So all of this talk about Dantonio dominating RR at in-state recruiting and how can you contend for national championships when you don’t win your own state got me to thinking how could in-state recruiting could be quantified. I know that it's mostly state slappies but I'm bored, I’m an engineer and I like using numbers in an arguement not just,"We got Will Gholston." I couldn’t just show total in-state commits because Michigan casts a much bigger net than State does. To combat this I decided to compare in-state recruits that they competed over and take that back a couple of years just see if there is any pattern to prove or disprove Sparty’s latest claim. 

I used Rivals' commit lists and looked to see which recruits had offers from both schools. Some of the 5 star recruits didn't show if sparty offered but it's a safe guess that they did so i counted them, otherwise if it didn't show one of the schools I didn't count it. 

Year      Competition recruits        M Wins          MSU wins  
2010*                  5                           2**                   2  
2009                   6                           2                      4  
2008                   6                           4                      2  
2007                   4                           4                      0  
2006                   2                           2                      0  
2005                   3                           3                      0  
*not complete    
** maybe 3 doesn't say whether or not Jeremy Jackson was offered by MSU
sorry i don't  know how to make tables look pretty 

2010
M Wins: DG and Austin White (again not sure about Jackson but he had offers from most of the Big Ten so…)
MSU Wins: Will Gholston and Mylan Hicks

One trend I noticed while doing this is the number of in-state commits for state has increased dramatically in Dantonio’s tenure

Year      # of commits
2010*            8
2009            12
2008            13
2007             7
2006             5
2005             6
*still not complete

So basically, John L. Smith was useless. He barely tried to compete and failed miserably when he did. Dantonio decided to fight back and has been mildly successful. He won last year but that wasn’t unexpected. Smith wouldn’t have but Dantonio is a much better coach. Right now, it’s neck and neck and it will take this year and at least next to determine who’s winning in-state recruiting. Even with Danonio apparent focus on in-state recruits and M coming off the worst season in its history we are still borderline winning. Once M gets back to its winning ways I think most years it will look like the 2008 class. With M getting most of the recruits but Sparty stealing one or two, and you know what I’m ok with that.


I know it's pretty shoddy statistics and I am welcome to feedback, but I hope i made your work day more enjoyable.