I think it was Irish Spirit who first pointed out Steele's recruiting rankings to me. Steele (by far the best of the pre-season magazines, btw) ranks incoming classes of frosh and juco's (combined) by simply taking the player ratings of the six major recruiting services and then coming up with a player rating. This has the effect of canceling out a lot of the nonsense. For example, Lemming tends to overvalue Midwest prospects and Wallace likes the West Coast. It also has some legitimacy in the sense that most of the player ratings are compiled before the player commits to a particular team. It also eliminates the nonsense of the overall "class" rankings. Lemming, for example, made LSU the #1 class in 2003, even though they had only 3 of Lemming's top 100, while N.D. had 8 of the top 100 (actually top 67).

N.D.'s rankings have been: 7 for the 1999 class (the last group of graduating 5th years), 6 for 2000 (5th years, Holiday et. al.), 5 for 2001 (seniors -- Grant et. al.), 5 for 2002 (juniors, McKnight et. al.), 3 for 2003 (Quinn et. al.) and 17 for the incoming frosh.

Here's the list of teams that have appeared in every one of the top 25's: Texas (all classes 9 or higher), Ohio State (all classes 9 or higher), LSU (two classes in the 20's -- all the rest in the top 10), USC (23rd in 1999 -- all in the top 13 since then, #1 classes last two years), Miami (all classes in the top 9), Florida (all classes 19 or higher), FSU (all classes 19 or higher, #1 classes in 2001 and 2002), Texas A&M (all 23 or higher) and Tennessee (all classes 21 or higher).

Now, in the group that has missed just one of the top 25's: Michigan (missed in 2000 but all others in the top 10), Georgia (missed in 2000 but all others in the top 23), Oklahoma (missed in 1999 but in the top 14 every year since), UCLA (in the 14-23 range every year except last year, then #31).

Now, here are teams that have made the top 25 at least 3 of the 6 years: Stanford (16 in 2000, 15 in 2001, 23 in 2002, 21 in 2003, 46 in 2004), Boston College (3 times -- all between 20 and 25 -- 33 last year), Alabama (4 times), Michigan State (3 times), Nebraska (4 times), Auburn (3 times), North Carolina (3 times), Penn State (4 times) and Virginia (3 times).

Now, let's compare records on the field beginning with 1999. Let's start with the group that has made the top 25 all of the years:

Miami 55-8
FSU 50-14
Texas 50-15
Ohio State 46-17
Tenn 46-17
FL 45-19
LSU 42-21
USC 40-23
N.D. 34-26
A&M 33-27

Now, in the only-missed-once group:

Oklahoma 55-11
UGA 48-16
Michigan 47-15
UCLA 31-29

So, in this group that always or nearly always recruits well, N.D. has outperformed only A&M (mostly coached by Bob Davie's hero, R.C. Slocum) and UCLA (which fired Bob Toledo and replaced him with the perhaps-as-incompetent Karl Dorrell). Note as well that in this group, anything that involves prolonged play around .600 or less indicates a coaching change (Davie by Willingham, Toledo by Dorrell, Slocum by Franchione, Donavan by Richt, Hackett by Carroll, DiNardo by Saban).

Now consider the records of teams that recruit well at least half the time:

Nebraska: 50-15
B.C. 40-22
Auburn 38-24
UVA 35-28
MSU 34-26
Alabama 34-27
PSU 32-29
Stanford 28-29 (22-13 under Willingham; 6-16 under Teevens)
UNC 22-37

Note that N.D. would be fairly far down in this group, and most of the underperforming teams here have seen coaching changes. Solich was fired and replaced by Callahan this year, Williams was fired and replaced by Smith at MSU, Alabama has gone through 3 coaching changes in 5 years (incl. Price), UNC has gone through one and will another after this year absent a big turnaround, Teevens will probably be out unless he gets S.U. to a bowl game this year, Groh replaced Welsh, Tuberville would've been fired last year had word not leaked of the interview with the Louisville coach and Paterno probably would've been gone if he weren't Paterno. Really only O'Brien at B.C. has been safe all along.

It's just hard to believe that N.D.'s performance of winning 60% or so of its games can be attributed entirely to a lack of talent. Some of it may be harder schedules than most of these teams, but -- in the end -- it looks like the problem has been primarily coaching. At least that has been the consistent judgment of athletic directors faced with a similar situation. Just sizing up perceived talent, it's hard to see why N.D. shouldn't be 8-3 or better this year.