Team Performance versus Scout Recruit Class Rank
As I was reading through fellow fans' reactions to recent recruitment news, someone had mentioned that 'recruiting doesn't really matter.' I'd read that several places, and in the back of my mind I probably didn't believe it. So, I decided to see if the quality of the class as measured through the eyes of a scouting site really did matter.
Turns out, it may not really matter. (Note: This isn't an end all be all of an analysis, and I'm not an expert on Statistics, Recruiting or Women. I also only looked at the top 12 as this takes a lot of time, plus it afforded me another opportunity to disrespect Ohio.)
What?! How dare thee suggest class rank doesn't matter! I'd kindly refer you to the table.
What is this table that thee speaketh of? Uh, chart?
| 2011 AP | Team | Average Class | Difference | 2011 Rank - 2007/8 Class | 2012 Class | 2011 Class | 2010 Class | 2009 Class | 2008 Class | 2007 Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | 8.4 | 7.4 | 10.5 | 2 | 7 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 22 |
| 2 | LSU | 10.0 | 8.0 | 12.5 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 7 | 22 |
| 3 | Oklahoma State | 29.0 | 26.0 | 29.0 | 27 | 18 | 18 | 45 | 40 | 24 |
| 4 | Oregon | 16.4 | 12.4 | 12.0 | 13 | 11 | 13 | 26 | 23 | 9 |
| 5 | Arkansas | 26.0 | 21.0 | 24.0 | 16 | 17 | 35 | 20 | 24 | 34 |
| 6 | USC | 5.8 | -0.2 | -0.5 | 32 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 9 | 2 |
| 7 | Stanford | 29.6 | 22.6 | 36.0 | 18 | 23 | 24 | 15 | 43 | 43 |
| 8 | Boise State | 68.6 | 60.6 | 52.5 | 53 | 65 | 97 | 60 | 64 | 57 |
| 9 | South Carolina | 20.0 | 11.0 | 11.5 | 9 | 12 | 34 | 13 | 34 | 7 |
| 10 | Wisconsin | 34.4 | 24.4 | 15.0 | 52 | 38 | 33 | 51 | 26 | 24 |
| 11 | Michigan State | 40.6 | 29.6 | 42.5 | 37 | 27 | 32 | 37 | 56 | 51 |
| 12 | Michigan | 14.2 | 2.2 | -4.0 | 4 | 29 | 12 | 14 | 6 | 10 |
| 16 | Oklahoma | 14.4 | -1.6 | 4.0 | 14 | 15 | 15 | 2 | 10 | 30 |
| 19 | Georgia | 10.4 | -8.6 | -8.0 | 20 | 5 | 21 | 4 | 5 | 17 |
| 23 | Florida State | 13.8 | -9.2 | -2.5 | 15 | 1 | 9 | 18 | 8 | 33 |
| NR | Notre Dame | 12.6 | - | - | 10 | 8 | 19 | 23 | 2 | 11 |
| NR | Texas | 6.4 | - | - | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 16 | 3 |
| NR | Texas A&M | 21.6 | - | - | 11 | 30 | 25 | 12 | 15 | 26 |
| NR | Florida | 12.2 | - | - | 5 | 26 | 1 | 21 | 12 | 1 |
Alabama and LSU have consistently strong classes, and the oversigning debacle probably helps them out some more. They along with USC seem to perform commensurate with expectations.
Some of the interesting items are the massive difference between expectations and results for a few select schools: Boise St, Michigan St, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma St and Notre Dame. You can see for yourselves, but Boise St rocks it with classes that are rarely in the top 50%. Their average class is sitting at 70. Texas and Notre Dame have the opposite problem.
You clearly need to have quality players. However, strong coaching, an eye for talent and knowing how to use and motivate that talent go far. Also, it may suggest that these recruiting services "one size fits all" approach to ranking players and classes is largely irrelevant to a team's performance. There's a long list of 5* failures and world beating 3* guys.
I didn't do a regression analysis as I'm a) lazy, b) not The Mathlete and c) things seem fairly obvious after perusing the data. Also, any laser focus on a single aspect of a team's record will probably miss the forest for the trees, but I'm just trying to provide some evidence on this point specifically.
Let's talk data sources and definitions. I used the final AP Ranking for this past season. The class ranking data is from Scout. I imagine it would be easy enough to bump this against some of the other scouting services to see what they say, as well as perhaps the Coach's Poll and whatnot, but I my imaginary army of minions was busy doing something else. So, this is what we're left with.
The "Average Class" is the class average from 2007 through 2011. I felt that the 2012 rankings, while somewhat finalized, aren't really part of this equation, yet. More just a "that's kinda interesting" rather than a "I think there's something there."
The "Difference" is the difference between that aforementioned "Average Class" and the final 2011 AP Ranking.
The "2011 Rank - 2007/8 Class" is the 2011 AP Ranking minus the average of the 2007 and 2008 Recruit Class.
---
So, what do you think?
January 30th, 2012 at 3:58 PM ^
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.
January 30th, 2012 at 4:00 PM ^
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?
January 30th, 2012 at 4:57 PM ^
But I thought recruiting wins games? how come Michigan hasn't done well
LULZ
January 31st, 2012 at 12:39 AM ^
you not include Ohio?
January 31st, 2012 at 5:42 AM ^
February 3rd, 2012 at 11:22 AM ^
The analysis I performed had nothing to do with landing Kozan or any other recruit. I just had several hours to kill at work and thought I'd look into it. It certainly isn't thesis-level work, but I found it interesting and thought some of y'all would as well. :)
Go blue!
January 31st, 2012 at 12:56 PM ^
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
February 2nd, 2012 at 12:57 PM ^
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.
February 3rd, 2012 at 11:20 AM ^
Let me quote myself:
You clearly need to have quality players. However, strong coaching, an eye for talent and knowing how to use and motivate that talent go far. Also, it may suggest that these recruiting services "one size fits all" approach to ranking players and classes is largely irrelevant to a team's performance.
Recruiting does matter, but having a highly ranked class probably doesn't. It's more a failure of the rating system. Bo was able to take a team that wasn't performing well and turn them into world beaters. Hoke took the same set of people who only won seven games in 2010 and got blown out in a bowl and turned them into a 11-1 team. Boise St far exceeds expectations while Notre Dame falls short.
February 4th, 2012 at 6:07 AM ^
UM went 11-2 this year. ;-)
Interesting chart. I think we all agree that, in general, the best talent wins (assuming the coaching isn't headed by dolts). However, there are certain combinations of coach/school that have defied the rankings/statistics, and they continue to compete at a high level in spite of a lack of "blue chippers" across their rosters. Our very own conference has a couple of good examples: MSU and Wisconsin.
Also, as much fun as many of us are having at the expense of ND and Kelly, they were just a handful of TO's away from being an 11-12 win BCS team. If they limit their TO's this year, then I am very afraid of how good they can be. I actually hope they are good because that'll help our computer rankings if/when we beat them (ditto for Michigan State and Ohio).
February 6th, 2012 at 2:09 PM ^
Ok fine, semantics. When I said "recruiting" I was referring to class recruiting rank. Let me repeat what I said in my first post:
"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 still don't see how you look at your data and say that "having a highly ranked class probably doesn't" matter. It's not like your class rank column is a random number between 1-120.
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