I think early recruiting is a beard for coaches who are not performing. If you can point to all the recruits or classes on the way and note they are highly regarded that can deflect the attention away from a program that isn't winning or is declining. It also attracts some notoriety to the program (not for the better I'd argue, but this is a reality TV crazy world). Dom Starsia has been doing this for a couple years now. If I were a Penn State fan I'd be concerned that Tambroni has not made an impact on the program to be consistent and competitive, and now he's gone out to do this. I'd agree that just one kid is more symbolic than a herd, but if you look at the programs who have used ER as a beacon none have done much. Hop -- needed a miracle turn around late last season just to make the NCAA and then made the FF for first time in a long time. UNC -- they have been a decent regular season team for year and years, but no FFs. UVA -- dumpster fire. UMD has had more success and their coach is going earlier and earlier in the past 18 months, so we will see how that rounds out for the Terps into the future. An argument could also be made that these coaches believe that if they have highly ranked recruiting classes stacked down for 3-4 years it will make them harder to fire...which if you think about it is pretty hysterical. | 
