Precisely. Notre Dame, LSU are just a couple that come to mind in recent years that have failed to live up to their recruiting rankings. In 2008 ND had the #2 recruiting class. In 2009 LSU had the #3 ranked recruiting class. Neither of those teams since then have competed in a BCS bowl.there is also the other side of the coin. callahan's greatest shell game, which always bought him another year with the fans, was that he was getting top classes. getting the talent isn't the end of the equation. there are plenty of schools that get great talent and then do nothing with it.That is true. The other thing that gets talked about a lot in Nebraska recruiting is team rankings in comparison to the present "cream of the crop" teams. For example, Nebraska was ranked #29 for their 2010 recruiting class by Scout. The funny thing is, historically speaking, Nebraska ranked between #25 and #30 in recruiting rankings every year when T.O. was running a "cream of the crop" team back in the day. T.O. himself recently made this comment last February on LOI day. He admitted that even back in his day as the head coach, the geographical location was hard to sell to recruits. He basically said that his recruiting classes ranked 25th to 30th on average.here is another example of how hard it is to recruit, we lost OWA to UCLA and ricky. we just produced the best d-lineman the game has ever seen, who also went #2, and he would rather play at UCLA. well there are a lot of UCLA caliber teams out there we are competing with (and i know there are externalities in any decision of a recruit, but still it will always be hard to get recruits to come to NU, it is just a struggle for almost every school. i am sure it is why michigan has been struggling lately, too many good schools to compete with for top talent.) what is important is having the type of coaches who can coach-up/create talent and get guys to stay for 4-5 years. (o'hanlon was a walk-on).Texas will always be hard to recruit. It's not like we've been killing it in Texas since we joined the Big 12. Read post #25 in regards to our Texas recruiting history since 2002. Truth of the matter is, we're still relegated to picking "leftovers" after all the other Texas schools cherry pick their selections throughout the state.i don't disagree, but it will always be hard to compete for talent in texas (and florida and california, for that matter) regardless of the conference we are in. even though NU is getting back to national prominence, there is just a lot more 'cream of the crop' teams out there. the who landscape of college football has changed and talent will become increasingly hard to acquire.But that's the thing. It was because we were "cream of the crop" that enabled us to dip into the Texas talent pool all those years. At the rate Bo has us going, we will return to being "cream of the crop" regardless of what conference we're in. The formula to snagging Texas kids and kids from any other state is winning. It doesn't matter what conference we're in, if we're winning consistently, then kids from all over will want to be a part of it.True but big 8 times we were cream of the crop of football, the entire nation followed us, we had coverage everywhere, so naturally we could get kids anywhere we wanted, unfortunately thats not necessarily the case now. Also we still played ou and osu every year back then, so that attention may have very well dripped into Texas. Remember that Gill was down between us and ou.To further show our history of Texas recruiting in the T.O./Big 8 era, here's a list of former Nebraska All-Americans who were from Texas.
- Kelvin Clark, Offensive Tackle, 1978 (Odessa)
- Doug Glaser, Offensive Tackle, 1989 (Balch Springs)
- Aaron Graham, Center, 1995 (Denton)
- Travis Hill, Outside Linebacker, 1992 (Pearland)
- Junior Miller, Tight End, 1979 (Midland)
- Aaron Taylor, Center - 1996, Offensive Guard - 1997 (Wichita Falls) < Was recruited in '94.
- Broderick Thomas, Outside Linebacker, 1987, 1988 (Houston)
- Kenny Walker, Defensive Tackle, 1990 (Crane)
- Jake Young, Center, 1988, 1989 (Midland)
Furthermore, I tallied up 55 Nebraska Letter Winners from the state of Texas during the Big 8 era.
Other notable Nebraska players from Texas:
Turner Gill
Kris Brown (Was recruited during the Big 8 years. Played one year in the Big 8 and 3 years in the Big 12)
Keithen McCant
Octavius McFarlin (Was recruited during the Big 8 years. Played two years in the Big 8 and 2 years in the Big 12)
Tom Sorley
This merely shows that even when Texas wasn't in our conference, we were still able to pull in plenty of Texas talent during the Big 8 years.
I would much rather have media attention in Texas rather than Ohio and Mich and so on (especially when pelini already has heavy Ohio ties. Also I'd rather have Texas and ou on our schedule rather than Mich and osu... who's better? Who do we have more history with?
All I'm saying is that we shouldn't move to the big 10 unless we absolutely have to. They were also talking about trying to get Texas but their not going to the big 10 y must we? Yes we must look in our best interest, but lets not have a preemptive action. We've already proven we can hang with
The big12 big dogs (the b12 title proved that). Besides the big 10 is big and slow football, we don't wanna risk catch that infectious style of football play too. The big 10 has become a joke do we really want to become a part of that?
Texas isn't going to the Big 10 because they can afford not to. Texas has enough $ to go independent if they wanted to. Do you think Texas would join another conference and relinquish control of what they already have? That's the problem we're having with them in the Big 12. Why would they want to join another conference when they're already in control of the one they're currently in? The SEC or Big 10 wouldn't allow Texas to bully them around, therefore it's not in Texas's interest to join a different conference. They're set, whether it be in the Big 12 or as an independent, because if they decide to pull the plug on the Big 12, then the whole ship is sinking. Why wait around to see if that'll happen? That just shows how much power and control they really have over the other 11 teams. Definitely not worth hanging around for.
What you also have to realize is that T.O. was against joining the Big 12 in the first place. He predicted that Texas would eventually seek control of the conference and manipulate policy within it and sure enough, he was right. This is the main reason why the Big 10 is a better situation for us at this point in time. Another thing too, back when Bob Devaney was our coach, he tried to get us into the Big 10 conference originally, but it didn't happen for whatever reason.
If the Big 10 is such a joke then why do they have a better winning percentage than the Big 12 in BCS bowl games? Also, why does the Big 10 have more BCS bowl appearances than the SEC, Big 12, Pac-10, Big East and ACC? They're always putting two teams in BCS bowls every year. The Big 12 can't even say that.
It's your prerogative to feel the way you feel towards Big 10 football in general, but it has no bearing on Nebraska in the Big 10. We'll bring the style that Bo Pelini gives us. It's silly to think that Nebraska's style of play will automatically change just because we're going to a different conference. If there is anything that is infectious, it's winning. Pelini will have us doing just that, regardless what conference we're in. Don't fool yourself into thinking that we'll be infected by the "slow, boring Big 10 style of play" as you call it. It makes no sense and surely Bo wouldn't allow Nebraska to become a "slow, boring" football team.
also, UT won't have the same power they have in the big XII, but whatever conference they are in, they will have plenty of sway.
also, i think people worrying about joining the big 11 are worried about this maxim said by Omar Little, "You can't expect to fight with the wolves at night, if you're sparring with the puppies during the day". but we will be the wolves the other big 11 teams have to fight at night.
So the point is, we managed to find a winning formula under T.O. with 25th to 30th ranked recruiting classes year in, year out. Pelini is in the process of mimicking the T.O. blueprint by coaching up his players. While it's always nice to get them Top 10-15 recruiting classes, it's even better if you have the right coaching staff to get their players to perform beyond whatever star rating they came in as.
Last but not least, Bobby Bowden made the comment when he was speaking at the coaches clinic in Lincoln a month ago that all you need to be successful is a handful of 4* players with the rest being 3* to walk-on players. His point was it's all in the coaching up of the kids that gives a team great success. Pelini has us headed in the right direction and you can bet that he's been picking T.O.'s brain along the way.
Speaking of LSU, since 2006 they've consistently been ranked in the Top 10 recruiting classes. They won the National Title in 2007, but have failed to compete in a BCS bowl since.
Last edited by a moderator:
