DropTopDoc
20/20 Vision With my Buffs On
Out of our best players during that era I'm not sure any were offered/recruited by yall besides Malik McDowell, and Will Gholston.
Cousins
Darquez Denard
Bell
Jeremy Langford
Bennie Fowler
Tony Lippett
Max Bollough (you know damn well no Bolloughs are going to UM-AA)
Denicos Allen
Isiah Lewis
Keyshawn Martin
BJ Cunningham
Y'all classes were still better and didn't Hoke have a top 5 class? The issue was never talent it was coaching and not being able to beat MSU & OSU. What game changers did we get over y'all? Not saying you're wrong just need a refresher. Maybe Larry Caper and Rock Baker at RB? Mark Dell?
MSU obviously benefited from y'all being down, as did OSU...beating yall for that stretch turned OSU into a national program rather than midwestern based. No different than y'all locking up all the local talent after Saban left until 2008ish while MSU was awful
Going back to Ed's point, MSU was good b/c Dantonio was an elite defensive coach, not due to outrecruiting anyone on a consistent basis.
Barney Rubble was ass as a coach and should be an Oline coach at best, Dan overachieved like a mf and he had a staff that was a hive mind of defense, doing the little things, and working your ass off. Your qb and run games just meshed well, but you can only hit on finding diamonds so many times it’s not a good model (see VaTech)
I can’t name exact kids because I’m not one to follow recruiting, because it’s so relative, i just remember a few guys from king and cass choosing msu over Michigan and that was big