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You are exactly correct by WilfordBrimley

and, in particular, the correlation between our recruiting rankings (typically between 8 and 11) and our NFL draft production (between 8 and 11 over the course of the Kelly era) is almost exactly the same. The R-squared between programs with top tier recruiting and programs with top tier NFL draft and on field production has to be very high.

The fact that we can’t compete with OU and Clemson (who are also in our range in both stats) on the field is a culture and coaching problem, not a talent problem. And they also have kids transfer, lose kids for whatever reasons, etc.

A great recruiter like Urban Meyer would be able to consistently pull in top 4 - 5 classes every year at ND, but we’ll never repeat what Alabama just did.

Furthermore, the ND fans aren’t powerful enough in the market for this stuff to move rankings on individual players and haven’t been for at least a decade. OSU, Michigan, LSU, Alabama, SC, Texas, UGA fans and so forth are all just as voracious consumers of that recruiting stuff as ND fans are.