Putting stock in recruiting rankings is like investing with Bernard Madoff. It might be fun in the short-term, but you're going to get burned in the end.
Today we look back at the last eight recruiting classes for eight teams in the Rivals rankings. Six of the teams — Notre Dame, Florida State, Miami, Alabama, UCLA and Tennessee — regularly finish in the Rivals' top 25. Two of the teams — Iowa and West Virginia — rarely do. But since 2002, the Hawkeyes and Mountaineers will put their won-loss records up against anybody.
Here are each of the teams and their Rivals ranking for the past eight classes, followed by the average ranking and won-loss record since 2002:
Iowa
2002: 51st
2003: 43rd
2004: 38th
2005: 11th
2006: 40th
2007: 28th
2008: 53rd
2009: 63rd
Average ranking: 40.9
Record since 2002: 59-29
West Virginia
2002: 37th
2003: 46th
2004: 47th
2005: 31st
2006: 52nd
2007: 23rd
2008: 42nd
2009: 27th
Average ranking: 38.1
Record since 2002: 67-22
Notre Dame
2002: 24th
2003: 12th
2004: 32nd
2005: 40th
2006: 8th
2007: 8th
2008: 2nd
2009: 21st
Average ranking: 18.4
Record since 2002: 50-37
Florida State
2002: 4th
2003: 21st
2004: 3rd
2005: 2nd
2006: 3rd
2007: 21st
2008: 9th
2009: 6th
Average ranking: 8.6
Record since 2002: 59-32
Miami
2002: 8th
2003: 5th
2004: 4th
2005: 7th
2006: 14th
2007: 19th
2008: 5th
2009: 11th
Average ranking: 9.1
Record since 2002: 60-28
Alabama
2002: 30th
2003: 49th
2004: 15th
2005: 18th
2006: 11th
2007: 10th
2008: 1st
2009: 1st
Average ranking: 16.9
Record since 2002: 55-35
UCLA
2002: 9th
2003: 36th
2004: 34th
2005: 26th
2006: 17th
2007: 40th
2008: 13th
2009: 14th
Average ranking: 23.6
Record since 2002: 47-41
Tennessee
2002: 2nd
2003: 18th
2004: 11th
2005: 4th
2006: 23rd
2007: 3rd
2008: 35th
2009: 17th
Average ranking: 14.1
Record since 2002: 57-32
RE: Alabama. Fran couldn't/didn't recruit; Shula couldn't coach. There was susbstantial turmoil in 2002-2003. What is the record with a proven coach to recruiting class?
2007 (18th) 7-6
2008 (1st) 12-2
2009 (1st) TBA
In sum, the analysis here is pretty glib (at least as far as UA is concerned).
Posted by: Der Schatten | February 09, 2009 at 05:50 AM
Instead of cherry-picking a few of the most extreme examples and declaring that recruiting rankings don't matter, why not at least attempt to look at things on a larger, more unbiased scale?
There are two huge flaws in your line of thinking that make this post useless to anyone capable of looking with a critical eye:
1) You clearly selected only the largest outliers (in both directions) to try to "prove" your point. However, this way of thinking is obviously skewed to ignore teams like Florida, Georgia, LSU, USC, Ohio State, Texas, and many others who consistently rank near the top of the recruiting rankings. This is a pretty obvious example of trying to fit the data into an argument, instead of looking at the data as a whole and drawing your argument from that.
2) Your two examples of teams out-performing their recruiting rankings both come from conferences not represented by your other six teams. This is important, since in the Big East, no current member team except Pittsburgh in 2006 has even broken the top 25 of Rivals' rankings; in the Big Ten, only Ohio State and Michigan have consistently out-recruiting Iowa by any significant margin (of note, Iowa's record against those two since 2003: 2-5). Meanwhile, teams like Alabama, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Florida State, and Miami all consistently face teams with far more talent (per the ratings) and likewise have not racked up the same raw number of wins as those teams facing easier schedules.
You might find it a more balanced exercise to look at the recruiting rankings of members of individual conferences, and then compare their conference records, since that is the easiest way to have any sort of normalized comparison with college football's current landscape. If you do this, and actually approach it with any sort of open-mindedness, you'll probably find that while recruiting rankings are not an infallible predictor of a team's success, they certainly carry much more of a correlation than these skewed examples would suggest.
Posted by: willwc | February 09, 2009 at 10:40 AM
Over at CFN Pete Fiutak calls teams like Iowa, Wisconsin and West Virginia system schools where those teams are looking for talent, obviously, but looking a little more on the margin for players that fit their scheme well and will develop and in their 3rd, 4th and 5th seasons be just as good as the unseasoned 4 and 5 star. It's good rationale and coaching consistency makes this work.
BC is like those schools, too, but I think it's more in line there with the Patriots apparatus wherein they consistently recruit pretty smart kids from the catholic schools.
Posted by: Carl Spackler | February 09, 2009 at 05:31 PM
Der Schatten has it down to a science nuthin else needs said
Posted by: BigTenAthlete | July 14, 2009 at 06:55 PM