Local vs National Recruiting

Submitted by Rodriguesqe on

The Crawford / Corley commits got me thinking about national vs local recruiting. Harbaugh seems to have tilted towards national in a way that Hoke and even RR never did. Maybe someone who followed recruiting back in Carr days could compare. 

I went through the current top 10 classes to see how each school did in state vs out of state. First number is commits from within state, second is class size.

1 LSU - 12 /20

2 Michigan - 1 / 24

3 OSU - 8 /18

4 FSU - 8 / 18

5 Georgeia - 12 / 16

6 Florida - 15 / 26

7 Ol Miss - 4 / 20

8 Alabama - 4 / 17

9 ND - 0 / 22

10 Auburn 4 / 17

I think whats apparent is that Michigan has a built in disadvantage of residing in a football poor state.

If I did a bit more work I think if you considered region Michigan would stand out even more. 1 from MI, 1 IL, 1 Wisconsin, 3 from Indiana, everyone else is from out of region. Even ND has more midwest kids.

It seems like the sights view Corley and Crawford as just about even. We don't know who Harbaugh thinks will be better. I'm no scout either. But philosophically speaking, I used to think tie breaker went to the local kid since 1) he'd get our rivalvies 2) it would keep him away from our rivals. My opinion is the opposite now, possibly skewed by watching Hoke reel in local kids and also not developing talent. 

This might also just be an aberation, as I think we are targetting plenty of local kids in 2017.

Stringer Bell

January 9th, 2016 at 8:34 PM ^

I'm of the belief that kids from Florida, Texas, Cali etc. are worth more than similarly rated kids from the midwest. Those kids just play against a better level of competition.

WorldwideTJRob

January 9th, 2016 at 9:16 PM ^

That's too simplistic of a view...Lewis, Butt, and Peppers are top-tier talents at there given positions and are from MI, OH and NJ respectively. Greatness doesn't have a regional bias, you either have the talent or you don't. Also it's tougher to get kids in the state now due to the rise of MSU's program in recent years.




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TrueBlue2003

January 10th, 2016 at 2:49 AM ^

come from the south and Texas and California because there are lot more football players in those states.  That's reflected in the fact that most of the top 50, 100, 300, etc. recruits are from those areas.  But your assertion that they outperform their rankings compared to midwest players is almost certainly not true.  The services take into account factors like competition.

In fact, many believe there is a bias towards the SE in the rankings and in perception becacuse competition gets weighted too heavily rather than the attributes that actually make an individual player successful at football.

Bruce Feldman investigated this very topic in a cursory tally in 2009 of pro bowlers in the NFL: http://insider.espn.go.com/ncf/blog/_/name/feldman_bruce/id/3934034/the…

Comparing the distribution of NFL pro bowlers (admittedly, a smaller sample than should be used. NFL starters would probably be better) in 2009 to the distribution of top 150 recruits in the same year (again not ideal, but let's assume the regional rankings distributions are mostly consistent), indeed there appears to be a bias with more talent to be found in the Midwest than recruiting rankings give credit for, and less in the south and Texas/SW than we are lead to believe, small sample caveats apply.

A more conclusive study would invole multiple years of recruiting rankings and multiple years of NF starters but ain't nobody got time for that (at least, I don't).

  Pro Bowlers ESPN Top 150 recruits
South/Southeast 37% 48%
Midwest 18% 11%
West 16% 15%
Southwest 12% 16%
Mid-Atlantic and NE 16% 10%

 

BlueWolverine02

January 9th, 2016 at 8:36 PM ^

we have offers out to 10 instate 2017 kids so this year is probably an aberration. however we have always had to recruit nationally as we are not a talent rich state. I remember there was a Carr class that had something like 8 or 9 instate guys and at the time at least it was the most instate guys in a class ever.

schreibee

January 9th, 2016 at 9:35 PM ^

Absolutely not! Michigan is not now, nor has it recently been, one of the top states for producing All-Conference, All-American, draft material level players.

Add to that the proximity of msu & osu, and UM has about as difficult a recruiting situation as any of what would be considered "traditional powers" of college football.

I'm not including occasional, periodic risers (such as Wiscy, Stanford or Oregon in recent times). I'm talking teams that have had multiple Top 15 type seasons in multiple decades.

As a point of interest, can anyone think of others that remain pretty much perpetually strong with similar recruiting handicaps? I'd go with ND, but the whole point is they don't really operate "regionally".

dankbrogoblue

January 9th, 2016 at 11:08 PM ^

When you say we're not one of "the top" that doesn't mean we're outside of the top 15. Let's name states that are ahead of us (in no order)...

Definitely:
Florida
Texas
California
Alabama
Louisiana
Ohio

Probably:
New Jersey
Georgia
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
South Carolina

Maybe:
Maryland
Virginia

I don't know if my list is accurate, but that's 13 states ahead of us, and some years we might be ahead of many of those states. Not saying our talent is proportional to our population, but saying "absolutely not" for top 15 is just false. That's not to say we have no hill to climb for recruiting with a fellow in state power and a monster not far south.




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MotownGoBlue

January 9th, 2016 at 11:32 PM ^

We're definitely ahead of South Dakota...and New Hampshire. I don't hear much about either state having a plethora of high school football talent.

/s

I believe Michigan is in the top 15. It'd be easy (may take a few minutes of research) to find out which states have produced the most top 250 high school football recruits over the last 10 years or so.

schreibee

January 10th, 2016 at 12:18 AM ^

So... essentially your long, beautifully indented post is mostly about semantics?

OK, gotcha - you are competing for Mgoblog poster of the year:

Take a bunch of time to parse a post, debate it in detail, then agree it's probably correct in substance.

But you see, until you provide actual facts about how many All-Conference, All-American, and draft material type players come from each state, then my opinion is as valid as yours.

And since you already agreed that we do face enormous recruiting hurdles in a relatively medium talent-rich state, I can't see why you'd bother. But the Oklahoma Sooner call was strong. Very comparable. In fact, I'd say they'd exceeded our accomplishments over the past 50 or so years with similar hurdles. Of course, they've been dirty as Hell doing it, but that wasn't the question I posted, was it?

Maize_Nation

January 10th, 2016 at 12:41 PM ^

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl-news/4525681-nfl-players-state-by-state…

Top 15 for NFL players.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/4/15/8143431/s…

And a top 15 state for 3/4/5 star recruits, though as you mentioned not one of the better states for recruiting due to the instate competition.

Avon Barksdale

January 9th, 2016 at 8:57 PM ^

He has to be kidding. In the South, kids grow up loving and playing baseball among other sports. I never played on a travel baseball team in Tennessee with less than 20 top notch athletes.



I personally chose baseball over football my sophomore year of high school -- just as many of my friends did. The diversification of sports is really a non-factor when it comes to why Michigan is weaker than other states in high school football.

Gulogulo37

January 9th, 2016 at 11:24 PM ^

Is that true for African-Americans though? There aren't a lot of black MLB players and I think most of them aren't even American. I don't watch college baseball, but from bits I've seen on ESPN and what not, I don't recall seeing a lot of black players. Basketball among African-Americans in the South doesn't seem particularly popular, at least in comparison to the Midwest, Northeast, and CA.

And I think it's safe to say soccer is more popular in CA than the South. Same for probably any other sport.

EDIT: I just searched Texas Longhorns and Ole Miss baseball team photos and they're pretty damn white.

Medfordblue

January 9th, 2016 at 9:19 PM ^

A population of ten million is not much out of a national population of 315 nillion.  It is 3+ percent.  Of the three staes you listed their populations are FL.  twenty million, CA 42 million and TX somewhere between 30 and 35 million.  A lot more kids and a lot more schools.  In fact AZ will popbubly pass MI in the next census. Hell even OR where I live is now over 4 million and we are considered a small rural state.  The warm weather states offer the folks a lot more diversity of activity just because they are warm and people can practice whatever and participate all year long.  I was born and raised in Michigan, but as a state the topdog Miichigan I remember from my youth is no more.