The Lions' Pride

Haha... I think you're overrating the Redskins' front office and overstating the Redskins' prospects for the future.

I very rarely agree with you ... almost about the same times as Hailey's Comet comes around, but I do agree with you on this. You can recruit all the high stared players on the face of the earth, but if you can't develop them properly, it means jack sh*t. Development is the key with this staff.

You should have much more confidence that BOB, Fisher can develop QBs better than Jay; Hixon can develop WRs better than McQuery; Mac can develop better OL men than Anderson/Kenney and Butler can do a better job with the DBs than did Scrap.

Our offensive coaching was honestly the worst in major CFB. Hixon is going to churn out talent (what an amazing resume this guy has) and I have the highest confidence in BOB and Fisher and to get the most out of our QB's. Strollo and London are sort of mystery men, and Mac to a lesser degree, but they can't be worse than what we had at those positions previously (Hall and Anderson were walking corpses stealing a paycheck from the state, Kenney was ok).

Certainly Butler will be better than the glorified GA we had coaching safeties the last couple years.

The only coaching concern I have is the same one I started with: Ted Roof. Unfortunately, that's a big position to be concerned with.

Wow! I didn't realize that. Is he going to have Elway's career or Marino's before he makes the Hall of Fame?

Great blog, Homer. Thanks for posting. I think you eloquently touched on the balance of hope and trepidation many share in Penn State Nation.

It's very clear Coach O'Brein did a SWOT analysis the second he walked in the door at PSU. Specific BOB activies have targeted each weakness/limitation in the previous approach. So improvement is very likely.

But perennial (nationally) may be made from unobtaniuim. With a new 4-team playoff in the works, we'll see if the "Best team" model favors the SEC with a greater number of champions and seedings. There is very little BOB can do to offset geography constraints of rural Centre County or the warm-weather South.

I think PSU fans would be extremely pleased with the 3-5 year cycle of contenders under the pre-21st century Paterno era. We don't need to dominate the Big Ten with titles split between historical powers like OSU, Michigan, more recent power surges of Wisconsin and Michigan State, and potential upstart Nebraska. But at he very least, we should be in the mix with just zero, one, or 2 conference losses in any given year.

Thus why he was the first QB and player taken at number one overall.

The answer to this thread title is January 7, 2013.

Booster incentives?

Its not that I dont believe in the team, I believe that we do things right and other teams arent ethical in their tactics to get a commitment from a kid. I also dont believe that kids nationwide are feeling what Penn State is selling. I never said I dont believe in the team. Its the high school kids. But on the bright side, this gives you another post to down vote...youre welcome.

Philafan, you named three recruits (two from '05 and one from 06') that were big time athletes. Some schools get atleast two of these types of recruits a year, your still holding on to three kids we got 7 years ago.

Look I am not saying Penn State doesnt get its fair share of good players, and yes we can pull a stud every now and again. But right now we arent on that level. This OP was about 'How Long Til We Are Back On Top'. When I think top I think National Title...I dont see that happening for a long time. Some of you may think top as winning the big ten, I dont.

Did you see Stanford's class last year ? How about Michigan's this year ? Notre Dame has had tons of great classes.

Point is, you can recruit lights out while selling academics and discipline. If we could recruit classes like '06 every year (I see no reason why this isn't possible) then we would be in the national title hunt regularly. Truth is, the kinds of kids you think "aren't feeling us" are from the south, and we don't want those kids anyway. There is plenty of talent in our region to build a national title contender, and few of those kids are the types you are talking about.

If we win, as we did in 05 and helped us snag the '06 class (which produced Bowman (All pro), Taylor (first round), Maybin (first round), Odrick (first round), as well as Royster, Quarless, Troutman (all draft picks), we will land the kind of talent we need. You can point to a lack of highly touted players over the last few years, but I would follow by pointing you to a picture of Joe Paterno standing next to Terrelle Pryor---the last time he ever visited a recruit. The things that held us back (horrific offensive coaching, free riding offensive assistants, low staff energy, minimal recruiting effort etc) are gone. All that is left to do is win.

Just to repeat- that class produced seven draft picks, three of which went in the first round, and one of whom should have and subsequently became an All-Pro in year TWO. That doesn't include Brackett, Devlin, and Ogbu, who have stuck around as practice squad players and were (or in the case of Devlin, would have been) meaningful contributors. There is also Mo Evans, who was a first round talent with a ten cent brain. We can recruit plenty of talent, we just needed a staff that could go and get it, and maximize it while it was here. We seem to have that now.

Saban also already had a NC in his pocket, spent time in the NFL and had a lot of experience in college football as a head coach. I don't think B.O.B. has that. I'm not saying he won't be a good or even possibly great coach, but to compare him to Saban is absolutely hilarious.