I think a lot of these dudes just don’t follow the sport like that. College football really is about levels. There’s the “we-ass” level (FAU, current Va Tech, Umass, et al.), there’s the “not really good, but not we-ass,” level (this is where Colorado is at right now), there’s the “alright but not quite good,” level (teams like Missouri normally occupy this space. On a given day, they could beat a really good team), there’s the “we would beat most teams in the country convincingly” level (teams normally like Penn State or Oklahoma when they’re good), there’s “the GOOD ass team” level (teams that if they have their antennaes are up for the game… it’s a wrap, see: last few years Georgia, Bama, Clemson, etc).
It’s damn hard to get into that last level. Damn hard, and y'all are saying it like it’s going to be easy
. It’s not just recruiting, but it’s building an infrastructure where you can plug and play high level recruits rather easily into your schemes; yet, the schemes are complex enough to still befuddle opposing defenses/offenses. Most coaches in college football fail miserably at this because it’s not just you, but more so about having the right coaching staff admixture in terms of philosophies, chemistry, right amount of ‘cruiters juxtaposed to “minds” on your staff, etc. What made a team like Clemson so deadly recently is that they were loaded with elite talent, but they had a simple system in terms plays/reads, however one that was equally hard to defend because they had a great offensive and defensive mind at the helm—and they we’re recruiting, recruiting.
It’s also the school’s football culture (Rice has an 8 billion dollar endowment and will never be a football school), the facilities, the boosters, and so on. NIL is a huge thing now in recruiting and the transfer portal—and flat-out—Colorado
is never going to outspend UGA, Alabama, UF, Ohio State, or even FSU on “foosball” or in terms of what the fan base will pony up monetarily; so he is going to be recruiting at a disadvantage. It’s going to be hard to take that step into GOOD ass team realm. It took Kirby Smart years to get there after recruiting at an incredibly high level.
It’s also staving off complacency. Okay, you won the championship… now what? A lot of programs go into chill-mode for prolonged periods after winning it big. shyt, I’ve seen it happen with my squad. In 2014 FSU returned a lot of their championship team from 2013 and was somehow worse. HTF!? Why? They’d already won. Coach was ready to dip, players were ready to dip, and so on. That’s why the Saban shyt is wild to me. I know how hard it is to maintain being a really good team for a prolonged period of time let alone under the same coach. Building a team that can win it all is fukking hard, but building a team that could win it all seemingly every year is incomprehensible. Either way, this will not be easy for CU but I think Deion knows that too.