No one is denying that the team has had a little downturn in recent years. The question is whether or not that will continue, or whether the recruiting has gotten better in the last few years and that this will lead to better records in the future. Some of us think that it will. You think that it won't. We get that. BTW, how do you think Solich would have done coaching Alabama?

Vanderbilt, Duke, Stanford and Northwestern have rigorous academic standards. It is hard for them to get a class of four and fivestar athletes.

yes they do in Basketball. They only have to find 3-5 players per year for basketball.

Maybe some of both. 247Sports tends to give out more 3-stars than other services. For the MAC as a whole the numbers by year have been:
2012 69
2013 64
2014 64
2015 101
2016 81
2017 96

Part of the jump in 2015-7 is related to better recruiting by WMU, and the rest may be inflation.

Wasn't Roger Lewis a 4-star recruit? I seem to remember Ohio being on him when Ohio State dropped him, then he ended up at Bowling Green, where he burned us.

I thought that Lewis was 3-stars. The guy I thought was 4-stars was Broagan Roback, the EMU QB, but he doesn't show that way.

Now, lets go back to the 2012 class:
3-star recruits: S. Smith, T. Clark, M. Roberts, C. Murray, Tanner, Windham
High 2-star recruits: Schany, Laseak, Wells, Edmond, Gibbons
Low 2-star recruits: Patterson, Watson, Waters, Branz, J. Brown, Stewart
Unrated: B. Brown, Reid, Rodriguez, Henry, Davis

Now let's score them. This isn't the best class to score because so many players were no shows, or were hurt early in their career before we found out what they could do. I'm going to drop the ones with early injuries from the math,
If you give 5 points for a player with all-MAC honors, 4 for a starter, 3 points for a second team player, 2 for an occasional player, and 1 for a player that never played, and ignore non-qualifiers, you find this:
3-star players: 5,na, na, na, na, inj, 4 (average 4.50)
high 2-star players: inj, 4, 3, 2, 3 (average 3.00)
low 2-star players: 4, 4, 4, 5, 3, 3 (average 3.83)
unrated players: 5, 4, 1, inj, 4 (average 3.50)

For 2012 the two 3 star players that actually enrolled, and who didn't get hurt early turned out OK. On the whole, though, there is not really any statistically significant correlation between predicted performance and actual performance.

What about 2014? These players haven't finished their careers, so before the year is out, these could change, but here is a preliminary look:
3-star recruits: Duckworth, McCray, Lowery, Walker
High 2-star recruits: C. Brown, Dudziak, C. Brunson, Kuhar
Low 2-star recruits: Meyer, Berger, Boland, Pruehs, Langenkamp, Fox, T. Jones, DiCillo, Brumfield, Brunis, P. White
Unrated: C. Washington, Nelson, Bonnstetter, Irons, Layton

Scoring them from memory:
3-star: 1, 4, 4, 3 (Average 3.00)
High 2-star: 2, 1, 3, 1 (Average 2.50)
Low 2-star: 3, 3, 4, 5, 1, 3, na, inj, na, 3, 3 (Average 3.13)
Unrated: na, 4, 5, 3, 4 (Average 4.00)

If I made a mistake scoring any players, please feel free to correct me. In particular I can't remember who was all-Mac, and who wasn't. In any case, it now looks like this:
2012 - No real correlation
2013 - Strong inverse correlation
2014 - Slight inverst correlation

Roback was 4 stars by Rivals. https://n.rivals.com/content/prospects/26050

Hey, I don't doubt it. I love this class. The only thing we are missing is a tight end. Kaim Caesar at 275 pounds will make a great DT or OT in a year or two, Coleman at DT is great. The DE's look good. TJ is an enforcer at linebacker. The db's are very skilled and fast. The wide outs are smart and fast. Minter and Cherry can be used for trick plays since they are former qb's. The QB's are better than what he have and our running back ran a 10.5 100 meter and was the player of the year in his city.

Cope and Meyer are as well, as was Mario Dowell, a few years ago.

Robert, if they doubt my point, they can run the numbers themselves. Every recruiting year it's about the same.

This reminds me, in a recent interview Frank said that while they look at the rating services' rankings, they have their own internal star ranking system. I think it's high time that WikiBALeaks hacks Solich's computer and publishes these rankings. ;-)

Just took a look at the 2017 class and see that none of the 9 3 star guys (247 sports) has played, but the bottom two rated of all signees have played-Ross and Meservy. And Rourke as a 2 star has excelled so far. Looks like the inverse relationship that LC refers to is in effect as usual.

Of course, the total career results are too soon to determine, but these guys have an early start.