Gato, I like that you attempt to balance things in your posts. However, as with anything you are going to find significant over performance as well as significant underperformance based on recruiting stats.
As you know, I am not in the camp tha NU has enough talent on the roster. In fact, to me it it clearly bottom third of the B1G. However, so is Iowa, Wisconsin, and Rutgers and they do just fine. They are examples of 1) Good under the radar recruiting, 2) excellent development, or 3) having a system that works for the player they can get. Schools like Michigan, Indiana, and MSU could only be described as woefully underperforming their recruiting ranking. For yuks and giggles here are the number of top 100 recruits from 2018-2021 per school. It doesn’t consider transfers out or in. (They don’t help NU).
IL 5
IN. 6
IA. 2
MD 5
MI. 9
MN 2
MSU 9
NEB 1
NU 1
PSU 0
PU. 3
RUT 1
WI 0
So, on recruiting star power, we should be able to hang with and beat, IA, MN, Neb, PSU, Rut, and WI. Clearly, we failed as we are 3-5 against these teams. Of course, their fan base expects them to beat us too. Conversely, you could say we should never be able to hang of beat MI, MSU or IN. They are clearly under performers.
I stick by what I said before games were played 8 was a par coaching. We missed it. IMO, 10 wins would have been a great outcome and 6 wins would be poor. We stunk it up and got poor.
After the PSU loss I said NU is in an untenable position with recruiting going forward. CCC can’t sell results. So go ahead and try something else. Bottom line is wins are all that matter and all the dissecting of the third string centers minutes doesn’t change the fact that we woefully missed a reasonable target, I just don’t buy this talent argument people throw out here.
