It’s not like Konkol wasn’t recruiting, he was just recruiting to a different situation (and evidently poorly considering both the kids he brought with him from the La Tech class were busts)
No they weren't both busts. You don't call an injury a bust. You call it delayed entry to the roster.
God you are so pro Manning and anti TU. And Manning wasn't competing against NIL. That's why Manning put a more senior reworked roster together. Only adding 7/8(Zedric King) & retaining 3 valuable players, two of which were upper classmen,(Tim Peete, Scottie Haralson, and young Rashad Smith) that Konkol didn't have available.
Wright & Woodard were retained from when Wojcik was here, and came not because of Manning, but because they decided to band together as players and come regardless of who was coach. Konkol would have loved to have them as recruits. Instead all he got was Chukwu.
Going against Nil handicapped Konkol. I imagine that influenced him when he decided to keep everyone and not rework the roster his first year, with a limited time period, and no Nil. The players that were left to recruit and any good,(late in the recruiting season in Konkol's first year) got Nil. How do you know if he was told he would have absolutely no NIL his first year, and then told he would have limited Nil this past year? That was probably the reality.
He had to rework his roster as a much younger team the 2nd year. Opposed to Manning who was able to retain better and more senior players from Wojcik, than Konkol had available from Haith. He was able to retain better recruits from Wojcik than Konkol had the opportunity to keep from Haith. Manning wasn't working against the almighty dollar to recruit. When Konkol reworked the roster, he had to get
10/11(Gibson) younger players not
7 older players.
Lot's of factors were in play, none of which you acknowledge, except the ones that look good for Manning, and the ones that look bad for Konkol.