I've been thinking about this a lot recently with the idea floating around here so much lately that BO & staff are a 7-8 win season in 2017 away from righting the proverbial recruiting ship. But the more I think about the whole thing, I just keep getting stronger in my belief that the W/L record is neither the major problem, or the ultimate solution, to this staff's recruiting woes thus far.
I don't think I could be convinced that Odom took over a worse program or situation in 2016 than Pinkel took over by the time the ink dried on his first recruiting class in Feb. 2001. We have better facilities now, we're in a better conference now, and the Pinkel tenure produced the most successful period of Mizzou football in at least the last 30 years, so BO didn't exactly take over the situation of a perennial doormat program with no history of recent success. Pinkel's first two seasons produced 4-7 and 5-7 records respectively. And while his first recruiting class before ever coaching a game here laid a nice foundation, it was his second class (coming off a 4 win first season) when that staff really started to gain traction. They were able to beat out Notre Dame for a guy like Dedrick Harrington, and while they never panned out, it was huge for a program in the situation like ours was to land highly regarded guys like Mario Whitney and Zach Zwilling. The next recruiting cycle, coming off a 5 win 2nd season, they were able to land guys like Damien Nash that essentially every P5 program in the region coveted. Darnell Terrell, the top recruit in the state, Tyler Luellen, Adam Speiker, and Martin Rucker who was more or less a Nebraska legacy with the career his brother put together there just a few years prior. And Nebraska actually WAS still a national power in the early 2000's.
So were Pinkel and his staff selling wins and losses to win those recruiting battles? Absolutely not. There's simply no way they were winning any recruiting battles based off that in that timeframe. What they were selling was a vision and a dream of where their program was going.......and obviously they were getting their fair share of high level recruits they had little business landing at that point buying what they were selling. Which brings me to the overall point of this whole post, and what we should all find very concerning if you give a shit about the Mizzou football program...........there's no reason a new coaching staff only winning 4-5 games in their first year should handicap your recruiting to the point it currently appears it has ours. Recent history under Pinkel proves that to be a crock of shit. I'm afraid these high level in-state and regional recruits just aren't buying what BO & staff are selling. And if that's the case, winning 6-8 games in 2017 likely isn't going to fix much. It certainly can't hurt, but I'm afraid it likely won't be the sudden cure all many think it will be.
I don't think I could be convinced that Odom took over a worse program or situation in 2016 than Pinkel took over by the time the ink dried on his first recruiting class in Feb. 2001. We have better facilities now, we're in a better conference now, and the Pinkel tenure produced the most successful period of Mizzou football in at least the last 30 years, so BO didn't exactly take over the situation of a perennial doormat program with no history of recent success. Pinkel's first two seasons produced 4-7 and 5-7 records respectively. And while his first recruiting class before ever coaching a game here laid a nice foundation, it was his second class (coming off a 4 win first season) when that staff really started to gain traction. They were able to beat out Notre Dame for a guy like Dedrick Harrington, and while they never panned out, it was huge for a program in the situation like ours was to land highly regarded guys like Mario Whitney and Zach Zwilling. The next recruiting cycle, coming off a 5 win 2nd season, they were able to land guys like Damien Nash that essentially every P5 program in the region coveted. Darnell Terrell, the top recruit in the state, Tyler Luellen, Adam Speiker, and Martin Rucker who was more or less a Nebraska legacy with the career his brother put together there just a few years prior. And Nebraska actually WAS still a national power in the early 2000's.
So were Pinkel and his staff selling wins and losses to win those recruiting battles? Absolutely not. There's simply no way they were winning any recruiting battles based off that in that timeframe. What they were selling was a vision and a dream of where their program was going.......and obviously they were getting their fair share of high level recruits they had little business landing at that point buying what they were selling. Which brings me to the overall point of this whole post, and what we should all find very concerning if you give a shit about the Mizzou football program...........there's no reason a new coaching staff only winning 4-5 games in their first year should handicap your recruiting to the point it currently appears it has ours. Recent history under Pinkel proves that to be a crock of shit. I'm afraid these high level in-state and regional recruits just aren't buying what BO & staff are selling. And if that's the case, winning 6-8 games in 2017 likely isn't going to fix much. It certainly can't hurt, but I'm afraid it likely won't be the sudden cure all many think it will be.
