Michigan 1 of 13 teams with enough talent to win the title

Submitted by FatGuyTouchdown on

SBNation's resident recruiting expert Bud Elliott has come out with his latest "Blue Chip Ratio" rankings. The Blue Chip Ratio is 4 and 5 star players (blue chips) compared to 2 and 3 stars. The benchmark that every national title team has hit since recruiting has been more heavily covered has been 0.51, meaning every title team since 2002 has had more 4 and 5 stars, than not. 

Michigan is 1 of 13 teams that has eclipsed the .51 ratio, and 1 of 2 in the B1G (Guess the other). The list of teams with more blue chips has won 12 of the last 14 titles, and does not include Florida, which dipped below this season, but was above the bench mark when they won 2 titles.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2016/8/18/12530108/…

Frank Chuck

August 18th, 2016 at 6:46 PM ^

Most people don't realize it but the Oklahoma Sooner doesn't recruit at a top-10 level ever year which makes their sustained success more surprising. Stoops doesn't always get the credit he deserves because Oklahoma lost a number of big games but it's not an accident Oklahoma has won 9 Big 12 championshps in 18 years under Stoops.

gwkrlghl

August 18th, 2016 at 6:40 PM ^

It's a good reason to be cautious on thinking Oregon, MSU or Stanford can get a national title because teams at their recruiting level never have. Great programs, but not the right recruiting combo.

Even from that list, I'd say there's only a few there with the combo of recruiting and coaching to do it all. Probably

  • Alabama
  • Ohio State
  • LSU
  • Notre Dame
  • Florida State
  • Michigan
  • Clemson

I'd bet at least 3 of the playoff teams come from that group

Ghost of Fritz…

August 18th, 2016 at 7:58 PM ^

Seems like he is saying that the teams that have what it takes to make the playoff and/or win it all have the rare combo of elite roster talent plus elite coaching. 

Elite talent and coaching are the casual elements. 

That's not the same thing as merely saying conference champs are most likely to make the playoffs and/or win it all. 

Hornsgoblue (not verified)

August 18th, 2016 at 6:36 PM ^

Not exactly going out on a limb when you pick 13 possible teams to win it all. Also, when one of those teams is Texas (given the current state of the program which is just struggling  to again become a consistent top 25 team) it certainly is not a fullproof formula.

FatGuyTouchdown

August 18th, 2016 at 6:42 PM ^

He simply showed the formula he uses to determine which teams have enough talent from recruiting to win. If you read the article, he mentions how important coaching development and retention is, and specifically mentions Texas as one of the teams he doesn't think will win.

jinglebaugh

August 18th, 2016 at 6:42 PM ^

He says so in the article. However, so far it has been foolproof as far as predicting who wins the title. It doesn' mean that you can't sign all 4 stars and still stink. It's mostly about going the other way - you can't sign mostly 3 stars and win the title (see Dantonio, Mark). Although, I'm interested to see when this formula could falter.

Optimism Attache

August 18th, 2016 at 6:43 PM ^

That is an interesting analysis and I am glad Michigan is comfortably within the range of being able to compete for a national championship. However, I think pointing to a single factor to determine who could and could not win a title in a given season might be a bit misleading. We know that schools that have lots of AD money, winning traditions, great head coaches, and play in the Power 5 conferences all kind of clump together. Does a school have great recruiting because of its execellent coach, or perhaps because it sends a lot of guys to the NFL, due to  fantastic facilities, large fanbase, etc.? It's a bit chicken or egg.

FatGuyTouchdown

August 18th, 2016 at 6:46 PM ^

he mentions that this isnt the only factor, just the biggest. Obviously coaching is huuuuggeee. But when you get into the playoff, you end up playing other great coaches, and eventually it comes down to who has the better players. For example, this year, two teams that recruited at a championship level blew out teams that didnt. Dabo, Saban, Mork, and Stoops are all great coaches, so there was no distinct coaching advantage.

Optimism Attache

August 18th, 2016 at 6:53 PM ^

Fair observation. I am just thinking of causality--success in what factors are leading to success in others. I don't really think it is possible to do it in a consensus, objective and quantifiable way, but I would love to see a regression analysis ID which independent variable is the greatest predictor of succes (obviously Bud thinks it is share of players with # of 4 or 5 stars). I don't believe it has been done, but I could be wrong.

Double-D

August 18th, 2016 at 6:44 PM ^

We have guys all the time argue against the importance of stars as it relates to player evaluation and player development. MSU has made a living on being good at player evaluation and development but their performance against Bama shows a ceiling for them unless they can start getting more elite athletes.

Michigan is already recruiting at another level and this years team has a ton of talent. If we have the season we should elite level classes should be expected moving forward.

somewittyname

August 18th, 2016 at 6:48 PM ^

I'd like to see this combined with experience. While we may fall short of some programs by the blue chip metric, if you were to weight it by experience, I think we'd probably fall in the top 3 this year, e.g., OSU's blue chip ratio is clearly higher but their talent is also younger.

Sledgehammer

August 18th, 2016 at 7:20 PM ^

Are 4 and 5 stars weighted equally? What about 2 and 3 stars? This seems like a useful look at recruiting, but I think it would be better if the stars were weighted. According to this, Rashan Gary is equal to Jacob Mathis, the composite 341 player and last 4 star.

Ali G Bomaye

August 19th, 2016 at 9:08 AM ^

I think it's intentionally simplified. The point is to draw a line of who can plausibly compete, not do a detailed analysis of the teams most likely to compete. Obviously a team with a lot of 5* talent is going to be more likely to win than a team with a lot of barely-4* talent.

But I think this is a pretty reasonable method, because a lot of recruiting services will essentially give an automatic 3* rating to anybody who signs with a power program, no matter how little they know about the guy or where they had him rated. We've seen this effect with a few of the gems Harbaugh has pulled from the rough. So with 3* talent, it's impossible to tell whether a guy is actually a 3* talent, or is granted 3* just because of where he signed. But with 4* and 5* recruits, you actually know that they've been heavily evaluated and ranked as one of the best recruits.