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And both were seeking to make a social statements,wrong reason to pick a football coach.
the Trees finished ranked 25th and were,, I believe, the ONLY team in the conference to make the final rankings. If memory serves, . . .
completely different environments. I also think he didn’t have the outside/inside influences like ND. As Bettis said, “they never gave him enough time”.
From what I understand, he was actually given an option to return in 2005, if he would just fire the inept Bill Diedrich, but refused to do so.
We would have been in a much worse position for that class of 2006 had Willingham done his usual recruiting job.
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It's not as if he had to try hard in the first place during his "glory" years at Stanford. Two eight+ win seasons in a badly weakened Pac 10 didn't exactly take that much effort. Pete Carroll didn't have his mercenaries, er, players, quite in place just yet.
To put it this way, arguably, his best season that resulted in a major bowl was 1999, when he took Stanford to the Rose Bowl. He did that with an 8-3 record, and that wasn't exactly very impressive. Seeing Ron Dayne bowl over them in the 2nd half and seeing how they were completely deflated pretty much summarized how those teams must have felt.
Once he got here, he was absolutely lazy when it came to recruiting. He was lucky to get the class of 2003 that was arguably a very good class, thanks to the hype from the 2002 season where almost every break went our way.
After that? He sat on his rear and didn't even reach out to many a blue chip recruit who wanted to come here. Instead, he was happy to passively let two star players the likes of Tregg Duerson come to the program. Looking at that God-awful class of 2004, there were maybe six players in that class that contributed meaningful minutes. Off the top of my head, I can only remember three who were notable.
Darius Walker - One of the better running backs we've had here. He could do it all, and put in a good season in 2004, along with very fine seasons in 2005 and 2006. I don't blame his leaving early, since playing behind that depleted offensive line of 2007 would have gotten him brutally hurt.
Maurice Crum Jr - Not as talented as his father, but still a very solid player for us. Hard working guy, and a better man than his father.
Terrail Lambert - Had a couple of decent games, especially against Michigan State in 2006, but aside from that, not very good.
The mathematics are pretty simple. If you don't have at least 8 players in a class who played reasonable amounts of meaningful minutes, then your recruiting pretty much stank.
Is enough to give you shudders
Willingham was taking in 2 and absolutely bottom level 3 star talent in 2004 and 2005. He was more of the filter feeder type that waited for those kids to contact him and plead their cases.
He also couldn't develop receivers worth a darn, and insisted on running a stripped down version of the West Coast Offense with a triple option quarterback at the helm. Not smart at all.
Weis had his faults, especially when it came to hiring the inept Jon Tenuta and turning over the keys to him on defense. That all by itself resulted in the difference in all six losses, since that stupid "jailbreak blitz every down" method was all too easy to burn with mediocre offensive talent.
But, in the end, Charlie left the place in much better condition that what he inherited. Those putrid classes of 2004 and 2005 contributed very few players playing meaningful minutes, and the only reason why 2005's class did better was because he brought in 3-4 players who did play some good minutes, especially Turkovich and Duncan.
Under Charlie, we were finally routinely bringing in 4 and 5 star talent, and that each of his recruiting classes fielded at least 10 players who played meaningful minutes.
To put it this way, with the lack of true junior and senior talent in 2007, even Nick Saban wouldn't have been able to get us to .500.
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...adjustments considered for era of college football.