[DC]

[quote author=DC link=topic=6031.msg58653#msg58653 date=1360559907]
We should be thankful that we didn't have many scholarships available this year.  If we had a "regular" availability of, say, 22 scholarships, we wouldn't have been able to fill them with quality players who could get admitted.  In fact, while we don't know whether Smythe, Allen and Cunningham were admitted, there is a reasonable chance that we couldn't even fill 14 or 15 spots with quality players who could get in this year.  Having a lot of scholarships available would have been a disaster.  I think this is because somehow, this class just didn't have a large pool of athletes who could qualify academically. 

It's hard to untangle causality here. Here's a possible counterfactual: we offer more guys in the beginning because we know we have more spots, and hence we end up with more guys.

SC had a similar problem as we did with finishing the class -- there are a fair number of guys, in retrospect, I think they'd wished they'd offered. It may be hard to manage a smaller class, because you're relatively worried about overshooting.
[/quote]

Who else could we have offered?  It didn't seem that many blue-chips were within our reach.

Max Browne or another QB probably. But beyond that it gets hard. We lost out on a highly rated, top-5 type TE who went I think to Arkansas.  4-star CB John Johnson reportedly didn't have the grades.  4-5 star LB Isaac Salivanera (sp) committed to us, then changed his mind, as did another less highly rated LB who changed his mind a lot.  Who else could we have offered that was both a blue-chip, interested in us, and was admittable?  And how many of those type of guys were there - enough to get to a normal sized class?

[DC]

[quote author=DC link=topic=6031.msg58653#msg58653 date=1360559907]
We should be thankful that we didn't have many scholarships available this year.  If we had a "regular" availability of, say, 22 scholarships, we wouldn't have been able to fill them with quality players who could get admitted.  In fact, while we don't know whether Smythe, Allen and Cunningham were admitted, there is a reasonable chance that we couldn't even fill 14 or 15 spots with quality players who could get in this year.  Having a lot of scholarships available would have been a disaster.  I think this is because somehow, this class just didn't have a large pool of athletes who could qualify academically. 

It's hard to untangle causality here. Here's a possible counterfactual: we offer more guys in the beginning because we know we have more spots, and hence we end up with more guys.

SC had a similar problem as we did with finishing the class -- there are a fair number of guys, in retrospect, I think they'd wished they'd offered. It may be hard to manage a smaller class, because you're relatively worried about overshooting.
[/quote]

Who else could we have offered?  It didn't seem that many blue-chips were within our reach.

Max Browne or another QB probably. But beyond that it gets hard. We lost out on a highly rated, top-5 type TE who went I think to Arkansas.  4-star CB John Johnson reportedly didn't have the grades.  4-5 star LB Isaac Salivanera (sp) committed to us, then changed his mind, as did another less highly rated LB who changed his mind a lot.  Who else could we have offered that was both a blue-chip, interested in us, and was admittable?  And how many of those type of guys were there - enough to get to a normal sized class?