Quote Originally Posted by HSVDawg View Post
Auburn had 3 top 10 classes and two outside the top 20 (during the Tubby to Chizik transition years) over the same period as mentioned above for Clemson before their title. They also had probably the most physically gifted QB of all time, so a little bit of an anomoly there. Oregon hasn't been able to win a title, so their rankings are somewhat irrelevant as it relates to what it takes to hoist the trophy.
1) I mentioned QB being the key piece that takes a team with an average recruiting ranking in the teens to being a contender. We saw how quickly those recruiting classes underperformed without cam.

2) Oregon was a flukey tackle where the RB's knees/elbows/butt were inches from the ground that resulted in a 50 yard run to set up a last second FG from going to OT in the natty. That's about as close as a team can be to winning one without winning it. Play that game on a different day and the result could easily be different. You put yourself in position to win conference titles and get a natty shot, actually winning the natty is a bit more of a crapshoot between 2 great teams on any given day. If we want to being myopic and not learn from a program's approach that was inches away from maybe winning a title because "they didn't win it so they are irrelevant", then we are dumb.

3) I said teams that have PLAYED for a natty. That shows you not just how hard it is to win a natty without elite recruiting, but shows how hard it is just to be in a position to play for a natty without elite recruiting. We need to get our recruiting consistently in the mid-teens and then hope to find the right transcendent QB to get the program over the top to competing for a conference championship (and this likely in the natty discussion). We were close with dak and had some other high end pieces, but the middle and back of our roster just wasn't quite good enough.