When recruiting, or more specifically evaluating talent, the one thing you can count on is that you can't fake speed. When you have it, you have it, and your ceiling gets raised because of it. If you play defense it shrinks the size of the field and the windows of operational space for the opposition and if you play offense it does the opposite. An athlete's strength, flexibility, size, knowledge, feel for the game, leadership, technique, and work ethic are all way more variable and able to be improved upon over time. Speed is really not the same way. Through excellent training involving technique and conditioning a player might be able to go from a 4.6 to a 4.5, but that is about it. There might be a few counter examples of a kid who was extremely immature physically at the time of his recruitment, but generally speaking, by the time you are 18, we know if you are fast or not.
IMHO, we can handle project recruits and establish a 5 year system of player development involving a high percentage of red shirts in order to field a two deep roster of upperclassmen that plays at the highest levels, but we have to find SPEED, CHARACTER, and ACADEMICs to supply that model and survive. To do so will require a massive expansion of our capacity in recruiting efforts, both in a geographic sense and a player analysis sense. We need teams of people who are trained and know what the coaches are looking for, right down to the smallest details, including both on the field and off the field stuff. This science is not exact, but if you have the capacity to give it due diligence, the payoffs could be huge. Of course, it is going to take money and lots of it.
Trying to compete with Clemmons and their fairy tale, amusement park facilities is not the answer for us IMHO. If kids take too much pleasure in those things they will flunk out of school. Better facilities should be sought after, but only after we completely restructure our efforts in the search process model. This is what we need to be selling to the big donors.
