For those who think recruiting doesn't matter...

The arguments on this issue go both ways, but I stand firmly on the recruiting-absolutely matters side.

That isn’t to say that recruiting is an exact science. As we’ve been told over and over again, recruiting is perhaps the most inexact science. It’s infinitely more inexact than the crapshoot known as the NFL Draft (and that’s saying something). There are so many variables when it comes to college football recruiting. The kid may be a total moron. He may not be able to read (and, frankly, who is going to put it past Bobby Bowden to recruit an illiterate?). He may not qualify academically; he may not be able to handle the academic demands of college once he gets there (that is, assuming he even goes to class). He may not be able to handle the pressure that comes with being a big-time college athlete who has to deal with all of the expectations that come with the “prestigious” 5-star rating. Maybe he gets on campus and expects everything to be handed to him. As a result, he doesn’t work hard, gets fat, and ends up transferring to some place like Idaho State (I’m talking to you, Aaron Klovas).

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that the kid may not be any good. Sure he tore up guys who had a tenth of his strength and a tenth of his speed in high school. Sure he runs a good forty, and he can bench press 185 all day. But guess what? Everybody in big-time college football fits those criteria. Duck fans know all to well the case of current wideout Cameron Colvin. He had 5-stars. He attended powerhouse De La Salle high school. He announced his intention to attend Oregon on ESPN. He was the gem of arguably Mike Bellotti’s best recruiting. 54 career catches later and he is heading into his senior season looking to salvage whatever he can from a career that was once so promising but is now so disappointing. This was a guy ranked ahead of Calvin Johnson, ahead of Marshawn Lynch, ahead of Dwayne Jarret, ahead of Brian Brohm.

Sometimes, they get it wrong. That’s all well and good. I’m not here to argue that trying to evaluate eighteen year olds is a perfected art. But those of you who say, “Recruiting doesn’t matter,” take a look at Rivals.com’s last couple of top 100 lists. There may be some names you don’t recognize, like Whitney Lewis (#3 overall player in 2003), or Fred Rouse (#5 overall player in 2005. However, there are also quite a few that you probably do recognize. How about Vincent Young (#1 player in 2002), or Reggie Bush (#2 player in 2003), or Adrian Peterson (#1 player in 2004). The point is that there will always be the misses, just like Todd Marinovich or Ryan Leaf. However, the majority of the time, the recruiting rankings are right.

Some people wonder how USC has grown into the premier program in college football. The answer is recruiting. The answer is that Pete Carroll can go out and literally get any high school prospect that he wants. USC has had the Rivals.com #1 recruiting class each of the last three years, and the year before that they were #3. There are numerous college coaches who I’d rather draw up a game plan, but there is no other coach who I’d rather have in a kid’s living room trying to convince him to come to my school than Carroll. He brings in the best talent and they win games. They just had a rebuilding year in which they went 11-2 and won a Rose Bowl. That was a disappointing year. That’s what recruiting can do. It can raise a program to a point where a Rose Bowl victory over the winningest program in college football history is a ho-hum end to a bummer year.

Remember that Texas Longhorns team that defeated the aforementioned Trojans in the 2006 Rose Bowl to capture the national championship? Four years prior, Mack Brown hauled in what some recruiting experts considered to be the best recruiting class in the history of college football. It was a class that included Vince Young, Justin Blalock, Aaron Harris, Kasey Studdard, Aaron Ross, Rodrique Wright, and Selvin Young. All were highly touted recruits who were a part of the temporary halting of the Trojan dynasty. It took the arguably the greatest recruiting class ever to knock off the greatest recruiter ever.

So for those of you who really truly believe that recruiting is completely irrelevant and believe that Ron Powlus was part of a trend rather than an anomaly, take a look at history because it never lies. Good teams are good because they recruit good players. There are always going to be players who slip through the cracks. There are always going to be the late bloomers who develop in a program. That’s the nature of all walks of life. Nothing is exact. I’d want a guy with an MBA from Harvard in my boardroom any day ahead of a guy who all of a sudden realizes that he has the business gene, just like I’d take a class of 5-star studs ahead of a bunch of “sleepers” every single year.