As far as Fedora's recruiting on his way out, that can be looked up. I did a pretty full analysis on EaglePost a long time ago, and while it's true Fedora's last recruiting classes weren't nearly as eye-popping as his first (which ultimately included a few academic casualties anyway), they were still among the best in the conference and comparable to any Bower had put together.

The problem was USM going through 3 coaches in as many years, with each being the polar opposite of the one who preceded him. The recruits of Fedora who didn't follow him to UNC quickly realized Johnson's system wasn't the one for which they signed up and bailed because they no longer fit. The same thing was true of many returning players. Then 12 months later, we went through the whole thing again with switching from Johnson to Monken.

The notion that Fedora purposely got lazy with recruiting because he knew we'd finish big in 2011 is absurd. That would basically be betting his career on a couple of key guys like Tracy Lampley (a JUNIOR that year, BTW) not getting hurt.

Also, Fedora's own OC, Blake Anderson, now Arkansas State's head coach, applied to be Fedora's successor. If the cupboard was being left bare & the whole program was teetering on the edge of a cliff, Anderson would've known it better than anyone, yet he still wanted the job something fierce.

As hard as it may be to believe, Ellis Johnson was, in fact, that big of a disaster for Southern Miss between what he did directly and the pains of having to make the sudden correction.