My football knowledge and evaluation of D-1 prospects pales in comparison to most on this board. That being said, it seems to me that there's some basic logic that's often missed on this board, especially when the discussion of recruiting and Jerry Kill is brought about.
What seems pretty straightforward is this-while Tim Brewster left behind some highly lauded talent (Gray, Hageman, Cooper, Michael Carter as examples) that talent was lacking in development and also without much depth, due to attrition, poor roster management, and/or other factors.
So Coach Kill stepped into a situation with some potentially elite talent, but also a situation where the roster was pretty bare amongst the upperclassmen. Not surprisingly, in a sport where the correlation between success and upperclassmen on the roster is strong, the Gophers struggled mightily last year, as they did so during the last couple years of Brewster's run.
My assumption, from seeing Kill's roster building thus far is that his priority is to establish a solid base of football players who are high character kids and will be on campus for 4 to 5 years. He was fortunate in that his first year as head coach coincided with the deepest pool of MN prep recruits in some time, if not ever. But he supplemented that class with "sleepers" such as Murray, Plsek, Keith, etc. This year, with limited scholarships and a less robust MN prep scene, recruiting has felt underwhelming. However, from appearances he seems to be recruiting the type of players that he's built the success of his programs upon and doing it through his tried and true method-working connections through the high school/juco coaches, evaluating players at camp, etc.
My optimistic approach is that through a development of these under the radar recruits, along with the occasional standout recruit from outside of MN (Harbison, for example), the Gophers will reach up into the 8 and 9 win level within the next few years with some high-profile wins amongst the successes. From there, the profile of the Gophers will become one where the 4 star recruits outside of Minnesota begin listening to the sales pitch and seeing the success that's taken hold at the "U". At that point, I think the expectations for the fanbase can and should be of higher rated recruits who can help push the Gophers into consistent top 20 status and (sigh) trips to the Rose Bowl.
To expect Kill to bring in a bevy of outstate 4 star recruits at this juncture seems both unrealistic and unfair. I also wonder if it works against program building in the sense that to bring those 4 star recruits into the fray without the maturity and leadership of the established upperclassmen, you end up with players whose sense of entitlement leads to situations like what we read earlier this week with Michael Carter (Nate Sandell's article at 1500/ESPN) or Jewhan Edwards type scenarios. From the sounds of it, when Kill stepped onto campus as head coach, there wasn't a great deal of maturity and leadership exhibited by the football players at the time.
Anyway, I think if you look at any football program that's experienced rejuvenation in the last decade or so (Wisconsin, Northwestern, Missouri, Texas Tech, Baylor, Kansas, Rutgers), they did not do so on the backs of all of a sudden bringing in top 20 recruiting classes; they walked before they ran and the players who populated the rosters of those teams that rose to great heights were likely pretty average recruits. Many of those programs didn't maintain their ascension and that's where (hopefully) in 5 years or so we'll be critiquing if Kill can maintain great success and bring the recruits to campus who can continue to elevate the program. The flashy recruiting of coaches at Minnesota, Illinois, North Carolina hasn't lead to success at these schools, because they didn't have the solid core necessary.
Basically, I don't think now is the time to really worry about the stars behind a prep recruit's name; Kill has shown to be a program builder, and I feel very confident he'll get the Gophers back to at least the level that Mason had us. Once he gets the program to that level, then I'll start looking at the outstate recruits and seeing what the stars are behind the names, because at that point, we'll evaluate Kill on whether he can take a program to an elite level.
