We weren't "hot on the trail" of Smelley. Shula had other qb's in mind and wasn't going to sign one maybe two qb's. He had other ranked higher such as Tebow and McElroy. Again we didn't "lose Smelley" nor did anyone "pull him away from us". We got the guy in McElroy that we felt was a better prospect... As for as your last statement. That's putting yourself in the mind of a recruit. Not all recruits think a like or use your same line of thinking so until this assumption actually materializes and our recruiting suffers there's not much to this line of thinking...
If you don't think that most coaches mention how well players at their position have gone on to be successful in the NFL, that were specifically developed within their program, I would have to consider you to be a little naive. From my point of view, there is simply way too much money being offered to high draft picks for this not to be firmly entrenched in the minds of most top prospects.
We're still putting players in the NFL so I'm not sure where your basis of paragraph number one is coming from. Their success or lack there of once they get there falls upon the player not the university. I can name you players from LSU that had good enough college careers to be drafted but are now either out of the NFL or buried on a depth chart holding water bottles. Your "point of view" is just that until the University of Alabama sees a definite trend in us being unable to get four and five star recruits...
