Recruiting at Missouri is hard. It always has been and always will be.
Over the past 10 years, Missouri has only ever breached the top 25 football recruiting classes (according to 247 Sports) twice. Even after all the success of the late 2000’s Gary Pinkel teams, the Tigers couldn’t even crack the Top 20. Not once.
Gary Pinkel never let this sort of thing get him down, instead turning the Missouri recruiting method into somewhat of an art form. The phrase, “diamond in the rough” has been used and abused on the Missouri corners of the internet, but it’s an apt title for how Pinkel went about his business on the trail.