re: True of False in relation to Football

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Y'all had far more talent than us all three years. Honestly, it comes down to coaching. Do you believe that Butch is the guy who will make you elite again? He's an awesome recruiter, but is he an elite coach?

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No we haven't. If you're gonna make these posts at least do your homework.

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No we haven't. If you're gonna make these posts at least do your homework.

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By pure rankings he's correct that we've had more 'paper' talent. However, in reality we never had that talent because of the Kiffin/Dooley Circus. Anyone trying to understand Tennessee football post-Fulmer til today needs to understand that:

1. NONE of Kiffin's recruits lasted

2. Dooley's attrition rate was AWFUL and his recruiting was terrible

3. Dooley recruiting was without rhyme or reason (say Tennessee needed 3 OLs and 3 DEs/DTs in a cycle - Dooley would recruit a 1 longsnapper, 1 PK and 3 TEs instead and be sure to make them all 3 or 4*s who have no other offers from a P5 school).

4. Dooley recruited ZERO o-linemen - only one other school in all of FBS did that, not a single SEC or P5 team skipped a cycle and Dooley did it knowing he had to replace an entire group of OL. An SEC school not recruiting the trenches is on a suicide mission - it was such a bizarre happening that it was remarked upon at the time by various recruiting services and even KNS took note. I can only imagine the conversations the rest of the conference coaches had about it.

5. Our attrition from the Kiffin/Dooley Era was so bad that our APR (which is mainly a gauge of attrition) had dropped so low we faced an NCAA bowl ban over it.

So yes, it can be argued we had more than Mizzou at first glance but our reality was quite different because the program and Kiffin/Dooley had created such an unstable inferno that our rankings (low as they were by our standards) were no where near their paper number.

Most of the time attrition can be dismissed or minimized when comparing recruiting classes across programs because programs suffer roughly the same amount of attrition and so you can just compare X's 4 year recruiting average to Y's and come up with a relatively accurate reflection of each school's level of talent. However, the attrition we suffered during the Kiffin/Dooley Era was not and is not comparable to normal attrition. It was so high and the program so unstable that it was akin to being put on major sanctions with substantial scholarship restrictions.

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If you look directly at recruiting rankings then, yes

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Which is what almost all non-Tennessee fans do

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Which is what almost all non-Tennessee fans do

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Meh, there are plenty of knowledgeable sports fans that look at the actual roster instead of just the prospective one.