The thing people have to remember is that in the current environment, it's not just about who really likes ND, it's also the price tag for an elite player at each position and who is willing to pay it and win the bidding wars going on. Every time a big time guy commits (such as Forstall) the market gets tighter and the price tag goes up for the remaining top talent by some amount. The result is that it makes it insanely difficult to get all the guys you want, regardless of how hard you recruit them, unless you're willing to spend top dollar for every single one of them.
That is not to excuse ND. If they don't land a top flight DL class, it's completely on them for not being willing to compete financially... But every school has a budget and a price tag they're willing to pay a position group. These things move insanely quickly and the agents and their clients are cutthroat. If the pricetag for a recruit climbs beyond your comfort zone and what you've allotted for that spot in the class, you have 3 choices:
1). Steal money earmarked for another position to stay in the race for said player.
2). Move on to the next player on your board, hoping to land him at the price you've slotted for that position.
3). Quickly try to find some additional money from the collective to match / surpass what a competitor is willing to offer.
For that reason, it can seem like ND is going to kill it at a position one day and the next day a bunch of those guys are off the board. That's why I've been saying that ND likely only gets a maximum of two of Sesay, Brown, Fakatou, O'Neil, Green or Forstall (now off the board). Possibly only one. The #2/#3 DE might have to be a down the board guy. It also likely depends on what the price tag is for the likes of Folorunsho and Parks on the interior.
Keep all of that in mind while also remembering that while ND is competitive with NIL, is not likely going to be the top bidder in any of these recruitments, which means that guys will be leaving money on the table to choose ND. Some guys will be ok with that given what ND has to offer, while others will choose to take the money.
Recruiting is much more of a business now, which means fans can't really be as invested in individual recruits. All we can hope is that ND is able to land as many from the pool of their top of the board players as their budget allows, and it's the staff's job to allocate the funds to the positions they want to spend the most and least money at in a given cycle. ND's budget is competitive, but still conservative. If they think player B gives them 90% of the upside as player A, but costs 75% of what player A does, sometimes they're going to have to swallow hard and pass on the more expensive player in order to keep their budget intact or to re-allocate the funds to the bidding wars for a player they like better or a position of greater need... Highly frustrating for the fans of recruiting who are left scratching their heads, but realistic in the moment we're in.
I'll say it again... Don't be shocked if ND's DL class is something like...
Parks + Folorunsho and 3 of O'Neil, Brown, Fakatou, Sesay, Green, Emedobi, Harvey, Tuihalamaka, Wittington, etc... And don't assume that all three guys will come from the big names at the top of that DE list. Hell, don't assume that even two of them will depending on the price tags.
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