(01-23-2017 05:16 PM)EagleSam Wrote:  Northern Illinois won the MAC West 6 years in a row, from 2010 to 2015, with three conference championships and one BCS bowl appearance in that span. Here were their "recruiting rankings" in the MAC in those years, per 247 Sports (best MAC recruiting site, in my opinion):

2010: 8th
2011: 6th
2012: 9th
2013: 3rd
2014: 4th
2015: 3rd

So a team that never had the best, or even 2nd best, recruiting class dominated the conference in that same span. Are they an outlier? Sure. But they are also proof that development is more important than offers and stars. We've recruited plenty of kids (especially in the English era) that had tons of offers who never panned out. Remember Quincy Jones? Jaleel Canty? Juwan Lewis? Hell, Lewis had offers from basically the entire conference and couldn't see the field because guys like Bronson Hill, Darius Jackson, and Ryan Brumfield (all with no other D1 offers, mind you) were better. This is why I stopped following recruiting. We have no clue which of these kids is going to be a player or not.

Next season will be a good test for Creighton. It will be team made up largely of his recruits. I believe only Roback, Spearman, and Barnes are key players returning that were English recruits. I'm most curious to see the offensive line, which is going from 4/5 starters being English guys (heavily under-recruited guys too, mind you) to it being entirely Creighton's. Our skill positions will be led by Dieuly Aristilde, Shaq Vann, Ian Eriksen, Sergio Bailey, and Johnny Niupalau...all of whom had one collective D1 offer before coming here. Let's see what our coaches can do with these recruits before writing off the class as "not good enough".

Its not just development. Sometimes its gaming the recruiting system. NIU was great because they got Lynch who no recruiting sites liked as a QB, but would have been a highly regarded player as TE/LB. He wanted to be a QB. Also sometimes they don't review a player because they don't think they will qualify. That's why Corey Davis and Antonio Brown were 2 star nobodies.