[washingtonismoney]

Fair points, WIM, but if you look at last year, there were several last minute commitment for players who had been considering Stanford and schools like ND, U.SC, and UW. Having a strong year may not add a lot more kids to the recruiting funnel, but I bet it helps seal the deal.

It may (or may not) help seal the deal, but the main thing is filling the funnel in the first place. For example, was the close really so bad (in the seal-the-deal sense) this year? Leaving aside academic casualties, it looks like we went 50/50 on late commits (Oser and Hooper to good guys; Smythe and Allen to not-so-good guys).

The problem with this class wasn't that we closed poorly, it was that we didn't have enough prospects in the pipeline in the first place.

[washingtonismoney]

Fair points, WIM, but if you look at last year, there were several last minute commitment for players who had been considering Stanford and schools like ND, U.SC, and UW. Having a strong year may not add a lot more kids to the recruiting funnel, but I bet it helps seal the deal.

It may (or may not) help seal the deal, but the main thing is filling the funnel in the first place. For example, was the close really so bad (in the seal-the-deal sense) this year? Leaving aside academic casualties, it looks like we went 50/50 on late commits (Oser and Hooper to good guys; Smythe and Allen to not-so-good guys).

The problem with this class wasn't that we closed poorly, it was that we didn't have enough prospects in the pipeline in the first place.