football

I’ve been in hibernation for a couple weeks working on getting all of my recruiting data in order and wanted to open a first post on the 2013 class by looking at how the overall picture of the top classes looks.

A quick refresher on the methods I use to rate recruits. Each recruit is given an overall ranking at each of the four major recruiting sites. For recruits in the top 250-300 the site gives that rating themselves. For recruits outside of the top threshold, I use an implied value based on position rating and player grade (available for everyone but Scout) to produce a final player ranking for all players. This ranking is then applied to a log scale so that the very top players are given an extra “bonus.” A unanimous #1 like Robert Nkemdiche is this year will finish with a rating of 99 points. Michigan’s top recruit Derrick Green, is the 21st highest rated player overall and is rated at 80 points. David Dawson is #101 at 58 points and a player on the fringes of the national rating like #305 Maurice Hurst are worth about 40 points.

The Rivals

Michigan’s top rivals are all having outstanding recruiting seasons as well. To gauge the classes, I have plotted each of the teams' commitments alongside each other, ranked from highest to lowest.

Where’s the threat?

Notre Dame’s class features the best #1 with the class (Jaylon Smith), #2 (Max Redfield) and #3 (Greg Bryant) before falling back in line with Michigan’s class.

Despite a marquee name at the top, Ohio State features the strongest overall top ten before the depth falls below Notre Dame and Michigan.

The strength of this Michigan class is in the quality depth. All 26 of the Wolverine position player commits rank in the top 750 nationally.

Meanwhile in East Lansing there is a clear talent gap as the peak is significantly lower and the decline is even faster. Any thoughts that the Spartans had of closing the recruiting gap seem laughable at this point.

The National Elite

In addition to Notre Dame and Ohio State, four teams from the SEC along with USC are making runs at the nation’s top 2013 recruiting class.

Michigan, Florida and LSU all have nearly identical classes with only slight deviations in player rating at each level.

Alabama is very strong through the top 10 but features a serious decline from there on.

Texas A&M is this year’s packed house with over 30 commits. There is a definite separation through the bulk of their class and the rest of the national elite, but without a sharp dropoff at the tail, the class is more than just a collection of also-rans.

USC’s class is small due to the NCAA sanctions but is absolutely loaded. The Trojans feature only 14 commitments but every single one of them are in top 200 players nationally.

Picking A Winner

Splitting hairs over which class is slightly better at this point in time is a mostly absurd. As you can see, the margins between the top classes are very slim and although I am a firm believer in recruiting ratings at a high level, there are a lot of classes within the margin for error for top class.

With that in mind, it’s seven months until the next meaningful college football game and so let’s assess the contenders using various methodologies.

Add ‘Em Up

Probably the simplest method, take each recruit for each team and add up their points and see who has the most. Using this method we currently have a top ten that looks like this:

Certainly not a bad way to look at it but the huge class at Texas A&M certainly seems to be overrated in this method. Add to that the opportunity cost by loading up a single class in terms of ability to offer the future, and this look is insightful but a bit incomplete.

Average ‘Em Up

An average versus a sum takes away the issue of opportunity cost lost by over-offering the current season and looks at where each team ranks on players committed, taking away the class size bonus.

USC small class size becomes irrelevant in this rating as the difference between their class and #2 Alabama is the same as #2 and #9. Michigan still finishes a solid 7th.

This method also has its drawbacks as now the opportunity cost is reversed. It values teams holding their offers for future classes, potentially costing the team opportunities in the present if they can’t keep a full scholarshipped roster.

A Player Rank Approach
One way I have been looking at classes this year is similar to the graphs above. Comparing each team’s Nth recruit versus all of the other classes to see how they stack up. With a limit of 25 scholarships per class, I gave the best 1st in class player 25 points, the second best player who was the best in his team’s class 24 etc. For each subsequent team spot, I dropped the points and players evaluated by 1 so for each team’s 25th best player, only the top one received a single point.

Based on this method each of Michigan’s top 15 commitments garnered at least 10. Jake Butt at #13 and Ben Gedeon at #15 where each the top players are their respective position within the class (No other team had a 13th or 15th best player rated as high as these two). Shane Morris, despite his senior year slide, earned Michigan’s highest point total with 18 points as the 5th best #4 prospect in any current class.

The hybrid approach puts Michigan at #5, behind top rated Notre Dame but just ahead of Ohio State.

In the end it really is splitting hairs with high degree of variability. Michigan’s class is probably not the #1 class but it is certainly a top 5 class with lots of quality depth. With back to back elite classes under its belt, Michigan should return to national elite roster levels within the next 2-3 seasons, a position it hasn’t been in since 2007.

It's unbelievably hard," Lewan said. "My redshirt freshman year was just kind of like, 'Just go.' I mean your techniques, you're still in high school mode. A lot of guys just think you're still bigger and stronger than everybody, so you lay your body on somebody and you expect them to just move out of the way."

Zoltan ponders how the gradient potential of his latest punt lines up exactly with that of collateralized debt obligation investment products in the 2008 bubble, and if they are correlated, could this end prostate cancer and teach cats to play ping-pong?

Somewhere in the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster complex, about a Yottameter from the Great Attractor, on a wet, rocky satellite of a smallish yellow star on the belt of a medium-sized Virgo Complex galaxy, there was a football game. In the first half, despite the best efforts of their opponents, Michigan's offense gained enough yards to traverse the Hoover Dam; in the second half they barely made it the length of a 747.

Millions who witnessed a representation of this occurring on stacked LCD pixels went online to find the similarly sized (and metaphorical) grain of salt, or compare the offensive coordinator's brain to the like-massed Paramecium. They tore out hair follicles, pounded their couches to release thousands of silt and skin particles which had settled there, and angrily flicked the transistor gates deep within their electronic devices to exclaim how this loss hurt to their very DNA.

In the abstract, a loss to Ohio State, even if largely expected, was too horrible to countenance. And so the Diarists burned glucose deep into the night while attempting to make sense of what was essentially the movement of a whole lot of atoms but to us a whole lot of matter. Zoom far enough in or out and you no longer have to see it.

The Micro. For the real quantum foam of the events in question, again I quote bronxblue…

The whole gang was back, to give the OSU faithful one more opportunity to cheer on a myth, a delusion about its history that seems painfully obvious to everyone not wearing crimson and grey.

So between the first and second quarters of the final game the 2012 Buckeyes will play, a premature finale caused by Mr. Tressel’s behavior during his years in Columbus, the fans in attendance gave him a standing ovation, one of the biggest cheers of the day. … The narrative went, at least in some circles, that most schools would have done the same, that fans love to cheer on winners and that most of those players were completely above board and played fairly, won every game that season, and, let’s be honest, Miami was no saint either. The thinking went that this was a team that the school should be proud of, or at least should be able to recognize publicly.

…who is going to keep winning Diarist of the Week until such point as BlueSeoul comes back to game wrap (with pics). I sat high up in the student section where freshmen who were probably 7 years old for 2002 cheered louder than the alumni. One kid in a black longcoat who spent most of first half with cheap nacho cheese on his chin yelled "Fuck Michigan!" at us through it all. This is Ohio State in a nutshell: cartoon bad guys oblivious to how stupid they look.

ST3 boiled Inside the Box Score down to Borges quotes. On the boards, Profwoot narrowed it to the script. And caup took it to the O-Line coach. Hypothesis: the more you know about football the deeper down the coaching ranks you can find blame. Theory: the 2003 team would have been national champs if it wasn't for (student mgr) Jeff Levine. Damn you, Levine!

Shane Morris puts the game in perspective.

[After the JUMP, we zoom out far enough to see the Space Emperor's Mustache]

Unfortunately, I was not able to travel to the game in Columbus this weekend. Thanks to Bryan Fuller for filling in for me and heading down to the game.  

Denard

More Denard

And the Gallery:

Here are the photos from Michigan vs. MSU. 

Ice Cold

Brady Hoke thought pass interference should have been called

Taylor Lewan with Greg Mattison after the game

The complete Slideshow. I hope it doesn't suck.

All photos are Creative Commons licensed. If you have any questions or comments that you don't want to post on here. Feel free to e-mail me at eric@mgoblog.com.

Here are the photos from Michigan vs. Illinois.

Jake Ryan forces a fumble

Let's play leap frog!

The slideshow: