I don't know the 2011 class was ranked 41st with Dak Prescott, Josh Robinson, Rufus Warren, B. Mckinney, Darius Slay, Tavese Calhoun, Justin Malone and Preston Smith held #1 in the nation for 5 weeks.
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Recruiting still comes down to development. The reason for Bama's lasting success is the continued development of players. It's good that they get 5 stars, but they get those 5 stars to reach their potential. I mean look at those OM classes that were ranked so highly. Take the 2013 class, their records for 4 years were 8-5, 9-4, 10-3, and 5-7. So 32-19 for 4 years.
Our 2011 class for comparison was 7-6, 8-5, 7-6, and 10-3. So 32-20 for 4 years. It all comes down to what you can do with them once they're in your building.
Not saying Bama doesn't develop, but the bigger difference to me in your example is depth. A lot of schools can reel in a top 15, 10, 5 class every once in a blue moon, but one great class isn't going to get you over the top. You have to string several together, and only a handful can.
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Ole Miss had 1 class that was anywhere remotely near an Alabama class. Alabama stacks those classes on top of each other every single year (and they are better than Ole Miss’ 2013 class 99 % of the time). The overwhelmingly main reason Alabama is so good is because they have way more talent than everyone else. When Saban was at Michigan State he was just considered a pretty good coach. Nothing special.
Which is not surprising. Mullen didn't rank very well his first full recruiting cycles either. Takes a little while to learn what you are up against in the SEC plus the OM network in MS recruiting. Mullen held Croom's class together and then struggled the next couple of years just like Leach held JoMo's class together and is now having to learn the pitfalls. The one thing about Leach though is his reputation pulled some offensive guys especially in TX that not even Mullen could get in his early days.
Wasn't there talk that Tyler Williams was coming back? We need him and he'd be our biggest recruiting win for the season.
We currently have a recruit that hasn’t been rated (that will end up being a mid 80s 3 star) and a high 3 star (4 star on 247) that has already signed with us and holding his announcement for the All American game. We haven’t had the recruiting rankings update yet but we aren’t truly sitting at 37. In 4 days we will be around 30. It won’t make our class any better in 4 days but people will view it differently.