers, and that is most evident in the offensive line.
Instead of having a full roster of as close to 85 full scholarships that were recruited through a full NLI signing period process for the past 4 seasons, we've been going to bat with a roster, because we didn't hit that peak again, in Edsall's last recruiting cycle, and have had so much coaching turnover, we've essentially been playing football with a 1-AA cache of full NLI cycle year recruiting (approx. 65 scholarships) and have been filling in those other 20 or so scholarships annually with JUCO transfers, division 1 transfers, walk ons, and any other player we can find, rather than the NLI cycle process of high school recruiting.
This again, is nowhere more evident, than in the OL.
What was interesting about what was put together with the simple numbers, is that the attrition rates of recruits from 1999, right through 2013, was remarkably consistent. It seems skewed, recently, but that's just because Edsall's last recruiting classes were small, and Pasqualoni brought in large numbers of players in the past 3 seasons.
We simply needed to hit another peak with recruiting in basic NLI high school recruits that we didn't hit approx. 4 years ago. Edsall had to know it, what he was leaving behind. Pasqualoni was pumping in players left and right from anywhere and everywhere in his 2 full NLI cycles of recruiting, we had several players as transfers and juco's b/w 2011-2013, and stacking them up in the post graduate, and prep school circuit as well. It was a simple numbers catch up game. Diaco, is right on track, to fill up this next class, as another peak in that cycle, that started a decade ago.
What this program needs long term, more than anything, is a few years of consistent NLI cycle recruiting at a competent level to produce athletes for our level of competition, for a few seasons.
I will say this though, if we are building up recruiting big boards, by primarily identifying names off of websites like Rivals, Scout, 247 etc......we are screwed.
), do you have any idea what it is you are arguing about?
