Someone here.. maybe even Kbee.. called SG good as gone in year 3. Or maybe Kbee had the quote in his sig to embarrass the other guy.. Kbee and Treeman seem to come to mind.. not sure who said it and who quoted it..
But GS coming in.. he had some juice ("stain" someone here called it).. because he was DC at number 1 Miami and Miami had a lot of fans in this area. So when he and his guys worked overtime to visit every HS, every year.. and he had that big Junior Day gatherings here at Rutgers and expressed his vision of winning at Rutgers.. he got some people listening.. not enough to win championships.. but enough that we COULD have gone to a bowl game in year 4, save for a drunk driver taking out our secondary depth. And we did got to a bowl in year 5 and win one in year 6.
Our problem then was that by year 3 and year 4.. a lot of doubters came around.. and recruiting slacked.. and during the great 2006 season... most of the players we needed to improve the program had plans to go elsewhere.. some were swayed.. like Anthony Davis.. he really really wanted to stay home and he could see that Rutgers under GS can get him to the NFL. But then in 2007.. well, we had a failure based on a good coach spending all summer prepping to beat Schiano's defense. And a good chunk of the air went out of the program, recruiting-wise. We couldn't really cash in on that 2006 season... because we really needed consecutive years like that to make a big jump... and then we had the conference problems as ESPN and the ACC struck at Big East football gain and again.
In the Big Ten, should we have back-to-back great years.. even if it doesn't mean championships.. we should be able to make a big jump in recruiting off of that. But now we have other issues.. like less kids playing football and people flooding out of the state being replaced by immigrants... I think our best bet is to recruit nationwide.. find a way to do that.
