Honest question, do you follow recruiting regularly? I ask because in your argument you’ve now completely dismissed Rivals (the flagship service in 2010), used 247 (a site that didn’t exist in 2010), and fallen back to ESPN (which nobody that follows football recruiting has used in 2010, 2020, or anywhere in between).
I've been following recruiting regularly since about 2005. I would prefer to use scout.com's old rankings but I can't seem to find them. Rivals is trash on par with espn and always has been. Regardless, even at the time the 2010 class didn't have the hype around it the 2020 class had and even your own choice of site backs that up with a mid 40s ranking. And that was the high water mark for the class, where the 2020 class was highly thought of across the board independent of service.
For some reason you’re in love with bigger classes. Which
No, you just completely lack an understanding that class size is a factor that plays a big part and try to hand waive that away by saying just add more players as if it were guaranteed. You're literally trying to give credit for players not landed to say the classes are the same. In addition. This small class had the same number of recruits as 6 top 25 recruiting classes that year so the argument about class size is without bite. Especially since late in that class there were still spots open and they were spent on the lower rated prospects of the class, in general, including that kicker you keep bringing up. As I said before, 4 of the 5 lowest rated recruits in that class were added after the new year. That class, as it was, had room for more higher rated recruits. Instead we took a couple of reaches late in the process. And as I said before, there was room for more than 19 in the class, but Johnson didn't recruit with attrition in mind.
And here is where class size matters. All 19 of the 2020 class that you mentioned were rated 5.6 or above. Only 14 of the 19 in the 2010 class can say the same. So the 2020 has more depth. And on top of that, the 2020 class featured 2 prospects on rivals ranked higher than anyone on the 2021 class (Brooks and Gibbs). So even going by rivals, the 2020 class feature higher top end, more depth, and was ranked higher. But yeah, we could add recruits who weren't an actual part of the 2010 class to make it compare....
In reality, you just want to ignore class size, reduce analysis down to average rating, and then pick whichever site helps make your point.
I chuckled at the part about “coming off a 3-9 season” and ignoring the avalanche of advantages CGC had last year (conventional offense, Adidas, new locker rooms, new EDGE coming, indoor practice facility, conservatively twice the recruiting staff, more lenient Hill) and to his credit took full advantage of.
Yeah, all those things are equally easy to sell and have the same impact as winning a championship....
