Do you really need to recruit the "top" players ? Or could he just recruit kids in the lower ranks and "coach them up?" If the kid will do anything for you then you got half the problem licked. What was TO's avg. recruiting class 17 18 20 in the country? Look at some of the total wash outs that have fluncked in the college ranks.
While this is true that a lot of highly rated kids have flopped but for every five star recruit that doesnt live up to his billing as a blue chipper, there are probably 50 two or three star kids who live up to there billing as being role players, and you will have more three star kids who dont play at all than five star kids who play like three star kids. So you cant go out and say I am going to recruit only three star kids cause I think I can get them to play hard, cause sometimes playing hard doesnt quite cut it. I mean look at USC, they are have a top recruiting class every year and every year they have a great team, I have not heard anyone say how they overrate USC's players.
The question is do we want to be Kansas, Oregon, Boise State, or UConn who happened to find a few diamonds in the rough and have one good year every decade, or do we want to be USC, Texas, Oklahoma, or LSU and play for NC every year. Now we arent going to have recruiting classes like USC and Texas because we dont have that kinda talent in our backyard, but you have to go after the best talent you can get.
We need to go after kids who fit our system and we need to go after the most talented kids that we think will play hard for us.
Now about Pelini's recruiting habits, how often does Bill Callahan go on in-home visits, I am pretty sure that most of the time that is the job of the assistants. So we need Pelini to bring in guys who will go out and bring these kids back to Pelini and Pelini will inspire these kids to play for him.
