^In 1995 ASU didn't even go bowling, the next year they were more or less playing for the National Championship. Teams jump from lower/mid tier bowls to higher tier bowls all the time.
I didn't ever insinuate that ASU would be building a championship caliber team around Arizona HS talent. But they do need to keep in state talent home, as the Valley grows, the talent has gotten better and it will continue to improve. You're comparing Koetters first class and Ericksons first, but what about Koetters other classes? I think a better way to look at recruiting classes than stars and numbers that recruiting sites put on them is to look who the school is recruiting against. It wasn't always the case, but it did seem like a lot of the time Koetter was recruiting against lesser schools.
I also don't know where I suggested in anyway that ASU becoming an elite program would be relatively easy. I think it will be quite difficult, but if it is accomplished, it'll probably happen in year 4 of Erickson at the soonest. I'm not sure how thats a wild prediction. He won 10 games his first year (an easy schedule certainly helped), could still manage to have a decent year this year, and who knows what will happen next year (though like I said, w/ a young QB, my hopes arent too high).