Staples!

Submitted by blueheron on

Happy holidays, everyone. I'm sorry to report that Michigan football has been (unintentionally, I hope) trashed by Sports Illustrated. Andy Staples, who I think is generally well-regarded by the readership here, has a column about the correlation between the number of Rivals 100 recruits and BCS bowls. He uses the numbers from '06 to '09. This seems flawed right away because very few of the recruits would be involved in an '06 bowl, but whatever.

That isn't the main point here. No, it's that he somehow manages to turn 15 recruits (7 + 3 + 3 + 2 if I'm counting correctly) into... *30*. Yes, 30. He uses that information to take an soft shot at Michigan.

I don't understand what happened; he even has the lists at the end of the article.

Anyway, I just sent him a friendly request for a correction. If you're not too distracted by more important issues, I'd suggest that you do the same.

Tater

December 25th, 2009 at 10:04 AM ^

Staples resorted to another "staple" of lazy reporting: the "RR REFUSES TO CHANGE HIS SYSTEM TO FIT HIS PERSONNEL" bullshit that we have been reading for two years now. Can't the fuckhead at least come up with something remotely original? Between that and his "math," he apparently thinks negativity toward Michigan will fill his story out without him having to do too much work.

pz

December 25th, 2009 at 10:44 AM ^

Article still mentions Michigan among top 4 stockpilers of recruits ("the top four stockpilers of Rivals100 talent (USC, Michigan, Florida, Texas) have combined to earn nine BCS bowl berths.").

However, the list is amended to show Michigan with 15 and ND would be the 4th highest team during the stretch... also with 1 BCS bid in the timeframe, thus still 9 BCS berths among the top 4 teams.

Overall, I give the article / analysis a strong "meh."

MGoViso

December 25th, 2009 at 1:03 PM ^

was this graph:
"Some of the rankings get goosed for commercial reasons, too. Though it's unlikely anyone at Rivals would say this on the record, if Virginia Tech fans bought Web site subscriptions at the same rate as Notre Dame, Alabama or Florida State fans, then the Hokies' recruiting classes might not be so underrated relative to their success on the field."

We all know the various flaws associated with recruiting rankings, but this is one I've never heard before and it seems plausible enough.

Also: his WSJ link isn't the whole story, right? Did anybody read this? The beginning of the article and Staples' review sort of make it seem inane--as Staples points out, such a small sample size is essentially useless (I'd go further and say that it's downright misleading and a sham of a journalistic effort, but I'll hold off because it's not a Rosenberg piece).