don't think Polk forgot how to coach baseball. I think he forgot how to recruit- or didn't for various reasons. I think like Croom, he was loyal to a fault with his assistants like McNickle.
Let me put it this way- when you ***** about Lottery scholarships, your arguement doesn't hold a lot of water when you go into Georgia and get a couple of players from there.
I also think we went away from recruiting "ballplayers"- guys like Grant Hogue and we signed too many athletes like Russ Sneed and Jet Butler. Now, if Sneed and Butler have a higher ceiling when you are talking about tools when compared to a Grant Hogue but a lot of times players like that have "five tool potential" but they aren't able to put the tools together in college, if at all. And, if they do, it's going to be for probably no more than a year or two at the most. But, you get a guy like Hogue on the team and while he had no power, all he did is help us win ballgames.
And I'm not saying that we should get all "ballplayers"- you need a mix of guys that have talent, but have a high baseball IQ- I think Chris Stratton is a good example of this- and "ballplayers".