It's great for them it's great for the recruiting board.  What else are we going to talk about.  There is no actual football right now.

"The recruiting media industry is entertainment and a big business, with major media and shoe apparel companies sticking their toes in the water to varying degrees of success. For more than a decade, information and analysis about where high school students decide to attend college has made a lot of adults money".

"We have a responsibility to our paying subscribers to give more information, more data, more analysis and a great way for fans to communicate."

"...analysis of how the players fit into teams and what it means. I don't think it's changing to that, not as long as you have a headline that says 'So and so player is down to three choices and what are they?'"

"Luginbill's biggest complaint about recruiting websites. He believes they write stories about a recruits' possible destination a certain way in order to appease the fans spending money on team sites."

"There are so many unqualified experts in this industry," Farrell said. "You have a lot of young guys jumping into the business and doing it for free, and I think it just bogs down the whole thing. People don't know what to believe. It frustrates you greatly when you put so much into your job and a fan base will believe some guy who created his own blog. They believe an opinion they want."

"Fans want to know where a recruit is going to school and how highly he's ranked, Farrell said. But more recruiting coverage also means savvier recruits who, in turn, can play the media".

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/02/has_the_college_football_recru.html

The perfect write up to drive traffic in the slowest part of the college football season.  McElwain has a blue chip problem.

http://www.teamspeedkills.com/2016/2/4/10914046/florida-gators-recruiting-jim-mcelwain-has-a-blue-chip-recruiting

So the first paragraph starts out with throwing more shade on Florida's offense in an article alledgedly about recruiting?  Hey, but that is a great way to get all the haters on board (and to piss off the pumpers too).   To me it is not absolutely clear what the writer is getting at- there is nothing here to back up anything.  I mean what is a "fairly conventional scheme" ?  Is he writing about a team's offense or defense?  I'm not sure what a fairly conventianal scheme is anyway.  On offense- Florida lines up in a 3 wide most of the time.  Does he mean UF is not Baylor? That they don't run a triple-opton?  Nobody would look at UF, LSU, UGA and FSU and say there are running the same stuff- conventional or otherwise.   It would be like saying all spread teams are roughly the same or every 4-3 defense is roughly the same.

It is just a weak set up- that says nothing of substance.

"The Florida Gators are in an unusual position for a college football program in 2016.... every year they play three other teams ... that happen to be elite recruiters".  "Unusual"? Really?  That just seems to be life in the SEC.   I would say at least 6 teams in the conference fit the identifier of "elite recruiter" and a couple more are not that far behind.  It's not unusual it is typical.

If he were writing about defense in his opening,  blue chips aside for the moment, we could look at the S&P defensive rankings for the period 2013-15.

           2013  2014  2015

Florida   15  8  6

Georgia  43  17  11

FSU        1  40  10

LSU       35  9  27

What a second!  Except for the year FSU won the NC, the Gators have finished 1st or 2nd from this elite recruiting group of teams in a key defensive metric.  The blue chip problem isn't on defense.  Maybe "coaching ability can overcome"?  Clearly you can't criticize the on the field play of the Gator defense.  I can only guess "fairly conventional scheme" is aimed afterall at the Gator offense and recruiting on that side of the ball.  Until a few days later when another article linked here made a run at the UF defense too.

Offfensive Blue Chip recruits 2016;

FSU-8, LSU-7, UGA-6, UF-5.  Not ideal, but it doesn't scream headline (click bait) either.

Ahhhh! Dawgs have 1 more Offensive Blue Chip Recruit than UF. 

Picking things up later in this hatchet piece, we see that McElwain gets to have lame-duck Muschamp,  whose effect really started in the recruiting cycle 2014 (blue chips decreased from 15 to 9 in that year and cratered before he was fired), Mac's transition class that started out ranked in the 100s, and his first full class that sill had to overcome the disaster that was the Champ era represent UF recruiting. No context whatsoever.

The author does mention Tennessee.  Jones had to overcome Dooley and it has taken them how long to do that?  Years, but the author has given McElwain 14 months to repair Will's damage.

The author wrote this about Jones (in this same article); "And despite needing to sign every warm body he could in 2014 and 2015 to restock a depleted roster...".   What?  Isn't that what McElwain is doing?  Why does one coach get a pass (praise even) and the other gets smeared?  Because Jones signed a few more blue chips apparently- 42.6% to 38.8%.  Jones got 4 blue chips in his transition class, Mac got 5.  The author doesn't say what the other schools (coaches) signed, but I will give you one...

Here is Les Miles taking over at LSU:

     2005  2006  TOT

FSU  12  12  26

UGA  9  16  25

UF  6  18  24

LSU  5  9  14

Les Miles has a blue chip problem, only he doesn't because LSU won the MNC in 2007. 

Anyway, for some reason McElwain  is compared in recruiting with the continuity of the FSU and LSU coaching staffs, two years of Richt, but essentially three since Smart had a class practically handed to him. Contrast that to what Champ left  for recruits on his way out the door- plus Champ's classy move of recruiting Florida commits to flip to Auburn (a school he had no intention of staying at, but lying to recruits comes easy for some coaches).   Is this really a fair analysis ? 

To pull things back to even with those other schools did we really expect Mac to pull in 29 blue chip prospects this year?  Prospects that were entering their senior prep year and had been worked on by the other schools for 2-3 years?

"It's one thing to have an iffy transitional class; every coach gets a pass for that", except apparently McElwain.   Jefferson-Ivey-Calloway (for starters) are now "iffy".  Also Mac had to put a staff together in what a week, maybe two?  Did you not think changes were going to eventually come?  Did you think UF had the staff they really wanted from CSU and other unemployed coaches from Dec-Jan 2014-15.  Callaghan getting the boot before NSD is unusual, but right now is when changes are made.   After the shiny classes are all signed up.

I would like to think that everyone realizes that the most important year for a prep recruit is his junior year. They are almost all essentially ranked and evaluated at this point, the film people look at is from their junior year in high school.  The camps,  the Junior nights they all take place before their senior season.   Mac had very little time to work this for the class of 2016. For example, all the elite QBs were committed for 2016 before he even got the Florida job.  And yet he flipped one of them- from another elite recruiter.   If you followed real closely this past recruiting season Mac was hitting the class of 2017 almost as hard as the class of 2016- including the last week before NSD.   It really is his first chance on an even keel with elite recruits.

We have already done the 4 out of 50 recruits in Florida to death.  IMG and all  that (12 of the 50 were from that football factory that just happens to be located in Florida and is set to host the University of Michigan football team during Spring break).  In fact,  the state of Florida only had 47 blue chip recuits according to the 247Sports composite rankings.    UF got 4 of the top 26 (4 of 20 not counting IMG), but that doesn't sound as bad as 4 out of 50.  UF can do better- sure they can, but they need the time to work with these players when they are juniors in high school.  Coaching relationships-parents-early playing time-how close is the school-academics.  In that order.  Playing time does not trump- people skills.

"It's likely that Florida's 2016 class was hurt by the fact that, after beating Georgia, the 2015 team removed its rubber mask Scooby Doo villain-style and revealed itself to be mostly another Muschamp team in November and on.

Thanks for completely discounting Florida's win over a 10 win Georgia team.  

Somebody provide me concrete evidence that this hurt recruiting other than just repeating it over and over again to make it sound true?   What known offensive Florida commit bailed on UF after November? Anybody- I might have missed somebody.  And not players with offers (which mean nothing)- players who committed to UF.   After November UF added Franks and Cleveland.   The only thing you can say is that UF didn't get this guy or that guy in January- nobody knows the reason unless a commit says it- anybody got a quote?  "I didn't want to go to UF because their offense sucked in November".

"Maybe McElwain and his staff will prove to be great at player development. Maybe they've got a better eye for talent than the recruiting services do".  Only Maybe? Really?

So far for 2017, Mac is 2-3 66.7% Yeah! on his blue chip percentage.  So there is hope.