In all fairness, we have seen around 3 Chizik recruits out of two signing classes play any meaningful PT. It's a little premature to call the recruiting a success or fail. On paper, its certainly a success; moreso the 2010 class than the 2009. One thing to consider though: You guys jumped all in CTT's ass for guys not making grades, guys just not panning out, transfers, etc. There were 28 signees in the 2009 class. 11 of them are not on the roster, for whatever reason. Thats a pretty big number for just 1 year removed from that class.
To me, it doesn't make sense to evaluate recruiting success after the fact. I know you can only tell if kids lived up to their billing
after the fact. You can only look back and see how things panned out....
after the fact. But to me, that's different than evaluating your recruiting success. "After the fact" is where you learn if you were lucky and if you could coach, but not if you could recruit.
Take Michael Dyer, Corey Lemonier, and Trovon Reed. These three guys were heavily recruited by most other top programs, all to varying degrees. Florida, Georgia, LSU, Tennessee, Florida State, Texas, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Oregon, Alabama, USC, Miami, etc...all had these guys evaluated about the same.
If in 2013 we realize any one or two of these guys were busts, that doesn't mean Auburn did a poor job of recruiting in 2010. It means we were unlucky or couldn't coach. Had those three guys gone to Florida, Georgia, and LSU, it wouldn't have meant Meyer, Richt, or Miles had done a poor job of recruiting either. It would have meant they were unlucky too. Chizik wouldn't have been alone in being wrong about Dyer. Everyone would have been wrong.
The success of recruiting, to me, is defined when you either win or lose the battles for those guys that are generally considered to be great talents by nearly all the top programs. Sure, things get more interesting when you're talking about 2-star and 3-star guys that you feel are "diamonds in the rough". But when we're talking about the guys that are top 10 and top 15 at their position, the success of recruiting comes when they choose you over other top programs. Not 3-4 years later when you get lucky or unlucky and the guy is either a drop out or an NFL lottery pick.
So to me, we won't have to wait a few years to see if this staff was successful at recruiting in 2010. That has been decided. They
were successful. It's over. They won a lot of battles against other top programs for the signatures of a lot of sought after kids.
From this point on we will see two things. 1. We'll see if they're lucky. And 2. we'll see if they can coach them. That's what we'll know in 2013 about this 2010 class. Not if Auburn was successful at recruiting. We can determine that right now.