Diaries

So, one of the things we hear about as a benefit of expansion is that it opens up new recruiting grounds for the schools already in the conference. Since we have yet to see what will happen with Maryland and New Jersey, I figured one of the most apt comparisons for our purposes would be to look at what happened to the SEC in what is generally called in recruiting circles the "Midlands" (Basically Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, etc.) In theory, picking up A&M and Mizzou should have helped existing SEC members gain access to recruiting in this area, and it should have been obvious over the last couple cycles. So, I went through the Rivals database, and grabbed every kid who was a four star or higher from  2010-2013 in those regions, and checked to see what conference the school they ended up at was in. Chart? Chart.

I only looked at the SEC and the Big 12 as they were in 2010, before things switched, and didn't count the schools that switched. I also only counted schools that stayed in the same conference, as it would throw things if I counted a school for one conference, then the other. In theory, the schools still in the same conference should also benefit.

2010:

10 out of the 90 four stars ended up at an SEC school

2011:

4 out of 61 to the SEC this year

2012 was the year we should have seen an uptick:

It's 6/56, which is not very different from previous years

2013:

7 out of 62, a slight uptick.

So, a preliminary report shows that the difference is pretty nonexistent, at least over the years covered. Things might look different if we counted the number of high-level players  A&M was getting in the Big 12 days as opposed to the SEC days, but their move doesn't seem to be helping the SEC in general start to recruit the state (a couple SEC West schools grabbed a couple kids, but they were doing that anyway). Also, Texas is one of the biggest recruiting states in the nation, and the difference is small in conference shift. A weird side note is that in the first year I looked at, the region put out 90 four star kids, and in every year after that, it's been about 60. Not sure if 2010 was simply a bumper crop, or if for some reason the region is actually just putting out less talent, which seems unlikely. At any rate, the effect of expansion on recruiting is minimal, at least in the first couple years after expansion.

EDIT: To satisfy curiosity, in 2010, 8 four stars from the region went to A&M, 2 in 2011, 7 in 2012, and 12 in 2013. It's worth noting that it was 12 out of 62 total in 2013, and 8 out of 90   total in 2010, so at least on the surface, A&M is really capitalizing on SEC membership. However, some of this could be skewed by oversigning, plus the fact that A&M had a very successful season in 2013, which always helps with recruits, no matter the conference.

With the addition of Maryland and Rutgers the conversation has centered around WHY, WHY, WHY, TV sets and whether or not this was just a cover for Delaney to ditch Leaders and Legends. MGoUser trppwlbrnID asked the question that should always be asked, what about recruiting?

With the addition of the two schools, I dug into their recruiting bases and how much opportunity there might be for Michigan to jump into some new territories.

Maryland

Home state of Maryland recruits (2009-2013 classes) weighted by consensus rating

Nearly half of Maryland’s last five classes have come from Maryland and Washington, DC. These two regions would have the most likely opportunity for Michigan. Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida are regions that aren’t going to give any advantage because Maryland has joined the Big Ten.

Rutgers

Home state of Rutgers recruits (2009-2013 classes) weighted by consensus rating

Over half of Rutgers’ recruits came from the home state of New Jersey. Like Maryland, Rutgers has looked to Pennsylvania and Florida as key secondary regions. So that leaves just the home regions of New Jersey, Maryland and DC as areas that Maryland and Rutgers have had success that seem viable for Michigan to make new inroads into.

Over the last five years, there have been 73 players from New Jersey, Maryland and DC that have garnered a consensus 4 star level rating. Five schools have signed at least four of these players. Penn St has signed 9 of these players while the new members of the Big Ten have signed 7 each. Florida and Michigan have each signed four. When you look at the totals by conference (excluding Maryland and Rutgers from any conference) the Big Ten is already the leading team in recruiting these key regions.

The Big Ten is already getting about a third of the players not going to the new members. Adding Maryland and Rutgers into the Big Ten count gives them 45% of the top recruits from the region. In terms of quantity, there doesn’t seem to be much upside for Michigan in the newly acquired regions on a quantity basis. Some of the ACC signees may end up going B1G but even taking a third of these players is still just one extra recruit for the conference per year.

The Elite Opportunity

During the same five year period, the Maryland/Rutgers region has produced 15 players who were consensus Top 100 level players only one signed with a Big Ten team (Eli Apple, OSU) and Maryland (Stefon Diggs) and Rutgers (Darius Hamilton, Savon Huggins) were each only able to sign three of the fifteen.  Of the other 11, four went to other ACC schools, 3 to the SEC, 3 to the Pac-12 (one of which was the embattled Yuri Wright) and one to Notre Dame.

Overall, the Big 10 and Michigan already have a solid presence in the local areas where Maryland and Rutgers have the most success. The area that seems the most likely for Michigan to gain a new advantage will be the elite level recruits that have been avoiding the Big Ten presently.

The Michigan Opportunity

As noted above, Michigan is already doing better than most at signing 4 star talent from the region. There is certainly an opportunity to do more, but this shouldn’t be a major change for Michigan. The biggest windows of opportunity are probably in some of the Top 100 type players. Recent names such as Stefon Diggs and Kendall Fuller are players who Michigan might have had a better shot at with the new footprint (although Fuller’s recruiting did overlap with the news). This isn’t a massively talent rich region but it has enough to produce a couple elite prospects annually. Michigan and Ohio should be most poised to step in and take advantage, especially with Penn State buried for the next several recruiting cycles.

The more difficult to quantify opportunity is probably Virginia. Maryland isn’t a major player in the state, but with the Derrick Green commitment and the recruitment of Da’Shawn Hand the opportunity to play two games in neighboring Maryland should definitely help solidify Michigan’s position as a major player in Virginia recruiting.

As a true confession, the addition of Nebraska to the conference in 2010 was finally what got me really into college sports, and football in particular; before I was just a casual fan, but the machinations of expansion just got me hooked. Anyway, like many of you, I was fairly disappointed by the recent move to pick up Maryland and Rutgers, and don't really see it ending well. At any rate, after spending way too much time thinking about this, I think expansion has died off for the forseeable future, though not for the reasons I have seen elsewhere (ACC grant of rights, etc.)

It seems to me that every conference has a "utility" that it wants to maximixe, and will add schools accordingly. The SEC wants to maximize football success, so A&M was a good choice, even if they thought it was largely a move to pick up Texas recruiting at the time. The ACC wants to maximize basketball success, which is really the main reason to pick up Pitt and Syracuse. Our precious B1G wants to maximize money, and to a lesser extent power (if it wanted to maximize power purely, it would go the SEC route of picking up football schools, and focus less on academics). Nebraska was to get a historic football brand which was available, and Rutgers and Maryland were demographic cashgrabs, which were likely shortsighted.

So, given all that, why is expansion dead for now, at least for the B1G? Well, in the interest of being provocative, the best way to put my point is that there are actually too many schools left to choose from to make any of them practical. A rule I have seen with expansion so far is that schools central to the existence of a conference do not leave for other conferences (Nebraska was not the be all end all of the Big 12 like UT or OU are, Maryland was expendable to the ACC in a way that UNC and Duke are not, etc.) For the purposes of this comparison, the most comparable conference to the B1G in terms of its goals is probably the PAC-12. If you recall, when the PAC-12 tried to expand last time, it went with the Texas and Oklahoma schools at first, and was willing to take all of them to get UT and OU. That fell through, so it was left with the Rutgers and Maryland-like demographic grabs of Utah and Colorado, which have contributed nothing so far in terms of football, and, tellingly, its options seem to be gone, unless it wants to reach down for a Nevada school.

So, where does that leave us? Well, effectively, the B1G would have to pick up an even number of schools that fit its criteria to make expansion feasible. For the sake of argument, we can throw out any SEC (except maybe Mizzou) or PAC-12 school for obvious reasons. That leaves us with maybe Kansas, maybe Mizzou, a couple ACC schools that fit the criteria of not being central to the conference like Pitt, and the crown jewels of UNC, UVA, UT, OU etc. as pipe dreams. Now, assuming we are probably only looking to add two more schools (no major conference has gone to 16 yet, presumably for the reason that no one wants to be the first to try and fail at it), let's see what the options are.

So, let's talk about the smaller, more doable, options of Mizzou and Kansas. Neither have historic football, and don't add new demographics as the previous moves have. Same with Pitt. Syracuse doesn't either, and isn't in the AAU. The problem is that even if one of those schools seemed OK if the goal was to help get another school, the schools that really bring in the bucks and prestige are all in larger groups. UT and OU go nowhere without each other, and both of them have their own baggage of the other schools in their states that they are likely yoked to. Similar with the ACC schools. UNC and UVA are probably together, and both have schools in their state that are not appealing options for other conferences to pick up, and would be left homeless if the ACC broke up - not to mention the power they lose by going to conferences where they are one of many, not the stars. Similarly, now that the ACC has 15 schools, it becomes an issue of where all those schools go. The upper half (Clemson, FSU, Miami, Duke, etc.) is appealing enough to get picked up by other conferences like the SEC, but the problem is that the SEC only has two spots left as well, so some school is left out, and the Big 12 might be reluctant to spread its geography further. Basically, the stronger members have no incentive to leave, and the weaker members will do anything they can to keep the conference together.

So, if the B1G is looking to add schools that are contiguous, academically acceptable, and bring demographics or money or football, the problem is that some schools that are singly available really don't do it, and the ones that do do it are in groups such that the conference would have to be willing to go over 16 members (which is not impossible, but dangerous). Now, if some other conference is the first to move, and other options are on the table, then all bets are off, but as it stands, there is little incentive to be the first to move, and we may very well have reached a stalemate for the forseeable future.

Yes. I realize that it is still May.

Yes. May is still somewhat far from September.

Yes. I am a bit psychotic for working on wallpapers for the upcoming season so...early.

Yes. I'm expecting my second child in July and will most likely lose all free-time and sleep I currently enjoy.

That being said, I am really excited about this year's Under the Lights game and all the wonderful wallpaper ideas I have for this year's edition.  Because of "Yes" #4, I am trying to get as much work done early as I can.  Naturally, I will have to do some work DURING the season, but I'm hopeful I'll be AT the ND game this year, and thus will not have time for my normal insomniac-like last-minute wallpaper post.  So there you have it - my full justification for posting this wallpaper now.

Actually, this wallpaper was intended as more of a "poster" feel.  You could slide an Adidas logo quite nicely onto it, IMHO, and it could pass for part of their promotional material.  I liked the idea, even if it is predictable, and I think it turned out pretty well.  Let me know what you think.  The next UTL2 wallpaper I work on will most likely feature a chicken.  Just sayin'.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.  As always, a mobile version will follow within the next few days.

EDIT: Fixed the blocky font.  Man, I really need to proof my work more closely.

EDIT 2: Added two mobile designs.

Light It Up, Again. (Desktop - 16:9)

Light It Up, Again (iPhone 5 - Mobile)

Light It Up, Again [Broken Edition] (iPhone 5 - Mobile)

- JonValk

USING RIVALS’ STAR RATINGS TO LOOK AT BIG TEN RECRUITING: 2002-2013 CLASSES

I decided to take a look at Rivals.com and the star ratings that they give recruits to come up with an approximation of relative recruiting success over twelve classes (2002-2013) in the Big Ten. To see where Nebraska may have fit in (we can’t really know how different it would be if they’d been in the conference for the whole period studied), I included them as well.

So, including Nebraska, Rivals had ratings on 3,160 recruits from the period 2002 to 2013. Here is what the relative distribution looks like:

So, as you will note, 5-stars and to a lesser extent 4-stars are something of a rare commodity in the Big Ten historically, accounting for only about 1/5^thof all recruits by their data. One thing that is interesting, and you can see this in more detail later, is just how far above the conference norm Michigan and Ohio State tend to sit.

The one thing that should jump out here is the percentage of five and four-star recruits that go to the traditional “Big Two”, if you will. In fact, about 44% of all players ranked four and higher end up at either Michigan or Ohio State. You can also see how sparse those same rosters tend to be when it comes to two-star recruits – by Rivals’ system, Big Ten teams not in Ann Arbor or Columbus attract nearly 98% of the two-star talent.

For all 3,160 players whose ratings I dumped from Rivals’ database, the grand mean star rating is 2.93, but individual teams obviously have had varied success. Here are the team means for the period from 2002 to 2013.

Including Nebraska as a point of some comparison, they would have been quite competitive in Big Ten recruiting circles regardless, so it seems. Here, they are in possession of the third-highest average. In fact, four teams have managed to recruit at or above a “three-star” in those twelve classes. Five teams have managed to stay above the grand mean of 2.93 – Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska (had they been part of the Big Ten for the whole period), Penn State and Michigan State. Michigan State’s numbers spike with the Dantonio years, as you might expect, or otherwise this doesn’t happen, I think.

Here is the conference mean for each year as well:

So, the trend is actually upwards, ever so slightly. The net increase in the average star rating over this period is about 7%, which doesn’t seem like much. It would be interesting to compare this to other conferences in a further diary. I suspect some of this – as it is subjective – has to do with perhaps a steady-state perception of the Big Ten.  I really don’t know – that’s speculation on my part.

A more meaningful comparison between each team and the conference mean for a given year will appear shortly, but this now allows us to look at another intriguing phenomenon.

So, here again we see the relative inequities in where the talent tends to go in the Big Ten, with two schools having never experienced a year above the conference mean rating, one school having managed this feat only once and three schools having achieved this only twice. Of course, on-the-field success is a different story from year to year with some of these teams too, but it seems to illustrate that several teams in the conference do indeed get along with less, if these ratings are any indication. Obviously, there is overlooked or underrated talent, so it is ultimately subjective and not 100% accurate by any means.

So, how did each team fare against the conference mean each year? Here’s what that looks like for each team:

Here’s the whole conference on a rather non-descriptive but somewhat telling chart. You can see Michigan and Ohio State flying comfortably above the rest of the conference for the most part:

Here are some comparisons with select teams. Why Indiana? I was inspired somehow:

TL;DR CONCLUSION:

Like many of these diaries that I do, the driver is for the reader to draw their own conclusion about what they see. Rivals’ data was the easiest to categorize, which is why I used it here, but they aren’t the only ranking service, nor are stars the sole measure of who is in fact the better overall player. What was intriguing to me is how these ratings make the Big Ten appear when you dig into them a little, and the trends seem reasonably accurate to me.

OBLIGATORY:

I've twice posted spreadsheets with information on UM and the NFL draft. I decided to do it at least once more this year.

In 2012 I looked at four-year intervals; this year I extended them to five years. My thinking: In any year the team could have players from five classes playing ... true freshmen up through 5th-year seniors. Here are the extremes that are captured in the most recent five-year interval:

* 2004 recruits who played a fifth year, like Morgan Trent ('09 draft)
* 2009 recruits who did not redshirt, like Denard ('13 draft)

So, part of the '04 class, part of the '09 class, and everything between them ...

In the most recent ('09 to '13) five-year interval, UM had twelve picks. That's the lowest number since '83 to '87 (also twelve). No other interval was worse in the modern era.

Taking a closer look at the high (rounds one to three) end, there were three such picks from '09 to '13. This has never happened in the modern era. In all other five-year intervals there were at least _twice_ that many. The '07 and '06 drafts (four apiece) had more high-end picks in single years.

Details: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AkEbjH02DNzxdFlsWW4zWEZxSU9...

At least by one measure (a decent one, I think), the "program" has clearly been lacking NFL talent (especially at the upper end). It will be interesting to see what happens in '14 and beyond. Needless to say, a couple of lean recruiting years ('10 and '11) might not bring high numbers. '09 looks a little better.

Etc.:

- Data is from CBS Sportsline.
- Next to the first draftee for each year you'll see four columns: * Total number of picks for that year. * Total number of picks for that year and the five prior years. * Total number of "high" picks for that year. * Total number of "high" picks for that year and the five prior years.
- Because the draft is currently seven rounds, I ignored all picks past that round in old drafts.
- I did not account for expansion (Bucs and Seahawks in the mid-'70s, Panthers and Jags sometime after that), so the numbers from (say) the early '70s, which are already impressive, should be considered in that light. (Being drafted in the first round with fewer teams is a rarer achievement.)
- For obvious reasons, I didn't count Ryan Mallett (a "high" pick), Toney Clemons (7th-rounder), or Mike Cox (ditto) in the recent years.