! It’s pretty obvious if the NFL allowed 4-5 teams to scoop up all the first round picks every draft we’d pretty much have a good idea who the hell is going to be in the playoffs no? I mean hell, this board has been crying the same tune for 10 years now! Let’s revisit this in 2025 to look back and see what teams are in the playoffs every year and how 125 out of 130 D1 teams just “didn’t put in the effort”!
While it's true the playoffs, for the most part, are the same teams over and over again with the occasional guest star (FSU, Notre Dame, etc.) recruiting is only one of the components. Several schools have recruited well and still failed to make the playoffs. Ugly is the most notable example. The year they lost in the title game (2018) their freshmen were part of the #3 recruiting class in the country. The next three years in a row they had the #1 class. What do they have to show for it? Two SEC East "titles" in '18 & '19 s and a second place in the division finish in '20. Coming into WiLLLLLLLie's first season in Tallacrappee, his roster was made up of guys from the #3, #2, #5, & #10 recruiting classes ('15-'18 respectively); how'd that turn out?
Yes, 'Bama, tOSU, & Clemson, for the most part, have all recruited lights out the last few years, but they've done everything else lights out as well. To me the guarantee in recruiting is you won't win if you don't recruit well, but recruiting well is no sure thing of success. (To that point, what do you think last season would have been like for the Gators with better coaching on the defensive side of the ball? The aTm and LSU games could easily gone the other way. Had that happened and the SEC game played out the same way, there's a good chance UF would have been in the playoff. Sure, we might have been one and done, but so what? Let's say last year's UF team had several more star players, but without the right coaching would it have been enough?)