Forgive me for not getting too excited about the 2009 Nebraska football recruiting class.
Please don't take that as a knock on NU coach Bo Pelini or his staff. I just think it is kind of silly to get enthralled or depressed about a group of teenagers who haven't even donned practice pads for the Big Red.
I used to gobble up as much information as I could about recruiting. I winced when Nebraska lost out to Georgia for Hines Ward more than a decade ago. I cursed Charles Woodson for helping Michigan lure Larry Foote to the Wolverines instead of the Huskers in 1998.
Analyzing recruiting classes has made so-called experts like Allen Wallace, Jeremy Crabtree and Tom Lemming household names during this time of year. More power to the recruiting gurus and their pocketbooks.
What has turned me off, however, is that recruiting is - prepare for the understatement of the year - far from an exact science. The next-door neighbor or the businessman down the street can provide as good of a guess as which players will develop into contributors and which ones won't.
A lot of time and energy is spent making predictions that so-and-so will be the next Broderick Thomas or Ahman Green. Thomas and Green were two players who lived up their recruiting hype, but many fall way short of expectations.
Others, like former NU receiver Nate Swift and quarterback Joe Ganz, barely made a blip on the national recruiting radar, but went on to solid careers.
Pelini's second official class is in the books. Experts can say what they want about Chris Williams, Cole Pensick and others, but their value won't be judged for three, four or five years down the road.
Pelini didn't comment about any individual recruits during his press conference Wednesday. That's smart. Why comment on athletes who haven't earned anything yet?
Time will tell who were gems and the busts of this class.