dressedcheeseside
Helluva Engineer
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I hear all the time "if Ross and O'Leary could recruit GT, CPJ should be able to." Now I'm hearing the same wrt to Gailey. This opinion ignores several changes in the college football landscape that have made it increasingly more difficult for GT to get top players. I'll try to outline a few of them here.
1. APR. This has got to be the biggest back fire piece of "legislation" ever in attempt to create parity in college football. Maybe that wasn't the goal, but it was supposed to be a bi-product. Nothing could be further from the truth. Factories have sham majors that require very little effort to pass, while legitimate academic minded schools now have the burden of keeping guys on track to graduate.
Ross and O'Leary had no such burden. They could, and often did, keep kids in remedial studies throughout the duration of their eligibility. They didn't have to recruit kids with the thought that they had to graduate or at least stay on track to do so. Many of those kids, especially the key guys, would never get a whiff of GT today. O'Leary, to his credit, raised the graduation rate, but it's a shadow of what it is today.
2. ESPN. The sports network has a vested interest in the SEC. In Ross and GOL's day, there were only a handful of SEC teams that were fashionable. Auburn, Tenn, Uga, LSU and Florida was about it. Bama hadn't yet risen to prominance yet. Now, any team in the conference is a prize to recruits. In large part, this is due to ESPN's constant drum beat touting the SEC as a super conference top to bottom.
3. Rise of Stanford and ND. These teams struggled in the Ross and O'Leary years. Stanford was not on anyone's wish list and ND was suffering a string of bad coaching hires.
4. Rise of other programs to "eye candy" status among recruits. Oregon is the poster child of this group. TCU, Bailor, and other teams that were off the radar in the 90's have raised their status among recruits, as well.
5. GT's self inflicted wounds post O'Leary. Flunkate and two NCAA probations have hurt our recruiting efforts post Ross/O'Leary. No need to go into detail on this, it's obvious to anybody and it's something Ross and O'Leary didn't have to deal with.
I may be off on some of these things but certainly not all. Maybe some of you can nitpick one or two of these things, but nobody can deny that recruiting is not the same as it was in the era of Ross/O'Leary. It's more difficult now.
1. APR. This has got to be the biggest back fire piece of "legislation" ever in attempt to create parity in college football. Maybe that wasn't the goal, but it was supposed to be a bi-product. Nothing could be further from the truth. Factories have sham majors that require very little effort to pass, while legitimate academic minded schools now have the burden of keeping guys on track to graduate.
Ross and O'Leary had no such burden. They could, and often did, keep kids in remedial studies throughout the duration of their eligibility. They didn't have to recruit kids with the thought that they had to graduate or at least stay on track to do so. Many of those kids, especially the key guys, would never get a whiff of GT today. O'Leary, to his credit, raised the graduation rate, but it's a shadow of what it is today.
2. ESPN. The sports network has a vested interest in the SEC. In Ross and GOL's day, there were only a handful of SEC teams that were fashionable. Auburn, Tenn, Uga, LSU and Florida was about it. Bama hadn't yet risen to prominance yet. Now, any team in the conference is a prize to recruits. In large part, this is due to ESPN's constant drum beat touting the SEC as a super conference top to bottom.
3. Rise of Stanford and ND. These teams struggled in the Ross and O'Leary years. Stanford was not on anyone's wish list and ND was suffering a string of bad coaching hires.
4. Rise of other programs to "eye candy" status among recruits. Oregon is the poster child of this group. TCU, Bailor, and other teams that were off the radar in the 90's have raised their status among recruits, as well.
5. GT's self inflicted wounds post O'Leary. Flunkate and two NCAA probations have hurt our recruiting efforts post Ross/O'Leary. No need to go into detail on this, it's obvious to anybody and it's something Ross and O'Leary didn't have to deal with.
I may be off on some of these things but certainly not all. Maybe some of you can nitpick one or two of these things, but nobody can deny that recruiting is not the same as it was in the era of Ross/O'Leary. It's more difficult now.