Mason, I've gotta disagree with you also about the elite recruits. From what I've seen and recruited, the top of the line players, the elites if you will, are significantly better now then they were before and I honestly don't even think it's that close.
By the way, I'm in total agreement with OR and Daalter (Girt to you guys who didn't know Girt was Daalter) about the huge gap between the elite recruits and the second tier guys. As I said in an earlier post, we need to see some actual numbers, but my instinct tells me that if the recruits being generated don't get "fixed", we're gonna see a large number of coaches leaving D1 in a few seasons. They may not totally quit HD, some may drop to D2 and continue to play, but it'll probably be the death of low level d1 and it'll put D1 mid-majors on life support.
I mean really, besides someone coaching their alma mater, why would anyone want to keep a school were they knew they had NO chance at all to compete? D2 is the place to be gentlemen. Much easier for EVERYONE to have a chance to compete and you can still get really good players to round out your squad. Oops, shouldn't have let the cat outta the bag........
Last thing. I've been bringing up for months the same thing Jpritchard said in his post above. When are we going to be properly compensated for playing beta tester with our teams (our PAID FOR teams)? It went way past being a joke a long time ago. And the worst part is, when changes are made either during or right before the NT. Anyone whose been around for awhile has seen it and knows what I'm talking about. Talk about screwing a season up. Coaches work hard to get to where they were at in the postseason and then WIS up and changes the game during the most important part of the season. That, my friends, is totally wrong, is not justifiable, and is a pretty good indicator of how this company views their customers.