Looking over our 2020 offers list in the recruiting DB, there are definitely some impressive athletes on the list, although there are every year. For some reason, or maybe 260 million reasons, I have a higher degree of hope for our chances to land a higher % of our A-list guys this cycle. However, I still find it odd that we are so selective in our offering. Just to throw out some comparisons, according to the DB, here are 2020 offer counts for related programs:
Northwestern: 47
Notre Dame: 116
Stanford: 35 (oddly low)
Michigan: 257 (ahh, Har-bage)
Duke: 144
Vanderbilt: 171
Wisconsin: 113
Nebraska: 277 (Frosty tells Har-bage, "hey, hold my beer")
Minnesota: 98
Purdue: 208
Illinois: 68
Now, Fitz has proven to find and land kids that truly fit the program's ideals and his graduation rate is even more impressive than what he has accomplished on the gridiron. But, sometimes I do wish that there was a bit of a wider net on the top athletes. There seems to be a lot of concern among the purple faithful that Purdue and Nebraska are going to be coming on strong in the very near future; they will be a threat to NU's recent string of success in the B1G West. Do we expect them to consistently out-recruit NU in the next few cycles and how much of this might you attribute to approach?
Anyway, let's go Fitz and co, go get yourself some of these young studs with offers. One thing is for sure... if you are going to fish with a spear, you better hit your shots or risk starving to death. 4 in the bag, but some big ones still swimming nearby.