How are we supposed to build a consistent winner when the entire recruiting landscape is designed to keep us in our lane? I'm looking at the 247 composite team rankings and it's the same story every year, the SEC and Big Ten vacuuming up all the top 300 talent while we're fghting Montana and Weber State for three-star flips. The noise around these mega-classes at Oregon and Texas is deafening, but the real work is happening in the shadows with the guys who could actually change our program.
We need to be locking down those high-three-star, fringe-four-star guys in Arizona and California before the Pac-12 leftovers come sniffing around. Every time a kid gets a late offer from Arizona State or Utah, our crystal ball flips overnight. Where is our NIL collective for these battles? You can't tell me the bagman game isn't being played in the Big Sky, we just aren't playing it at the level needed to secure the difference-makers. We're always reacting, never setting the pace.
The worst part is watching a kid like Cooper Terwilliger, from South Dakota no less, commit to Penn State. That's a regional kid who should be on our radar, but we get out-worked by a national brand before we even get an OV scheduled. Why aren't we the program that finds and develops those guys first? When do we start winning these battles instead of just being a polite participant? Our entire future depends on it.