I say you look at Dantonio, even though he has a much better recruiting hotbed. Win 11-12 games and/or a CCG. Same thing every previous staff here was trying to do. Until then, or until you cheat, or until you just go out and hire recruiters regardless of coaching ability...ain't happening here. Bray is the only star recruiter on this staff. Just so happens he's a good coach, too, but he is obviously the exception.
I've actively followed recruiting for the past decade. No figures will be available for at least a couple years, but i estimate that we've at least doubled, if not tripled, the recruiting budget under Riley and added infinitely more manpower and resources to recruiting than ANY previous Nebraska staff EVER had. To date, there has been little to no actual ROI on that investment. We are getting commitments from the exact same type of 2-4* players we always have. The only difference is what system they are best suited for. There is nothing particularly wrong or bad about that, but this myth that Riley is some hotshot recruiter is just that. Riley is not breaking any new ground. He is continuing the positive momentum the previous staff had built thr most recent 2-3 classes, which is fine, but until we see some bonfide results, it's hard to say that the average, classes will improve much at all. I'm not arguing we didn't absolutely need the resources or infrastructure, because we did, but Riley is doing a little more than treading water at this point, and the losses piling up make their long-term job security a valid issue and a neg recruiting point for everyone else. All the good they were starting to do has essentially been canceled out by incompetent game management and poor coaching.
One interesting thing I got from the Dillard interview was his take on Callahan's recruiting. His claim is that it was only John Blake that was responsible for Callahan's rep. Worth listening to for that tidbit.