Hell yes he can recruit way better than Holtz. Holtz was recruiting with the BCS tag, came into a rising team, and had he been retained, I have my doubts that the team would have managed to stay in the top 75 in recruiting classes.
Taggart is coming off a 2-10 season with mostly Holtz era players, has no BCS tag, and despite that he's keeping this class in the top 50. So yes, Taggart will surely turn this team into a good squad.
So despite the fact that the empirical evidence disagrees with you, you still maintain Taggart can recruit better. I guess there is nothing left to discuss. Spit up this "empirical evidence", pony boy.
Rivals 2012 team ranking #49. Rivals 2014 team ranking #49.
Wow. Taggart is soooo much better,
Oh wait. Maybe not. To be fair, Tags has six weeks to move up or down.
Apparently it only took him about 45 minutes to move up. We're at #45 now. If you're going to throw out Rivals figures, at least be accurate, and use them all for comparison: Holtz
2010 - #62
2011 - #64
2012 - #49 Taggart
2012 - #49
2013 - #64
2014 - #45 (as of 9:30PM 12/26/2013)
Um, how do you have Taggart tied with Holtz in 2012? Tags was with WKU. He was simply making a comparison. Plus last year Taggs came in what December? So he had 1 month or so to recruit for a team that just went 3-9 and was losing its starting QB
Actually, I made a mistake when posting but here's the correct one: Holtz
2010 - #62
2011 - #64
2012 - #49 Taggart
2013 - #49
2014 - #45 (as of 9:30PM 12/26/2013)
Kind of ridiculous to give Taggart full credit for 2013, since Holtz recruited the majority of the class. That is why I also don't think it is valid to count 2010, since that was even much more Leavitt's class since Holtz didn't come in until mid January. Counting that as a Holtz class is pretty ludicrous.
Most of our better recruits came after Tags was hired