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All those ugly losses didn't stop Notre Dame from landing a beauty of recruiting class.
Same goes for Miami.
And while Alabama's first season under Nick Saban was so-so, the first Crimson Tide recruiting class the $4 million-per-year coach can truly call his own turned out top-ranked.
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Despite coming off lackluster seasons, Notre Dame, Miami and Alabama -- along with Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma -- came away with the top recruiting classes Wednesday, the first day of the national signing period for high school football players.
"It's a statement about tradition," said Allen Wallace, the national recruiting editor for Scout.com and publisher of SuperPrep magazine. "It's the hardest thing to get and it's the hardest to kill."
Terrelle Pryor broke with tradition and decided to put off his big decision. The ballyhooed high school quarterback from Western Pennsylvania, who has been compared to Vince Young, had Ohio State and Michigan at the top of his list but now wants to give Oregon and Penn State a better look.
Rarely does a major recruit not announce on the first day.
"I'd like to take more time and be fair to all the coaches that recruited me, who spent a lot of time recruiting me," Pryor said during a no-news conference at Jeannette High School that must have left Ohio State coach Jim Tressel and new Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez exasperated.
For Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, signing day went much better than the 2007 season, when the most storied program in college football finished 3-9. Still, Weis was able to lure some of the best prospects in the country to South Bend, Ind.
"It's still Notre Dame," said Bobby Burton of Rivals.com, which had Alabama's class No. 1 and Notre Dame's No. 2. "At the same time when a team is 3-9, highly ranked kids see an opportunity to play right away."
The Fighting Irish's class of 23 recruits includes a five-star prospect at quarterback (Dayne Christ from Sherman Oaks, Calif.), wide receiver (Michael Floyd from St.Paul, Minn.) and tight end (Kyle Rudolph from Cincinnati) and plenty of defensive line help.
"I think our program needed this boost," Weis said. "I think this is a significant boost -- the right type of players, the right type of kids and the right type of day. This is the type of day where everyone has to feel good, saying, 'What a good day.'"
There were few good days for Randy Shannon in his first season as Miami coach. The Hurricanes went 5-7 and, like Notre Dame, suffered several embarrassingly lopsided losses.
