Spencer Hall's latest. Worth a gander. Looking forward to being good again. A lot of a team's peak form, the point at which temporary invincibility is universally granted, is ascribed to either strategy or recruiting. There are elements of both, to be sure, but Alabama's recruiting capabilities far exceed what the school's should be on paper as an institution. Tennessee as a state has more people, and yet its flagship university's football program has the highest recruiting budget of any school due to the "unique challenges of the state's geography." Meanwhile, Alabama hauls in the number one recruiting class in the nation despite having a third as many people in-state, and no clear advantage in terms of profitability.* *Greater overall revenue, but expenditures are higher with similar overall net profits. Alabama spends almost twice as much, though, and that's a whole other column. Continuing this fun parenthetical! As a counterpoint, please see Texas and the relative squandering of talent they've managed over the past three years. Money, facilities, and recruiting muscle have gotten Mack Brown little despite having what is arguably the most advantageous hog-wallow in college football. Geopolitically speaking, Mack Brown is college football's Prince Jefri of Brunei, just buying supercar recruits and leaving them to gather dust on the shelf. )