First, kudos to Al Featherston: a terrific article.
Second, football recruiting is different from basketball in that nobody gets all 5 star guys (not even the Dukes of the football world), but they do need a lot of players--and the top programs do tend to get a whole lot of 4 star guys. with a sprinkling of 5 stars. And from looking at lists, it's fairly clear that the big bulk of players attend their local flagship state university. A few go from rural Texas to Oregon, but generally they go from, say, Shreveport to LSU.
Our recruiting classses have tended to be composed iof a bunch of guys who they rate as 3 stars (though this year's potential class has 3 4 stars). It'd be a huge jump to a school like Alabama ( in the upcoming class: 2 5's, 16 4's, and 2 3's); and a lesser but very big jump to places like Miami (15 4's, 10 3's); Florida State (13 4's, 11 3's); and Va Tech (7 4's and 10 3's). Stanford, which has become a top tier program, does not recruit on that level. This year, according to espn, they are looking at 6, 4 stars and 10, 3 stars. Last year, they got 6, 4 stars and 6, 3 stars. In 2012, they got 1 5 star, 7 4 star, and 13 3 stars. This is not totally out of reach for Duke. One difference is that 13 of Stanford's recruits in those 3 years were in espn's top 300, while Duke hasn't gotten any of those recruits. I'd quickly add that I trust Cutcliffe's judgment more than any reporters' judgment, and so he may well be able to spot and recruit players who might get underrated by others. Nevertheless,
It's also probably safe to say that 5 star quarterbacks like to play behind great offense lines, throw to great receivers, and hand off to great backs, so it's not likely we'll get the next great 5 star qb without amping up the overall recruiting; that shouldn't keep us from getting teh next great 3 or 4 star qb who blossoms into something spectacular.
Anyway, from Featherston's article, I feel reassured that we have arrived at very good and are on a path that could lead to great if the cards continue to fall our way.