Shame about Hearns--but hey, good an academic school as we are (and despite our long-standing efforts to be known as "The Harvard of the South"), this ISN'T the Ivy League, and if a kid, with all the help he gets, and time he has to shore UP those grades once apprised of the danger he won't cut it here if he DOESN'T get with the tutors, etc., and, failing to put some time and EFFORT into it, instead figures it should be HANDED to him like everything ELSE has the last few years of high school, then MAYBE this is a young man with OTHER problems--SOME combination of motivational, attitudinal AND priority-appraisal-related ones that likely make him unsuitable for the kind of TEAM this staff is building here. Ya gotta WANNA be a Gator--even if that means finally opening up one of those "BOOK-thingies", and getting used to CONTINUING in that vein all the way through your college career. I mean, how BAD are things STILL at Auburn when their "edge" is that they accept and can promise to "get ya thru" an "educational program" (it's a JOKE even CALLING it that, really) that amounts to a transparent EXCUSE to finesse the supposed "student athlete" rules and image--making it the mockery the phonies at the NCAA make such a big (though in truth, selective) deal as how things "have to be".
Anyway, we really NEED this to be the great recruiting class it is still well-shaping up to be--all the MORE with what has amounted to a "worst case scenario", or something close to it, with the juniors we ended up losing here. Indeed, in an extensive analysis, Feldman at CBSsports.com notes that "the Gators have taken a particularly heavy hit in the number and QUALITY of key non-seniors that they are losing to the NFL Draft this time around"...He rates us as the #3 "Hardest Hit" in a "Top 10" of such programs, one (not surprisingly) as dominated by the SEC as any fair end-of-season ranking of the programs' performance in the season just past (I'll get to that at the end here).
We got on that list, and "rated" on it so highly, courtesy of "just" FOUR PLAYERS' leaving:
Floyd (DT), Elam (S), Reed (TE), Jenkins (LB)
Here is the full list itself:
(1) LSU
(2) Tennessee
(3)**UF**
(4)TAMU
(5)FSU
(6)UGA
(7)'Bama
(8)Okla.
(9)Mich. St.
(10) Stanford
As you can see, with so MANY SEC-teams, plus FSU, on the list, many of our "toughest future opponents" have been arguably as significantly "hard-hit" (or nearly so, anyway) as WE have been--so perhaps this will not affect actual competition as much as it might seem on first glance...It comes down, as I implied above, to how well each team "RELOADS" in the next couple of recruiting cycles, ESPECIALLY THIS ONE, which of course culminates in a couple of weeks.
This would thus be all-the-more an opportune time to "hit the jackpot" with a really outstanding class--and we are still well on track to DO that. I believe we'll be in "good shape" even if we only get the ones we're "solid with" already--but if we COULD grab a handful more of the "BEST OF THE BEST" who have us on their "short list or BETTER", this COULD be "one for the ages", one of those "transforming" classes that (like for eg. Meyer's 2nd year, I think) is so well-timed that it sets-us-up for a multi-year run that feeds on ITSELF, drawing in NEW "good-to-GREAT classes" to KEEP fueling that success. I still say that had we--and HE--not lost all those great assistants, men who carried our recruiting, those prospects' preparation for ON-field success once they GOT here, and, as it tuned out, to a great extent Meyer HIMSELF--and then Meyer somehow losing focus, unloading too much onto an ill-prepared and unworthy Dive Master to both make those choices AND oversee getting 'em ready once they got here...had we instead KEPT that staff together just a couple more years, the intervening years since our last Championship would have been VERY different indeed--no great insight, I grant you, but worth noting/remembering--and it all began with (what I-think-was) the '09-Class, that all the "experts" (and that was part of the problem: that remaining "Not-Much-Brain-Trust" relied completely UPON that "accepted common wisdom", rather than "their own"--really The Dazed One's--LACK of research, evaluation and/or insight in choosing the prospects in that class) called "amazingly full and talented", but one that turned out to be loaded with prima donnas, trouble-making sideline-sulkers and locker-room whiners etc. who thought it all should be handed to them, tore the team apart when it wasn't, and for the most part ultimately didn't live up to their promise in ANY event--no big surprise. It's a mark of how good a team we HAD that, though it STILL "underachieved" that last "year-in-the-string", with Tebow and a number of others coming back for their senior years to WIN another one (DESPITE being MORE "ready for primetime" and "higher-rated" than most of the guys leaving early THIS year) only finally getting beat in the SEC-Championship game (a topic of "Warning to Future Gator TEAMS" in-and-of-itSELF, worth remembering and examining in detail ELSEWHERE), we went otherwise undefeated DESPITE the resulting cracks that began to show and multiply. It wasn't until 2010, though, after Meyer's "drama-queen flip-flop" to start things heading that way at the end of '09 (another HUGE "warning", that we swept-under-the-rug, then ignored and did our best not to think about--mostly in RELIEF, as I recall), that it all REALLY "showed"--when it turned out we DIDN'T have the "replacement parts" after ALL.
THAT, ie. "having the REPLACEMENT parts", is exactly what is on-the-line THIS time TOO, btw.
