And yet we still finished comfortably ahead of LSU in Total Defense. (Yes, you capitalize the first letter of each sentence.)
And I'm well aware that we're guests on a B1G board, which is a conference that Ohio State owns. Much like the Big XII is by OU. Congrats on winning the SEC with a Bama team that was riddled with injuries all year.
oh
a capitalization nazi
we have a fair few people around here that have serious word-choice issues, myself included ("would of, could of, should of" and "dominate" in place of "dominant" are my pet peeves this year), but we don't have any capitalization nazis. until now. welcome... i guess
Well even though Baylor's defense doesn't rank very high, they are very talented.
ohio state's defense was talented in 2018... talented enough that the same guys compose a defense that is inarguably a top-5 defense this year. and yet in 2018 they were a train wreck of dumpster fires. talent is necessary for a good defense; it is not sufficient for one.
Already, NFL scouts are high on James Lynch and some are even comparing him to J.J. Watt. Baylor had the toughest defensive front OU's faced all year, and twice they prevailed against them.
Also, Baylor has an Olympian-producing track-and-field program and some of their athletes are also on the football team.
some nfl scouts compared judah herman to chris spielman. nfl scouts do that. it means squat.
also... i find it a little odd that our now-resident capitalization nazi also appears to be the king of the superfluous comma. if we ever have a punctuation nazi, they'll have a lot of fun with that.
Yes, recruiting rankings matter so much that for approximately 5 years UCLA had out recruited OU for some of the highest ranked prospects out west. We had recruited some five-star prospects from Southern California by the names of Darnay Holmes, Keisean Lucier-South, Jaelen Phillips and Mique Juarez who all chose to stay home and play for the Bruins after Mike Stoops and Tim Kish had failed to persuade them to come to Norman. We did beat them out for Joe Mixon back in 2014 though.
And how did UCLA perform after signing all those heralded recruits? Oh, they fired Jim Mora and are about to fire Chip Kelly and they are one of the most underachieving teams in the country even though they signed all these great athletes and blue-chip prospects who haven’t shown shit as to why they were so highly regarded in the first place.
So yeah, recruiting rankings do matter for some. But not so much for others. As for Baylor’s case, I’d say they did a much better job with their unheralded players than UCLA did with all of those four stars and five stars. Now does that mean Baylor is as talented as the likes of Bama, LSU and Georgia? Hell, I don’t know. I do know their coaching staff has done so much more with so much less though. I wouldn’t be surprised if they curb stomped Georgia either.
here we have yet another of the oldest and tiredest tropes on the internet, cherry picking a few counter examples to "prove" that recruiting ranking mean nothing.
no one has ever suggested that recruiting rankings by themselves are dispositive; certainly no one on this board has suggested it. yet you frequently hear that recruiting rankings mean nothing. you ramble for two paragraphs to "prove" that recruiting rankings don't matter, then you backpedal enough to admit that they matter for "some".
bullshit
to quote a famous big xii coach, this is not intramurals, this is division 1 football. as stated above, while talent alone is not a sufficient condition for success, it is a necessary condition. and while recruiting rankings cannot split hairs between teams at the cfp level, they absolutely differentiate between cfp level teams and the regional powers like baylor, iowa, wisconsin and all other 3 star developmental schools.
recruiting rankings are shite for telling the difference between #15 and #20, but they can certainly tell between the truly elite and the penn states of the world (it's a bp thing, don't worry about it). recruiting rankings aren't reliable on a team by team basis, but they very reliably split division 1 into tiers.
top tier - look at the rankings the past few years and there are three teams that have separated themselves from those around them more than any other; bama, clemson, and osu. those 3 team are the only teams that have won the cfp. if you want to call that 5 staight coincidences, fine. you didn't really have much credibility here anyway. there is also a reason that this tier produces more nfl talent per team than the other tiers
next tier - lsu is in the next tier of teams. baylor is not. the next tier includes teams like lsu and oklahoma which have at least made it to the cfp. one of these teams might someday win the playoff. this year is certainly a possibility for that
the peloton - the main group comprises teams that recruit mostly 3 stars with the occasional 4 star and the rare 5 star. they are the bulk of division 1. occasionally a team from this group will make the cfp (e.g. msu) but they will never be in danger of winning it.
performance against the peloton is not a predictor of performance against the top tier. some teams might be near the front of the peloton. baylor is one of them (right now). don't expect anyone here to mistake them for the top tier or even the next tier.
