Team Performance versus Scout Recruit Class Rank

Four thoughts:

1. Adjust the average recruiting class for juniors/seniors rather than weighting each equally. Having the #1 overall incoming freshman class is unlikely to help you in the current year.

2. Boise State has been an abberation for awhile. Whether it's an easy schedule, luck regarding the QB position, or whatever, I'd think of them as an anomaly rather than proof that rankings dont matter. We'll see how they do in Big East play.

3. Using "Average Class" and "Difference" doesn't make sense. Alabama is an 8.4 average ranking, but in that time period that may be the 3rd best average. Nobody is #1 4 straight years, so your formula forces there to be significant differences between place of finish in classes and 2011 season. Instead, consider calculating Average Class (maybe with just seniors/juniors) then assigning the ranking in order of who has the best average (i.e. USC's 5.8 gets reordered to #1, Texas's 6.4 gets reordered to #2, Alabama's 8.4 gets reordered to #3, etc.) that way it is actually possible to see if "best recruiting class maturing to juniors/seniors equals or doesn't equal on field success."

4. I dont look at recruiting class rank any differently than I look at a prospect's individual star ranking.

As in, having a better recruiting class doesn't guarantee success, it just makes the odds better that your team will end up high up. If you lined up the top 20 "average classes" top to bottom, I bet it wouldn't be random but would rather be about a 50/50 split between top-20 recruiting classes and non-top-20 classes. Therefore, if you bring in a top-20 class every year, you would be 50% likely to end up in the top-20 (factors including conference, coaching, schedule not withstanding) compared to the other 100 schools with a 10% chance of ending up in the top 20. Thus, instead of saying "its an equal mix, recruiting classes don't matter" the conclusion would be "recruiting classes give you a 5 times better shot of finishing the season in the top 20." This is an example but you can understand the line of thinking hopefully.

If the independant variable (recruiting rank) incorporates multiple recruiting classes. wouldn't it kind of make sense to look at the dependant variable as an average of multiple season rankings?

you not include Ohio?

If we land reeves, Kozan, etc this article doesn't get published... Time to own up to the fact that we're all just trying to find someway to not feel like crap because OSU, even after a terrible year and facing a bowl ban is still beating us with recruits... And just to clarify, I hate OSU with a passion!

It has been discussed in virtually every forum that exists and the empirical evidence remains the same:

Schools that recruit top ranked classes on a perennial basis have a far greater degree of success than those that do not, provided all other ¨givens¨ for success are intact. Those are, of course, good to great coaching, continuity of same and an outstanding support base.

Radical changes in any of the aforementioned will, of course, provide for a change in end results, sometime positive, other times not.

You point to Boise St., as an anomaly, but they have all the ingredients that others, such as WVU, under RR has, most of all a belief system that everyone buys into without question. Good coaching makes good players.

I think we can all agree that if Bump had remained as our HC from the period 69-74, he would not have produced more All Americans than any other five year group in Michigan football history. However, that is exactly what occured under Bo and considering that all the aforementioned criteria existed under Bo, does one really need to further dissect that which is self evident?

T

I don't understand how you look at that data and proclaim that recruiting doesn't matter.  You have just shown us that 9 of the top 12 teams have an average class rank of 30 or better.  If it truly didn't matter at all, you would instead see an even distribution of class ranks among the top finishers.

I also don't understand how this topic is so frequently discussed and misinterpreted.  It's like people think there are only 2 options, either:
A) recruiting is the only factor to success, and the list of top teams every year is an exact copy of the top recruiting classes, or
B) recruiting bears no relevance to success whatsoever (ie "doesn't matter")

To me it seems blindingly obvious that the answer is:
C) recruiting does matter, and correlates to success, but is only one of many factors and defficiencies here can sometimes be overcome by being superior in the other areas.