There's a new sheriff in San Antonio, his name is Frank Wilson and he's here to bring order and talented recruits to the River City. The rest of CUSA is taking note. Frank ain't playing. Let's look at his 2017 class and UTSA's five year trend.

A disclaimer or two to start...first, it's recruiting i.e. an inexact science, zero star players go on to great NFL careers. We acknowledge that, but, if you look at trends - especially the top ten to fifteen classes each year - you find that schools that recruit a high level of talent tend to perform well. So, yes, better players yield better results. Plus we assess talent much better now than five or ten years ago. Swag parties like the Opening, regional combines, and satellite camps give better exposure and lead to better evaluations than ever before. Elite recruits and even everyday Joe's are poked, prodded, timed and measured. Unlike the old days when an in-home or on-campus visits were the first opportunity to see if the 6'3 290 pound guard is actually 6'1 220, most players are tracked from their sophomore year or before. The wind aided coach's stopwatch has been replaced by electronic timing and game tape is more readily available than ever before.

Are there misses? Sure, but the misses don't mitigate the fact that recruiting is the life blood of any program nor do they undermine the evaluative advances. We'll go a step further, if you recruit better than league brethren, from the Fun Belt to the SEC, you're likely beating those conference partners on the regular. Lastly, we use 24/7 composite rankings for no good reason accept they are easier to track over the date ranges we're looking at.

Uptick

Frank Wilson came on late in the 2016 recruiting cycle but he came to UTSA as a bonafide recruiting legend. He rose from the high school ranks to become one of Ed Orgeron's and Les Miles' top lieutenants charged with bringing elite, SEC level talent to Ole Miss and LSU. That's the deep end of the pool. In 2015 Texas A&M put together the number 11 class in the country, a pretty good class for A&M. That was good enough for fourth in the SEC West. When you're top 12 in the country but you're staring up at 3/4 of your division, that's cut throat, do or die stuff. That's the environment Wilson came from, the world he lived in.

At UTSA meanwhile, things were different. Larry Coker had been the steward of a Miami mini-dynasty before coming to a start-up in UTSA. Coker's first game against a Division II opponent drew 50,000 plus in a city starved for college football. By 2015 the honeymoon was ending. UTSA recruiting had never broken triple digits in terms of rankings. And for as genius a hire Coker was to start the program, by most metrics the Roadrunners had bogged down.