Whatever happens, we have a very solid class this year.
Solid, maybe. But if you want to compete for national titles, you have to do better than solid.
Even TO had top 10 classes when he finally won his national titles. You need difference makers to win titles. Difference makers are the difference between 10-2 and 12-0. Think of our national title years and the amount of legitimate stars we had on that team. Tommie Frazier was not a 3-star Grand Island kid who TO coached to greatness. He was a huge prep star who everyone recognized as special coming out of high school. The best coach in the country cannot win a national title without those players. TO couldn't and neither can Bo. Owa is the type of difference maker we need. We will not win a national title with classes consistently ranked outside of the top 20. That's just how it is.
Not true at all.
I can't find the link anymore, but another forum had gone back and found national team rankings for pre-Rivals years. The idea that Osborne never had good recruiting classes is just a myth.
The classes that contributed to our national titles were mostly highly ranked. But the main point is, difference makers are necessary. Top 100 type players are necessary to make the jump from a very good, 10-2 type team to a national title contender. Guys like Grant Wistrom (HS all-american by just about every publication) are needed, and Owa seems to be one of those guys.
I agree that TO recruited much better than many fans would have you believe, but he wasn't an elite recruiter by the standards that the recruitnics go by. Here is the link you are referring to I think:
HuskerPedia - Historical Recruiting Rankings. They only found the SuperPrep rankings, which became Scout.Com in 2002, but if you look at the 5 year averages for the championship years I think you will be surprised. The 5 year recruiting ranking average for 1994 was 18, the 4 year average was 20. The 5 year average for 1995 was 17.6, the four year average was 15. The 5 year average for 1997 was 14.2, the four year average was 13.25. The highest ranking TO had from 1987 to 1997 was 6, that was in 1996.