I re watched this game, and I did not see an overly large gap in talent. There was some in the trenches and LB positions but could have been offset with better coaching (alignments/schemes/adjustments/play calling) on both sides of the ball. I watched FSU, ND, NC and South Carolina take Clemson to the end. Clemson was pushed to the end by ND and FSU, Clemson being home team, and ND and FSU with back up QB's. Then their in state rival that was pitiful this year played them very close. And NC in the ACC championship had a chance to win against Clemson but a bad referee call at the end stopped the opportunity. Then we see a Baylor team that we beat, go into their bowl on crutches and beat NC. We see Houston soundly beat FSU, and then ND get pounded by the runner up in the big 10. So in looking at all this, are we saying our talent is worse than ND, FSU, NC and South Carolina. These teams played Clemson a lot better than we did. I think our performance against Clemson was more to coaching, play calling, schemes, defensive alignments, lack of creativity on Mike Stoops (held his ground just like Texas). Maybe conditioning and depth hurt us, we seemed to tire in second half big time. Of course losing Walker, Evans, Perine and Mixon contributed to our sub standard performance, and Clemson maybe playing their best game of the year. And yes, I think Clemson showed more energy and enthusiasm than we did from start to finish, possibly having a massive home crowd advantage helping. We have lost several big stage games over the last several years without there being a talent gap, i.e., Boise State, WVA etc. I think there were a lot of factors that influenced the outcome of this Orange Bowl. Yes we can recruit better, but the bigger gap is in the coaching, preparation, and game time adjusting.
