It depends to some extent on how much of a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of guy you are. It's exciting to have guys with interest and offers from other BCS teams choosing us. It gives us some good news we can hang on to in a season full of mostly bad news. On the other hand, the need to go with so many JUCOs highlights the fact that we've had recruiting problems in the past and player development issues. It also carries with it a kind of stench of desperation from a need to "win now" perspective.
We also need to temper our enthusisam a bit with JUCOs, in that, to a great degree, every JUCO that we bring in creates the potential for ANOTHER development bubble in future years. That is, every junior we bring in is one less freshman that can be brought in and developed down the line for future classes. It's fine to fill in holes here and there, but it can quickly become a snake eating its tail as we're rob the depth of 2016 and 2017 to buy some talent today. For example, in a couple of years, we could wind up needing 2-3 JUCO defensive linemen because we haven't signed any HS DL at all this year. Or, we find ourselves in the position where we see that we have 21 WRs on scholarship and only 10 DL on scholarship (which has happened in the past).
I think most, if not all, coaches would want to recruit only HS players and then just work them through the program. Do your own development of freshmen and sophomores, and don't rely outsourcing that critical player growth to the junior colleges. However, we're not Notre Dame or Texas. We're going to have recruiting misses, development busts and attrition. I've never gotten too worried about taking 2-3 JUCOs a year to fill in major holes at ISU. I think when you talk about taking 7-10 in a year, you've got problems.
I think the regime is feeling pressure and has it's back to the wall in 2014. Another bad year isn't going to work given we have stakeholders, boosters and fans all stepping up in a major way the last few years, capped off by the SEZ project announcement. It's 'put-up or shut-up' time for this regime I think. Thus, more JUCOs.
We're bringing in some great talent this year, it appears. We're filling some major talent gaps with some very JUCOs. But overall, it has a feel of some of those McCarney years where they had "immediate needs" all over the place. It's not as bad as most of those Mac years, but I get that vibe from it. I tend to think that a program is mortgaging it's future too much if you go over 4 or five JUCOs. We need to do better next year, though, so the picture of a class of 25 HS guys for some ideal 2016 and 2017 doesn't matter. We need to win now. This staff, to it's credit, has done much better than MccCarney did with JUCOs - Mac rolled the dice far too often with his JUCO recruiting and it cost him. I don't want a return to that.
I'm excited and hopeful, but a bit troubled by the need for so many JUCOs. Overall, I think the talent is better than in the past, but I hope we aren't selling out the future and creating problems down the road, where the solution winds up being "more JUCOs."
Cheers
