What college program does the most with the least?

Ummm.. it is stated in the title.  The ESPN 300. That comes from the so called "recruiting gurus" who have created a new industry the last 30 35 years or so as recruiting has become a separate sports season. 

Yeah..sorry..no.  Coaches don't give stars or rank Jimmy J  from Bumbledum Texas as the #1 player in the country. 

And nobody insinuated that was what happens.  Sorry, not letting you derail the thread further by having to explain recruiting to you so that you then change to your 5th (or is it 6th) screen name here. 

yes YOU did insinuate such. Sorry the fact hurt your untouchable perch.

They rank em left and right based on critical factors...
www.espn.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/news/story?id=6403943

No.  It seems fairly obvious that in the context of this discussion, my comments reflect exactly what I am alluding to.  That the recruiting "gurus" go to camps, games etc and create their lists, BUT then when some schools are introduced into the recruiting, those ratings often change.  

Coaches don't  "leak" recruiting to these people.  They don't create lists and then give them to recruiting media sources.  They just go about their recruiting.   The services report on said recruiting for the fans.  When certain schools recruit certain athletes, those athletes are often subjectively considered "better" and thus some schools sign more "high value (as assessed by a third party) recruits" because certain school's interest in those kids creates that "high value" (again, as assed by a third party). 

Put more plainly, Bama, LSU, Florida, etc sign a bunch of 4/5 star recruits because the people who give the stars decide that if aan athlete is  being recruited by those schools, that athlete must be 4/5 start recruits.  

I don't see how anyone who is involved in coaching HS football could take my comments to mean that Nick Saban sits around and basis his recruiting on what Tom Luginbill says. 

Like everyone has said, the service academies with Army lately but Navy and Air Force are always solid. Don't forget about The Citadel as well.

Coastal Carolina and Liberty have done a nice job this year. Boise State back in the day under Chris Peterson as well before they shocked Oklahoma and started picking up way better recruits. San Jose State, University of Buffalo, Ball State, this year as well.

I would look at any successful D3 programs as well. Those D3 programs can relate to us much more than scholarship NCAA schools. University of St. Thomas in Minnesota under Glenn Caruso comes to mind. He has done an outstanding job. John Carroll University, Springfield College in Mass., and I am sure there is many D3's I am missing outside of your traditional powerhouses like Mount Union and Wisconsin Whitewater.

I don't know if that is necessarily 100% true. Even though I objected to Wisconsin and Iowa being crowned as kings of "doing most with the least", they certainly are working with  with "less" than OSU and Michigan.  Texas Tech and TCU are working with "less" than OU or UT.  The Mississippi schools are working with "less" than the rest of the SEC West.   

So I agree that they should not be considered "doing most with the least", but I would not say that they are on equal footing.   Charlie Strong with a .444 Big 12 winning percentage is still getting the top tier kids over Patterson and his .670 conference winning percentage. 


I wonder how this will affect football moving forward the next 2 decades or so.  There seems to have been a cultural shift (I blame travel baseball with the kids getting "rings" every weekend...gag" to where if you arent the champ, why bother.  I wonder if that will filter up to college football.  We already see it on an individual level (opting out, not playing bowl games etc) and it is spreading a great deal.  I wonder if it gets to the point where schools who compete for their conference title once every 15 -20 years or hang it up. 

The institutions at the academies don’t allow the access to resources, but the academies have by far and away the most resources, the American tax payer.. I am not suggesting the institutions compromise, but that to say the have less to work with is silly.

Not a lot of folks know that Jason Bourne was a hell of a safety for the Black Knights before Operation Treadstone.

A lot of good answers here. I'll add the West Virginia schools. They have 2 FBS schools in one of the least talented states in the union. And yet both Marshall and WVU remain competitive and consistent bowl contenders.

If they wanted to, they could go get the Stanford, Vanderbilt, michigan, many of the upper echelon academic institutions of D-1 college football. I am not telling you it would be on the up and up or that it wouldn’t be x,y or z, nor am I suggesting I am for this, but they have the resource of all resources if the powers that be permitted it be powerhouses. Facilities, recruiting, academics, coaches...

Where are the resources for most institutions, especially in the power 5 and the academies. They have the resources. What they lack is the want to win. The perfect example of this is Oregon. The money is there to recruit and build facilities. And the money is there to do it, whether they do it or not. Colorado was Oregon in the early  90’s. Most with less is a falsity. They are choosing to do more with less. Who is doing the most with what they have is more appropriate.

Of course not and Pithy said so in his message. I think that the problem here is defining "least".