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No one has ever doubted Mack Brown's ability to recruit football players, but all the five-star prospects in the world are only useful if they become good-to-great college players.
In 2012, only two Texas football players -- seniors Alex Okafor and Kenny Vaccaro -- were named first-team All Big 12. That's about what you would expect for a team that went 8-4 and finished in the middle of the pack in the conference, but it's not what anyone would have expected two, three and four years ago.
When the upperclassmen from who make up the majority of the all-conference team were coming out of high school in 2009, 2010 and 2011, they were ranked well behind the blue-chippers Brown was bringing in.
According to Rivals, Texas had the No. 5 class in the country in 2009, the No. 3 class in 2010 and the No. 3 class in 2011.
That's a grand total of 6 five-star recruits and 45 (!!) four-star recruits. No one says the recruiting services are perfect, but they can't be that bad at their jobs.
At some point in the last few years, the player development machine in Austin has ground to a halt. Instead of coaching up his players, Mack appears to be making them worse the longer they stay on campus.
This is exactly what the rest of the coaches in the Big 12 are saying on the recruiting trail. And if Mack was this bad with five and four-star recruits, what happens when he has to start taking more four and three-stars?