CheshireCat,
My "take" on recruiting is quite simple and I've stated many times previously; however, since you've obviously missed what I said in past threads I'll reiterate it for you here and now:
* If Nebraska doesn't sign player A, they'll get player B to take his place. If we lose player A, it doesn't automatically mean that player B is not as good as A. And when we do lose a player to another school, we rarely, if ever, know the real reason why. Maybe the coaches won't promise a player playing time, a starters role, a job for mommy/daddy/uncle buck, maybe the player is a trouble-maker, uncoachable, maybe they find something out about the player and tell him to look elsewhere. Or, maybe another school's coaching staff was able to promise the player what he wanted or maybe they are just better recruiters and did a more complete job of selling their school than the Nebraska coaches did.
* Recruiting is a process that can make someone crazy if they get too in depth with it. These are, in most cases, 17 year old kids who are in the process of making a major decision in their life. And as such they are prone to changing their minds.
* I want to see Nebraska recruit and sign the best available, but I'm realistic about the process. Nebraska, for all the history and tradition, has an uphill battle when going after the top talent. When going after the top talent there's a lot of competition and it's blatantly unrealistic to expect the Huskers to win all, or even a majority, of recruiting battles.
And who should address these recruiting concerns? You? Me? Huskers51? We're just fans here. Nothing we do or say will change how this staff recruits.
I will repeat myself again: If Nebraska is still sitting at 5 recruits and it's getting towards the end of October--then I will agree that's it's time to start getting at least a little bit concerned about what is going on. My guess is that now that the season is officially underway-it is game week after all, we're going to see Nebraska's commit list start to fill up.
As far as class rankings go: I believe that as long as a team is consistently in the top 30 nationally-they're going to have the kind of speed and talent on their roster to compete with anybody. I don't buy into this notion that a team has to be 3 deep at every position with 4 and 5 star rated players exclusively.