I don't understand when people say ICE didn't help last time. Wasn't he in the same position? When we signed the #1 recruiting class though alot of flops it was still #1 at the time. We had alot of s Fla studs still here. Correct if I'm wrong.
Well you are wrong.
Ice joined the staff the year after in which we had probably 2 of our worst recruiting classes(which most of the players especially on defense never made it or were kicked off the team) since I can remember.
This^^^ is a huge reason why our depth, especially on defense has been so bad the last 2 seasons, yet everyone wants to blindly blame Golden and Donofrio.
A lot of people(the Golden haters or blind Randy supporters) conveniently forget this, and the fact he has had to deal with the longest NCAA investigation in history in where over 100 news outlets had the phrase "death penalty" in their headlines about us.
And since it was the longest NCAA investigation, there was about 2 and a half years where we could not tell recruits what the future of our program was.
Now if you are a top recruit with offers from everyone and planning for the next 3-5 years of your life, would you really consider a team that has not been so great the last 10 years and is being investigated by the NCAA and the phrase "death penalty" is getting thrown around not only by the news, but by apposing coaches trying to land you, "mentors" and high school coaches with their hands out for these apposing coaches, and you ask UM coaches what might happen, and for 2 years we had no clue what the NCAA might do and had to be honest and say "we don't know".
Would you not say, hey I'm from south FL and grew up liking UM and all, but this is a business decision and I just don't know what's going to happen at UM, so I'm going to UF or F$U b/c I still want to stay in FL, or Bama b/c they have been great and put a lot of guys in the league.
Then there are some elite recruits that get offered extra incentive$ to choose a school, we cant compete for a recruit who is looking for that, and there are a lot more than you would think.
Any of you who have thought that Golden is on an even playing field with our apposition when it comes to recruiting just doesn't know too much about recruiting and college football.
Back to our depth problems on defense that are a main result of the 2009 and 2010 recruiting classes(the 2 classes ICE was on staff for)
Trust me, I get frustrated at some of the schemes he runs too, but Donofrio has not had the horses to compete with solid teams with correct depth.
We are finally getting to where we want to be depth wise everywhere except DT, need to work on that.
There seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, but we are gonna need some of these top south FL kids staying home and taking pride in and repping their city the right way(not throwing up 305 gang signs in Tallahassee lol) to reach it.