Recruiting is the lifeblood of any program. You can't deny that and you need coaches who can and will recruit at a high level at the P5. I do agree that this staff has been a failure in recruiting at that high level. The whole give them time is a little hollow to me, but I don't think there has ever been a coaching staff who was put in a weirder situation with the timing of the hires and covid restrictions. CU has major disadvantages with who they can hire because of money. You can't deny that either.
I most certainly not making excuses for their recruiting, however; there are good recruiters on this staff that have proven to be good recruiters at the P5 level (there are really two coaches who are major head scratches to me). You don't just all of a sudden not know how to recruit. I feel as if there is something bigger at play right now and if we are having this same discussion with the 2021 class, then by all means, we can start throwing out the incompetent takes.
The idea that you can overcome poor recruiting with good coaching is pure fantasy. Well coached teams "may" occasionally jump up and win some individual games against more talented programs but in the end wins and losses and talent level usually correspond fairly closely.
Unless you are a program that can draw recruits on name alone (Notre Dame, SC, tOSU, etc.) you can't afford to have assistants who don't recruit. The idea that a couple of "star" recruiters are going to fill your class while the rest focus on developing and coaching players is a recipe for disaster.
You can recruit or you can’t. The offers are going out to some real head scratchers already. You’re not going to convince me that the staff as currently constituted is competent. Sorry.
Recruiting is selling. Some guys can sell, others aren't cut out for it. Doesn't make them bad people but they can't sell (or recruit.) It goes past that though. Even guys who have ability to sell or recruit also have to have a drive in them. They have to have something that makes them willing to ignore rejection, to overcome objections, to battle through and even when they lose one (or more than one) to go after the next prospect with energy and enthusiasm and optimism and a belief that this one is going to result with a signature on the bottom line.
Utah struggles to recruit because of where they are.
They benefit with good in-state pipeline but struggle to bring kids from anywhere else. Their in-state kids tend to be less heralded than they should be.
I think their recruits tend to be better than the services credit them for in general. In other words, they evaluate better than most.
Second they develop better than most.
If a staff could do that at CU, we'd then also recruit better than most.
Utah never will, because SLC is a ****-hole and the LDS thing.
CU could parlay on-field success into very good recruiting.
Utah has some significant challenges but in the end they recruit above their level, and it shows in their win-loss records and the number of players they get drafted.
Part of this is that they identify where their recruiting strengths are and they hit those hard. They get most of the best players in state, they do very well with west coast Poly kids, they do well with the second tier kids in SoCal.
What they do much better than CU though is that their entire staff works at recruiting. Sure they have some who do better than others but they all work at it, they all focus on it.
I don't see that from CU and other than some push from Mel haven't seen that in Boulder since before GB shut it off after the so called scandal.
Does the administration have enough of a commitment to football for us to win? That is a legitimate question but right now the bigger question is if our staff has the commitment to win. They can talk about it but unless they get out there and recruit as a staff, put the work in, it won't matter.
