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Post being replied to

ND is trying to sell the public that we can only recruit a by VaDblDmr

small percentage of the best players because most won't qualify. I point you to Kelly's and his acolytes' many statements over the years on the subject. And I further invite you to peruse the comments on any homer website. They are replete with that sentiment. So if you don't think that's what ND is trying to sell, then it's hard for us to have a meaningful discussion on the topic of landing top 5 classes.

OTOH, if you agree that ND is trying to sell that nonsense, then the OP's data, and similar recent analyses on this site, plainly put the lie to it. And it really is that simple.

Going back to Hansen's article, he quotes Elston as saying that fewer than half of the top 100 could be recruited, while Lemming says 60-70. Hansen tries to square that circle by positing as to Lemming's number, that it "could conceivably be representative of those who simply clear the admissions bar, but perhaps couldn’t sustain that in the classroom over the long term at a school with no soft majors." And that explanation is rubbish unless you want to believe that Vandy (or Duke or Stanford or Northwestern) has lower academic expectations for its football players than ND does.