What is to come for UCF this season? That is what is on the mind of everyone who follows this team since Storm and Blake declared for the draft. To be honest, the way our team and our system works under Coach O'Leary, it's not easy by any stretch for people outside of the program to really predict the program's direction.
I believe it was Ryan Gillespie who said in a great piece for the Central Florida Future that the success enjoyed especially in the past season by individual players and the program itself are hardly reflective of what could be demonstrated on paper. Our star players were not blue chip, high star rating recruits coming out of high school. Blake Bortles barely got any attention from big schools and even less at Quarterback, yet here he is being talked about as one of the top two QB prospects of this draft class. Other stars on our team who have had opportunities to shine on the biggest stages of college ball were merely 3-star recruits or lower who were overlooked by most major schools but were able to mature into playmakers here. Even Brandon Marshall was a lightly recruited player in his high school days. The point is that recruiting star rankings have little to do with who has emerged as the playmakers on this team and that's how it's always been for Coach O'Leary.
Knowing how little impact recruiting class ranking has on the field, all I can say is this. For those of us in UCF Nation who despair about the seemingly lackluster ratings of our recruiting class, the outlook of the team is not really reflected in our recruiting class ranking but more so in what happens in training camp. What may seem like an underwhelming recruiting class may prove to have just the right stuff for the coaching staff to be able to whip into the makings of a star through camp. It's always worked before; it'll still work now, especially with the increase in recruiting profile from all the exposure UCF earned this past season.
Remember, most people figured we were gonna finish 8-4 last season based on poor team on paper. Look how that turned out.
I believe it was Ryan Gillespie who said in a great piece for the Central Florida Future that the success enjoyed especially in the past season by individual players and the program itself are hardly reflective of what could be demonstrated on paper. Our star players were not blue chip, high star rating recruits coming out of high school. Blake Bortles barely got any attention from big schools and even less at Quarterback, yet here he is being talked about as one of the top two QB prospects of this draft class. Other stars on our team who have had opportunities to shine on the biggest stages of college ball were merely 3-star recruits or lower who were overlooked by most major schools but were able to mature into playmakers here. Even Brandon Marshall was a lightly recruited player in his high school days. The point is that recruiting star rankings have little to do with who has emerged as the playmakers on this team and that's how it's always been for Coach O'Leary.
Knowing how little impact recruiting class ranking has on the field, all I can say is this. For those of us in UCF Nation who despair about the seemingly lackluster ratings of our recruiting class, the outlook of the team is not really reflected in our recruiting class ranking but more so in what happens in training camp. What may seem like an underwhelming recruiting class may prove to have just the right stuff for the coaching staff to be able to whip into the makings of a star through camp. It's always worked before; it'll still work now, especially with the increase in recruiting profile from all the exposure UCF earned this past season.
Remember, most people figured we were gonna finish 8-4 last season based on poor team on paper. Look how that turned out.
