Big Ten Recruiting Rankings 4-16-12

Yeah, but if you combine OSU's class with its own class, they have 8 recruits with a 4-star average.  Our class is FREAKING AWESOME, but OSU could easily match us by the spring.  That's basically what happened last year. 

Can we expect a mid-week update when the ESPN 150 comes out tomorrow?

Ace,

Fantastic work, as usual. Cannot get enough charts, first of all, and second, between Hoke's lights out recruiting and your excellent coverage of the process, I have slowly but surely turned in to an addict for recruiting news. Yeesh.

Looking at today's chart, though, I had a thought: What if the Mathlete analyzed each team's recruiting class by combining the star rankings with the relative importance of each position from the perspective of win value added? Obviously not all four stars are equally important pieces of the overall puzzle. For example: we picked up a 4/5 star quarterback but only a 3 star tight end. Penn State got the 4/5 star tight end. But I'll take that every day. Would be a cool thing to see.

Cheers!

Ace, I think the reason you got so much backlash from your tweet yesterday is due to the fact that looking at a composite average for OSU and PSU and comparing that against Michigan's average is not a useful comparison. I see what you were trying to do, but it doesn't make a lot of sense from a statistical standpoint. For one, PSU and OSU aren't one team, so right away you're not comparing apples to apples. If they were one team, and their numbers added up to some 16 player team, then the numbers might make sense to compare, but since they're separate populations, you just can't do it. Secondly, PSU's numbers are worse than OSU's so you would expect them to drag the average down.

I've never been a fan of comparing recruiting classes against each other this early in the process. When you're comparing a group with a sample size of 17 against ones with only 8 players... it's just not a useful comparison. OSU is putting together a solid class. However, their average ranking is inflated because of a small sample size bias. While their average exceeds ours, our denomitor is higher and our average is dragged down by the few 3 star commits that we have.

While you can't say one is better than the other at this juncture, it is helpful to note that given Michigan's greater sample size, you can distribute the risk a little easier over their recruiting class. For instance, Ohio losing a player from their class (decommitting, flunking out, etc) might cause their average ranking to increase due to that smaller sample size. Does that actually improve their class? Probably not. However, adding another player, say a 2 star fullback, would decrease their rating because it increase the denominator. Michigan's average, on the other hand, is more stable and less susceptible to fluctuation. Whether that makes their class 'better' or 'worse' is inconsiquential at this point in time.

MI and OH...why can't we recruit the outer regions of the galaxy like MSU? 

To be fair, the difference between the UM average star rating and the OSU+PSU average star rating can be explained almost entirely by your decision to count NRs as one-star recruits.  It looks like the gap in average star rating would be very small if those five Penn State NRs were credited as three stars.  (If credited as two stars, the difference shrinks but not as much, obviously.)

Ace great job. It was a fun fact from a Michigan blogger. Relax everyone. He didn't rip any school. He just combined the next 2 classes because the number of recruits is almost the same. If you want bias go to 11w and hear their recruiting analyst who is totally fair. He just calls the big house the out house and says they never lose a recruit. F him

Good job, Ace, I really appreciate this update on a weekly basis. I am hoping 11W will eventually start creating something similar.

As far as the fun stat combining PSU's and OSU's average star rating, I honestly am not bothered by it. If anything it just reinforces the gap between our class and PSU's. They drag ours down quite a bit.

Also, this will be a tough year to compare the OSU and Michigan classes. Both will end up with great star ratings, but the number differences will have a big influence. We'll probably end with 17-18 while you guys will have 23-25 (this is just a guess as I don't know where your numbers are for certain). Plus, it will be nearly impossible to increase our star rating as there just aren't many 5 stars to go around and finishing with nothing but 4 stars obviously isn't likely. I could see us finishing out with a 3.8 average and I'd be extremely happy with it.

I am way too lazy to calculate this, but I wonder how high we could get our average ranking by using only 8 of our recruits. By way of comparison, my daughter chose a "highly-selective" liberal arts college over Michigan, but imagine what kind of academic numbers Michigan could put together using only our top 300 incoming freshmen.

Michigan State just got a commitment from Shane Jones, who had a Michigan offer early on. Solid 3/4* LB for them.

Have anyone else noticed that Iowa has a pipeline into Cass Tech, with the verbal from Delano Hill, thats 4 players thathave chosen Iowa.

 Michigan Football-  


 What you gonna do when hokemania RUNS wild over you?