The Lions' Pride

The trouble is they already have so many marginal kids on the team, they can't afford to take anymore.

In my scenario / hopes we'd have about 15-18 commits come in.

Big times reaches.....for a good number of new guys, no D1 offers.

With that said, we need bodies.....but this class will set us back a few years. But, what can/could we expect coming out of a huge scandal with a unknown commodity at the helm.

Lets hope we go big in 2013

Your talking about a roster that hung with Bama longer then almost anyone, and only lost 2 in Big 10 play and includes a win @OSU and should have beaten Nebraska if not for a what happened. And a roster that had more talent in it's underclassmen than upperclassmen. We don't have a rebuilding job, we have a reloading job, of course with the big issue of finding a QB.

We almost no "marginal" kids. Don't know where you're getting this from

Nobody wanted Suhey to get an offer either.

...if not decades.

We keep talking about sticking with tradition. Joe always took care of family. Look how many legacies he had. We are going to be ok. If Warner has a touch of what his Dad brought, I'll be smiling ear to ear.

I think what you're seeing is people understanding it is a sort of necessary evil at this point. Big class originally means lots of holes to fill. They may not be up to our caliber that we all want, but we were dealt a shitty hand.

Yea, we have starters to play, and even a lot of 2nd team people...but we still have some large holes on the depth chart, and if we have any kind of injury crisis like we saw 2 years ago, we're completely screwed thanks to Sandusky.

Exactly. We have an energetic staff now... but we are not going to have the recruiting class that we thought we were going to have. That doesn't mean that this staff can't pull off some shockers in the next few weeks. A little momentum coming out of this weekend would be nice. The thing to note here is that we have some southern guys on this staff that are looking at prospects in states that we haven't truly worked since the mid to late 90's. I have no problem going after some intelligent, hard working kids that are under the radar but might have a higher incidence of becoming over-achievers in college. It seems pretty clear to me that this staff is going to grab some DB's regardless of how many stars they have... we just have to hope that we stumble upon some Adrian Amos type kids that can come in and contribute.

Bottom line is that this class coupled with the last few will not seriously cripple this program. We still have more talent across the board than every team in the Big Ten minus Ohio State if you put any stock in stars and class rankings.

You can carry a few over but depending on how many graduate or leave next year you may run into the yearly limits. The most you can give in any 1 class is 25 so if you were going to have 22 available and you save 8 ... you will still only be able to give 25 and will have 5 left over unless some are willing to greyshirt. Now if you were only going to have 17 available then you could save 8 and use all of them. So they will have to know the numbers and how many they will have and can save etc..

Damn, wish they gave me a scholarship to play football at the D3 level. My school was one of those who followed the rules and didn't...

Anyways, being that successful and having to go the D3 route should have taught you that natural talent and not just gumption and being a good, technical ballplayer is key to competing at the highest level. I had great technique, held my own against D1 guys in HS. But I was never a D1 prospect as anything more than a walk-on. Why? I didn't have the natural talent and build.

I'm not a huge scout the star guy. But I'll tell you this, there are correlations between success in recruiting and success on the field. You can sign 20 2-star guys and ya know what, there will be 1 or 2 guys that make it. But its about the law of averages. Yeah there are a couple guys in the NFL who walked on or late round draft picks or UDFA. You know why they are big stories? Because most of them fail or do not work out.

I agree, coaching is the most important thing. But you have to be an EXTREMELY gifted athlete to just play college football (outside of the rich kids who walk on because of dad), as roughly only 1% of all HS athletes go onto play NCAA sports of ANY LEVEL. But to be a D1 athlete at a premier school in a premier conference is even more than that.