quote:
Not necessarily... the kid coming from the bigger program with better training/facilities may be more ready to contribute right away, but the guy who's getting by on raw athleticism and hasn't been getting the proper weight training/coaching could have WAY MORE upside.

CJ Mosley at Alabama is a good example... Theodore is terrible, but he's been an outstanding player, even though he wasn't as highly ranked in HS as some of their other LB signees.

Exactly.

The 3* in other states is almost like recruiting a JUCO in MS from a development standpoint. If you need immediate help somewhere, that's a good way to look. However, if it's not a position of immediate need, the MS kid is often the better option longterm with the higher ceiling.

That's the biggest reason that we recruit MS so hard -- and then redshirt practically everyone that isn't a 3-yr NFL type talent. The idea is that by year 4 or year 5, you cancel the talent gap with other teams by having more mature/developed players.

Had Croom not left the roster in such a precariously depleted situation, we would have redshirted Bumphis, Boyd, Banks, Cam Law, Smith, etc...Cox would still be gone, but all the rest of those guys would probably be returning NEXT year. Think about how much better our roster situation would be right now had we been able to do that. That's the problem -- our 2009 class is split between redshirts and not -- while basically the whole 2010 class was redshirted. That leaves us with a very "young" roster, where we are graduating only about 17 this year and about 14 next year...It will be 2014 before the roster is "fully developed" on the level that we want it to be...

This post was edited on 1/14/13 at 2:21 pm