I agree with you and like you, I get Pace’s overall point. Yet Pace essentially has targeted the coaching staff for not doing their job on recruiting, while yes, that same staff coaches up the kids Utah gets. His point, as I understand it, is that Kyle Whittingham should be targeting 4* and 5* recruits and getting their fare share of them, at this point.
Arguably Utah is not getting “their fare share” of these kids. But if you look at the recruiting for all but a handful of Pac-12 programs, you will see the same pattern. USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon, Washington, perhaps ASU do better. Yet Colorado, OSU, Washington State and Utah seem to settle for 3* recruits. Consider Arizona, 3* kids. I have not looked at these trends in detail, so I could be wrong here. But Utah is certainly not unique.
Utah has adapted its recruiting. They have refined and fine tuned the characteristics they look for, offer those kids. They look for frame, speed, and coachability. Clearly, their recruiting is detailed, rigorous. We know this costs the program a bunch of money. So its not for the lack of trying that they are lot yet landing a full suite of ESPN 300 recruits. You could even argue that Utah outperforms in recruiting. We know the recruits are coached up and we know that the NFL loves what Utah does to prepare its players for the big leagues. That trend is marching on.
There are likely outstanding issues to Utah. Geographically, its far away from any coast. Even within the Pac-12, it is likely the most remote program, along with Washington State in Pullman. Even this week, when I mentioned that I went to Utah, folks I spoke to in airports were confused between Utah and BYU, and Utah being a private school for the LDS religion. If in this day and age that confusion is still that prevalent, its another barrier, albeit scalable, for recruits and their parents. Also, Utah’s coaching staff tell the trust to a recruit: earn your position. We witnessed two 4* QB recruits who could not handle that, or his parents could not.
Utah has done okay on the field in the modern era, since say 1994. Certainly its bowl record is terrific. Peak years 2005 and 2008 are to be frank, now distant memories, particularly for recruits. The program only this year has achieved a winning record in the Pac-12, what 41 or 42-40. It has no conference titles, just a division 1st place, another near miss (damn you Colorado). The team plays a hard-nosed style of football that some folks think is boring. The program has struggled on offense, has not been a haven for gifted quarterbacks. Removing a few highlight years pre Pac-12, the program is still working into greater national respectability. So its completely understandable that Utah does not have the phenomenal cachet of select SEC, Big-12, Big-10 and even a handful of PAC-12 programs. Those programs had 70 plus years to build that reputation. Utah has had really 10, maybe 15 years.
This is to say criticism Pace levies has a shred of merit, while his full-throated dismissal of Kyle Whittingham’s recruiting, at least in my opinion, is not warranted. It is way too soon for that. In my view, Utah’s progress in this regard is moving at an exponential pace. But even for an exponential curve, the first bunch of years, the trajectory looks somewhat flat even with exponential growth. Only once more time lapses, does the growth or improvement really take off. I think this program is on the cusp of just that.
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