I definitely think there is a case to be made that USU and the U have both had better player development for the last 5-10 years. But I think there are so many variables with how players turn out vs. how heavily recruited they were. It's a crapshoot for every team. When all is said and done I still haven't seen anything more predictive overall of future success than the collective opinions of the scouts, coaches, and recruiters that are represented by the star system.

Also, you can say that BYU should have recruited certain USU players based on the rearview mirror, but that also means that all the other D-1 programs that didn't recruit them (including Utah – because your premise that they would have come to BYU if we'd recruited them means they certainly would have also gone to Utah if given the chance, right?) also had the same lack of foresight. It wasn't just BYU missing on these guys. All the other programs that are superior to USU also missed on them.