I know this may be a bit of backtracking, but I've been giving some thought to times Mizzou has done well in hiring. All of our successes have been with coaches who have a track record of doing more with less.
Plain and simple, we are always going to be in the bottom half of the conference recruiting wise, so this is how it has to be.
Pinkel took Toledo from perennial bottom feeder, to the class of the MAC conference. And then turned around and brought Mizzou out of the depths of hell and made it into one of the top 3-4 teams in the Big 12, and had early success in the SEC.
A current example is Glen Elarbee. He was able to take Sun Belt offensive line talent, and routinely punish not only his own league's D-Line's but also SEC teams, including Mizzou.
On the other side of the ball
Kim Anderson routinely had top classes in DII, not because of great recruiting, but because UCM's academic standards allowed for the easy transfer of D-I problem children. Because of that competitive advantage, he was then able to have success at that level. As he's finding out, it doesn't really work like that in D-I.
Barry Odom, has overseen great defenses, but once again that mostly came due to competitive advantages. At Memphis, the school has traditionally had the top 1-2 recruiting classes in it's conference, often taking kids that could easily be playing P-5. But that was present before him, and is still the same after. So when you have athletes that are generally a league above your competition, you're going to do well. Then when he came to Missouri, he took over a D for a year, that had already been one of the best in college football, and merely maintained it, doing well as the same key players from previous years were becoming Juniors and Seniors. We're now finding out what it looks like when he gets to put his scheme into place, without a built in competitive advantage.
Plain and simple, we are always going to be in the bottom half of the conference recruiting wise, so this is how it has to be.
Pinkel took Toledo from perennial bottom feeder, to the class of the MAC conference. And then turned around and brought Mizzou out of the depths of hell and made it into one of the top 3-4 teams in the Big 12, and had early success in the SEC.
A current example is Glen Elarbee. He was able to take Sun Belt offensive line talent, and routinely punish not only his own league's D-Line's but also SEC teams, including Mizzou.
On the other side of the ball
Kim Anderson routinely had top classes in DII, not because of great recruiting, but because UCM's academic standards allowed for the easy transfer of D-I problem children. Because of that competitive advantage, he was then able to have success at that level. As he's finding out, it doesn't really work like that in D-I.
Barry Odom, has overseen great defenses, but once again that mostly came due to competitive advantages. At Memphis, the school has traditionally had the top 1-2 recruiting classes in it's conference, often taking kids that could easily be playing P-5. But that was present before him, and is still the same after. So when you have athletes that are generally a league above your competition, you're going to do well. Then when he came to Missouri, he took over a D for a year, that had already been one of the best in college football, and merely maintained it, doing well as the same key players from previous years were becoming Juniors and Seniors. We're now finding out what it looks like when he gets to put his scheme into place, without a built in competitive advantage.
