I have no idea what you are talking about. I never said Brohm was starting from scratch. I never said Hazell was a bad recruiter. He got key players in key positions. The defense wasn't great and the line had holes which Brohm patched with some WKU transfers.Convenient how the narrative has changed, at least in your mind. The consensus on these boards were that it would take years to recover from the Hazell era and that Brohm was inheriting very little to work with. Then everyone realized that the players weren't that bad when they were coached and put in positions to succeed. And I do believe you'll find that Hazell's recruiting classes weren't ranked very highly. Maybe you could say that recruiting wasn't his only/biggest problem, but it was certainly an issue that seemed to get worse as the poor seasons stacked up.
Now you're talking rank when before you were talking talent. Before you were suggesting our struggles were due to a lack of talent. When it's pointed out that both NIU and Miami (OH) were both far more competitive with Notre Dame than we were, now you're saying that NIU is more talented because they won and got ranked?
This isn't a video game. Talent is part of the equation but there is much more that goes into winning and losing than that. You can look at our basketball program, and most recently Zach Edey, as proof of that. Our football program just happens to be proof of that on the other end of the spectrum. We may not have more talent than Notre Dame, but we have enough to be far more competitive than we were if we were well coached.
The differences are:
1. Brohms recruiting his last two seasons was crap. Like, ya know, he had checked out and was on his way out. Line, receivers, linebackers, QB...there was precious little other than a stellar walkon running back and a legacy player.
2. NIL changes the entire game. Talent is a major part of the game, particularly at key positions. QB, lines, linebacker, receiver. You can get away with less talent at some positions you can't at others. We don't have an alpha receiver. We don't have much dline pressure. Our linebackers are shit. Not surprisingly we get run on, can't get stops, and our passing game sucks. Town of those three issues were present before Brohm left.
Comparing basketball to football is insane. There's a ton of turnover from bad to good you can have in basketball because you only need one dominant player in basketball. Football requires a LOT more.