Some of you seem doom-and-gloom about your football program, but the future might be brighter than you think. A lot of people mocked Prince's last recruiting class because of star-values, but it's possible he will get the last laugh, depending on how well he evaluates recruits.
Rivals and Scout aren't the be-all and end-all of recruiting. For spotting talent at the nations largest schools they are usually pretty good, but they don't know anything about kids in smaller schools. There are A LOT of awesome athletes sprinkled throughout the midwest's small towns, and most of them never get any stars from rivals because they are either unknown or considered to be playing "weak" competition. I have to tell you, some of the hardest hits I have ever seen were watching eight-man football.
If Prince is able to base his classes on these talented unknowns, and then pull in a few highly ranked kids from Kansas City, Wichita, Chicago, Omaha, etc, he could have some awesome classes. This is what Nebraska used to do, and this is what Prince seems to be trying to do so far. Nebraska's last championship team in 1997 was made-up mostly of Nebraska-born starters with a few blue chip out-of-staters mixed in.
As for how successful this will be, it really just depends on how well Prince can find and develop the talented unknowns.
All I am saying is, don't let star-values get you down. Prince, whom I revile, could pull this off. I would guess there are hundreds of thousands of high-school seniors each year, and more of them are capable of Division-I football than the few hundred blue chips Rivals digs up.
This is just my take, and honestly I hope Callahan will start looking around Nebraska more.
