I can accept to an extent that coaches are loathe to drop recruits. But weren't they also loathe to join the earlier recruiting trend? Wasn't that something none of them ever did 3 years ago? It is also a given none have never had commits who went from 8th or 9th grade to 11th grade without getting better (or have seen other recruits in the same class pass them by).

Quite honestly, are these really men who are beyond reproach? They went early to compete, and if they needed to dump recruits to compete they'd do this as easily. Dropping a recruit will be a bad thing and something that singles out a coach in a negative way only until the next coach does it too and then a herd of them do it after that. Who is the bad guy then?