When 40% of the recruits will not contribute, the coaches have to disregard the rankings and evaluate the players through film, visits, interviews, etc.

I don't agree that high recruiting rankings translate into results on the field and I mainly stress that due to high attrition rates. Recruiting rankings are not accurate when 40% of the recruits fail to contribute. FSU and Clemson had top ten recruiting classes BUT they still faltered.

While there are certainly many reasons, I would argue that a big reason for the empty trophy case was Beamerball's emphasis on defense and special teams. This meant that the offense was not able to win games and the offense really looked bad in big games.