. . . and the number of coaches available to recruit them, not to mention who we target based on the style we play and who our chief competition is for that talent.
Football recruiting has picked up significantly over the past few years to the point where it shouldn't even be a general point of attack on the program, IMO. Uriah Leiataua, Mika Tafua, Tevita Mounga, Charles West, Kieffer Longson, Jonah Trinnaman - we are getting good players and beating out good programs to do it. There is really no point in freaking out about a guy who, while he would certainly help us out a lot, plays a position for which we already have two starter-quality players who are still young in the program. He would certainly be an upgrade, probably a significant one, but we do have guys who can play there and who really wouldn't fit well sliding inside to play guard.
If a kid wants to big time us, he's going to big time us, and that's equally true in football and basketball.
I do want to see more kids going to the NFL, but we just haven't had the quantity of NFL-caliber athletes over the past five years that we needed to have that pipeline moving, particularly since age is such a huge issue when it comes to the draft.