Big Ten Football Recruiting Classes

How does Ron Zook end up with such a great recruiting class? Illinois hasn't been that spectacular over the last few years. I guess the idea of actually playing instead of sitting until your junior or senior year would be appealing. The Illini picked up the nation's #1 DE (the kid is from Chicago), #3 WR and the #5 DT. I thought the year Wisconsin had would be big for recruiting, but their class isn't even in the top 25. They definitely deserved more love during the season, and now in the offseason too. Iowa's class is 24th and we got some good defensive pick ups, good TE from Kansas and the usual pick of the litter of the in-state kids.

Big Ten recruits:
http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/recr...iting/tracker/conference?confId=5&season=2007

NCAA Top 25 recruiting classes:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/recruiting/news/story?id=2757802

Ron Zook recruited the kids that just won a national title, so it's not too surprising to me. The man can recruit, he's just not a spectacular gameday coach. The prospect of being able to start for 4 years probably factors in as well.

I don't get too caught up in recruiting, as some never pan out and others are not with their teams for the entire 4 years.

That being said, Wisconsin seems to have a good class, however the fact that they only had 16 slots open compared to other programs that added 20 or more weighed significantly in the ratings. In the star rating system, Wisconsin was comparable to other higher ranked schools, but due to the low number of scholarships available they fell overall.

Im not impressed with the big ten recruiting this year, I really felt one of their top teams would be in the top 5 classes.....But no as usual is USC, Forida, and Texas....Figures!