Even at the AJ-C, nature abhors a vacuum.

Give Jeff Schultz credit.  Terence Moore is gone, so somebody’s got to step up at the AJ-C sports page and carry on with teh stupid.  Schultz contributed this beaut yesterday.

… Now, I know there’s not always a correlation between NFL prospects and the success of a college team. But it seems to me there’s strength in numbers. And in this case, the numbers say Boise State coach Chris Peterson … might have done a better coaching job than anybody last season.

Schultz reaches that conclusion based on Boise State winning twelve games with a team that didn’t have a single player drafted by the NFL.

You know, he might be on to something here – if every college team were comprised solely of draft-eligible players.  If for no reason other than personal enlightenment, Mr. Schultz might want to investigate an obscure group of collegiate players sometimes referred to as “freshman and sophomores”.  Should he dig deeply enough, he’ll discover that Boise State’s star quarterback is one of them.  Believe it or not, the NCAA allows these kids to play.

And there’s this team in Gainesville, Florida that plays football.  Even Schultz has probably heard of it.  What he may be interested in learning is that its best offensive player and its best defensive player elected to come back for their senior seasons – even though they both would have been selected had they made themselves available in the NFL draft.   So the fact that the national champions only had three players selected in the draft doesn’t mean nearly as much as Schultz would like it to, does it?

Look, no knock on Chris Peterson here.  He’s a fine coach whose record benefits from playing a relatively weak schedule every year.  But Schultz’ metric on coaching greatness – strength in numbers, as he calls it – is essentially meaningless.

Besides, isn’t part of a college head coach’s job attracting talent to his program?  Aren’t guys like Carroll or Richt doing their jobs well in getting the kids on campus in the first place?