quote:
That’s why you do have a lot of guys who fly under the radar. I’ve always maintained that the top guys are very easy to spot, and going to camps and things of that nature matter is these rankings. Once you get past that though, it really is a crapshoot. There are only so many places where you can essentially pick the players you want. It always becomes apparent which coaches can identify and develop.

Bingo. Now you will always have some top guys who flame out for whatever reason in college. That happens.

It is the coaches who build talent who really win big. Pinkel never really had access to the elite tier of players (for which the rest of us are thankful because he'd have put some monster teams on the field) but he and his staff could find and develop talent like no one's business.

On the other end of the spectrum you have guys like Bert Bielema who had a pretty good eye for talent... but was lousy at developing it. It only adds to the overall misery for Arkansas fans to watch players go to the NFL and look much better then they did here.

Saban, for example, can get great talent, can identify good players, and can develop them. There is a reason the guy has as many national titles as he does.