Quote Originally Posted by Steve View Post
Along the same line, Gene sounded somewhat envious when he talked about the SR O-linemen with extensive starting experience that Cotton inherited at UNL. Barney also has a couple of pretty solid JR OL available to him as well as some highly recruited younger guys.

Gene knows what he needs to produce a quality OL. The easy way is to walk into to it on day one. The hard way is to attack it with a combination of recruiting, coaching, and time. We are forced to go the hard route and all three components are required regardless of how much frustration some fans might be experiencing.
Yep, the only scholarship offensive linemen in the program that have been here longer than two and half years are Joe Vanstrom, Brandon Johnson, Reggie Stephens, and former walk-on Mike Knapp. I guess walk-ons Nick Slobidsky and Evan Vencil were put on scholarship this year too, but that was mainly a reward for being here forever and working hard in practice so you can't really count them.

In fact, about 80% of our scholarship offensive and defensive linemen have been in the program two and half years or less, and more than half of them have been brought in by the new staff in the last year and a half. Luckily Mac's last class had some decent linemen in it. His previous two classes, not so much.