I?m by no means an expert on this field, but I?ll give you my thoughts.
You have to find them first before you can wine and dine them.
I think recruiters are salesman and they convince young men to go to their school.
I think it evaluators do a very succinct job of looking at an athlete and determining their ability to play or their potential to play.
In the NFL there is no recruiting. There is simply evaluating players potential ability to play in the organization. Head coaches do no recruiting, they work with a player / personnel director to build a team and every year there are major personnel changes.
It could just be semantics, recruiting should encompass evaluating, but I think you could separate the two and a coach could be good at one and not good at the other.
If we think of other levels of college football, the FCS level, the D3 level, They don?t get three star four star recruits, but they find good players. They have to be good at finding players without strictly following the scouting services.
We?ve had a couple players from lower divisions come up and be good players. Lance Guidry brought that one secondary player. I forget his name he end up playing for one year and then left for Miami or LSU. He Was a heck of a player. How did those coaches find those guys? They have to evaluating high school teams or in contact with scouts that evaluate.
On a separate subject, I was thinking about the players we?ve had that have been undersized and I think some of the most impactful we?re obviously Tommy Schuler, even Rakeem Cato, John Grace, Will Edwards and even Troy Brown was undersized and ended up being superstars and most Marshall Hall of Famers.
Just going off my memory, but I remember John Grace to be one of the most amazing linebackers we?ve ever had and I think his size limited his looks in the NFL but he went to the Canadian football league and end up being the most valuable player so I think that definitely validated his ability to play football.
Then the other pieces to assembling talent is player development and now more than ever getting rid of players that don?t have it and making room to find those that can play and contribute.
I heard Jim Tressell say as OSU HC, I?m paraphrasing Every player I recruit, will play for me, I never recruit a player that I do not believe in. Im sure there?s a little salesmanship BS in that statement and it?s very simple, but I believe it?s a good fundamental principle.