Blue Chip Ratio Day
Bud Elliott’s annual list of who can actually win a national title, where the number of four and five stars in recruiting classes is over 50 pct. Michigan is 12th with 59 pct. Alabama is at a remarkable 89 pct. OSU is second with 80.
Meh … what they are telling us is Michigan has a harder time beating AL and OSU. ✅
might need a physicist to check my calculations, but i'm pretty sure the following equation checks out.
59% - 80% = 42 - 27
kinda feels like the rankings are "Top 3 and everyone else" unless by some miracle you get a year out of your QB that's one of the all time greats. See LSU and Clemson from previous championships
Title teams from the past 10 years that were close to Michigan's 59 BCR
- 2019 LSU - 64 BCR
- 2018 Clemson - 61 BCR
- 2016 Clemson - 52 BCR
- 2013 FSU - 53 BCR
Soooo....basically if JJ turns out to be *that guy*, we've got a shot at making a run for the title. Otherwise, it feels like we'll perpetually be on the outside looking in.
With the talent Michigan has, Michigan will need to learn to win with offense. I was watching some season highlights yesterday and a lot of our young star power is on the offensive side of the ball. JJ, Corum, Edwards, Andrel, etc. We've got to give the ball to JJ and start trying to win games 42-27 all the time because I don't think we're going to have the defense this year to try to win with defense and running the ball
Even Nick Saban, who publicly stated how he hates spread offenses and spent decades winning with his precise defensive schemes had to give in and embrace the offense-first mindset. I like that our current run-based scheme gives us a high floor (if our OL is good), but eventually we'll have to let guys like JJ loose and air it out if we wanna compete for conference or national titles, simple as that.
The defense will probably be better than most think. The secondary and LB may see an improvement and the DL will have talent but very young. I hope the D can gel after the first 6 games in which our high powered offense will probably lead us to easy wins.
Its not even just having an elite QB, you need a few elite players. The thing about those Clemson teams is they lacked depth but they had very elite top level talent and got good injury luck. Saw on reddit in 2016 they had 16 top 100 players on the roster and that is the lowest amount a team has had that won a championship. Michigan currently has 7 guys on the roster who fit that description. Of course its a little hazy, guys like Mazi Smith or AJ Henning are ranked like 105th and that is basically the same thing but the point being that Michigan doesn't just like an elite QB, they lack elite players more broadly.
It's interesting stuff, though the article also notes later on that the scale of BCR aggregation has been increasing quite rapidly. For example, in 2016 only Alabama had more than 75% of their team full of BCR, and only OSU joined that group in 2018. So the delta between the top teams and the champions were smaller than they are now, which likely also helps to explain how Clemson was able to pull off those two wins. Well, that and having a great QB AND great injury luck (if I remember correctly Clemson didn't suffer many injuries during those two runs and their (relative) scuttling the past couple of years was at least partially due to guys being hurt and them not having great depth behind them.
Miami is lucky Texas keeps embarrassing themselves because Miami really flies under the national radar as far as wasting talent. Possibly because they don't have any actual fans to mock like Texas does
Looked up the list from 2015 which showed some interesting contrasts:
https://www.sbnation.com/a/college-football-preview-2015/blue-chip-ratio
- Michigan is still at 59%, but that number was good enough for 8th before
- USC has fallen from 2nd to under the ratio; UCLA has fallen from 12th to under
- Alabama is still #1, but has raised from 77% to 89%
- The biggest risers are Georgia and Oklahoma
People forget how well Mora recruited there, they just couldn’t keep guys healthy and seemed to also get a lot of head cases.
One might argue getting a lot of headcases is a symptom of not recruiting well…
Malik McDowell for example
What I found to be most interesting is the chart toward the bottom of the article.
The chart shows the difference in the BCR with and without transfers. Most of the schools see a decrease in their BCR with transfers. Michigan's stayed the same. Counters the complaints about Michigan having so many transfers; it's happening at other schools, too.
Yeah but I bet a team like Alabama lets go of some blue chips that are not panning out and takes in guys who are over performing. So the BCR might go down a little, but the production up.
OSU has it so easy; they act as if they are struggling to win games and they have all the advantage.
No OSU fan is worried about not paying players NIL.
This is meaningful but obviously gets skewed by the more important positions on the football field these days.
D-line and QB. Clemson has multiple national titles in this era of Bama, OSU recruiting domination - with 2 generational QB’s (Watson, Lawrence) and stud d-lines.
Be good everywhere, and great in those 2 areas and you can beat any team.
OSU has an elite qb right now, so hopefully their d-line looks as soft as last year.
Unleashing JJ, assuming he can be an elite game changer, could really skew these odds. Just wish ojabo and Hutchinson were around this year :(
I think if he expanded this to also include a breakout of high 4-stars and 5-stars (say top 50-60 recruits) the gap between the top three and the rest would grow.
Looking at just 5-stars for the last 5 classes, Alabama has 19, OSU has 18 and Michigan has 4.
“Nobody wins a national title by player development in lieu of elite recruiting.”
YOU'RE MY BOY BLUEchip