As in they left and either went undrafted or never made a roster. Tech's problem is that they have so few players who have even a remote chance of being drafted as juniors that, when it does happen (regardless of the player's NFL success) it hurts Tech worse. Better retention can be a piece of the puzzle, but in Tech's case, it's kind of ancillary. The big thing they need is more NFL talent, in every recruiting class. The ultra-elite superstars are great and all, but they need to have like 6 future 4th-round picks, in every single class, versus having 1 1st or 2nd rounder in each.

The WSJ article is most concerned with how the elite programs get a critical mass of talent to be able to get to the playoffs, if not play in the title game, every single year. Yeah, if Tech should miraculously ever somehow get to that point, then the retention factor will be more important, because at that point it's implicit that everything else has already fallen into place. The thing about Alabama, Ohio State, these kinds of programs that turn in top 5 results almost every single year without fail, it's not the 2 or 3 5-stars they sign each class, it's the 20 4-stars comprising the rest of the class.

Tech's at least getting a little bit better the last 2 years, 25-30% of each class has been 4-stars. It used to be more like 15-20%, maybe 25% once every few years. So the 2018 class was 7 out of 24 were 4-stars, but that same year, it was 13 out of 21 in Florida State's class. In Clemson's class they had 5 5-star and 7 4-stars, out of 19. Miami, 14 4-stars and 1 5-star. Basically, while VT is doing better, they still aren't even going to be favorites to win the division, let alone the conference, on a consistent basis, unless Miami severely underperforms. Honestly, better hope that none of the new coaches at UNC are worth a damn anymore either, because VT's recruiting with UNC (and incidentally also NC State) is basically neck-and-neck, and probably no one sees those teams competing for conference titles anytime soon.