Your " critical and thoughtful analysis" ignores 2 salient facts. Willinghams first recruiting year came off a decent program left to him and part of that recruiting was built off neuheisels recruiting efforts. Sark's firt year was just 2 months and built off Willingham's ugly program. So be a real analysis you should just compare both coaches last 4 years.
Sark for those 4 years scores 1724 compared to Mr. W's 1429 points. Clearly your critical and thoughtful numbers ignore those points
You act like 1-10 never happened
What happened to all the FREE PUB from the rose bowl game?
Willingham took over after two years of Gilby (not Nuehiesel) and the successful 2008 recruiting class was one of the reasons used to keep Willingham around for another year. So Willingham had an advantage because he could continue Nuehiesels 7 WR class recruiting success from 3 years prior but Sark gets a mulligan because he couldnt continue Willinghams recruiting success from the year before?
There is no statistical evidence to suggest that a coach's first year of recruiting is significantly lower or different than the following years. I looked at 25 different pac10 coaches and compared their first year to the following years recruiting (up to 4) and there was no evidence that the first year a coach is hired they have significantly lower recruiting "success" or scores. Simply because Sarks first year sucked doesnt mean you get to just throw out the first year because you feel like it, if you are going to remove data you have to prove why, not because "mulligan!".
Regardless, this is the real world. Every year counts, every day their are 11 other coaches trying to do better than Sark. There is no mulligan because you are a new coach, if Sark sucks at recruiting OL because his only experience was 2 years as offensive coordinator then it was probably a poor hire, not lets just pretend this year never happened.
Sark's OL recruiting during his tenure is nearly the same as Willingham's, there is nothing subversive or deceitful in that, it is the truth and reality that is going on in our program. You can justify it or make excuses, that doesnt change our reality.