I don't understand why everyone gets so confused on this, especially in this situation. If you're a 18 year old stud football player, and you have the option of playing for program A or program B:
Program A: 5 national titles (including one as recently as 2001), 34 NFL players on roster at start of 2019, last season with more than 7 losses was 1977, average attendance is around 62,000, and you play in a warm climate with lots of beaches and everything that comes with that.
Program B: 1 national title (way back in 1959), 4 NFL players on roster at start of 2019 (you should see a list of schools that have more than us [Rice, Northern Illinois, Old Dominion, Tulane, Troy, Kansas, Wyoming, etc]), last season with more than 7 losses was 2017, average attendance is around 37,000, and you play in the cold of upstate NY.
I can't imagine why a kid would pick program B if he has a similar opportunity at both places. Obviously every recruitment is different, but I think we have to put our program in perspective here. We aren't Miami and probably won't ever be. I'd love us to win more recruiting battles, but take the orange glasses off and look at what these kids are looking at and it's not hard to see why we lose a lot of them.