PeekingDuck said:
How did they do against Texas?
In years 1 and 2, correct, they lost to Sarks 4th and 5th year teams after he built his program up. It sucks, and it doesn't take away from how much losing hurts, bragging rights, or any of that, but perspective matters. It's not a very fair comparison nor is it a reason to downplay what Elko has done in the portal thus far.
What he did in the portal was actually pretty outstanding. They hit on a ridiculous amount of their top targets at positions. Whether you believe it or not doesn't really matter, but they got their #1 overall CB, 2 of their top 3-4 OTs, either #1 or #2 LB, #1 S, one of their top 2-3 DEs, their 2nd WR, and 3 of the top 5/6 DTs they sought after on their boards. Even TE, they really only targeted about 3 guys and landed 2 of them. getting that many guys that far up your big board is a huge win. Hard to argue otherwise. We'll see what their evals look like next fall, but that's pretty insane, actually.
In addition, in the last five years, I'd say we probably had the 2nd or 3rd best year two of any new program behind only Indiana and maybe one other if you dig deep enough. The portal was a HUGE reason for that. Elko was able to add about 8-9 NFL draft picks from the 2024/2025 portal classes. All but Scourton were here for this season. Elko should have some serious trust when it comes to portal evaluations and where he's taken the program thus far. Need to get that next gear and close out a win at Kyle over texas, no doubts. But stop comparing everything to them. We play them once a year.