As for your last paragraph, there's no need to choose between two poisons.
No need to worship "national rankings" that are actually based on the "evaluators" from certain key geographic regions, and the biased writers who devote all of their coverage and saliva to the recruits at the SEC/Big 10 schools who make up the biggest chunk of their subscriber bases.
And there is no need to make this about the opinions of "Miami fans".
There is a middle pathway. And what is happening at Miami (and some other schools) can conceivably and finally bypass the "national rankings". And that involves a MASSIVE expansion of scouting/evaluation staffs at P5 schools. Miami now has a TON of people who work 10-12 hours per day evaluating film and other metrics, in order to get past the hype, to find the talent that fits what we are trying to do.
And it's not all just "talent". Alonzo is now asking questions of recruits that they ordinarily would be asked before the NFL Draft. And our scouting/evaluation is getting back to the old Butch/Pete model of assessing work ethic and leadership, instead of ONLY "height/weight/speed" measurements.
Do we need some "outcomes" and some wins to validate the new approach? Sure. But as you continue to dilute the "national rankings" websites (the addition of "on3" just thinned out the ranks of those who evaluate high school kids, it certainly did not IMPROVE anything), and as you continue to add more staffing at the college level, the pendulum begins to swing more heavily to "trust the coaches" than it does to "trust the national rankings".
Bottom line, I'm never going to stand here and tell you MY OPINION on all the recruits. I'm not a professional football talent evaluator, that's not my job. But I can say that I believe we will have better OVERALL talent selection with Alonzo and his staff, at least compared to an approach that attempts to chase the national rankings. Not sure if the class rankings will indicate that level of quality, though it's a bit too early to detect a "trend" from a 2-star kicker and a 3-star QB who was going to be the second QB taken in the class when we thought we could land Air Noland.
Let's settle down and see what develops. We just signed, what, the #7 class in the country, do we think that a couple of months later (with BETTER coaches) we are headed for the #27 class? Come on, now...
