Success on field compared to recruiting

quote:

---

When college football teams fail to meet expectations, fans tend to turn to an old stand-by: Our coach is an all right recruiter, but he just can't coach. This is the narrative behind, for example, Will Muschamp's downturn at Florida. On the other hand, coaches who significantly exceed expectations are perceived as solid coaches despite meager recruiting skills. (This the case for Bill Snyder.) But these coaches are outliers. How does the rest of college football fare in translating expected talent to actual success?

We compared how teams recruited to where they ended up in computer polls at the end of each of the last five seasons. To measure on-field success, we used Kenneth Massey's ranking composite. Massey is a statistician whose work contributed to the BCS computer rankings; his composite index averages dozens of rankings including the six computers used in the BCS, the AP poll, and the USA Today coaches' poll.

Rivals rankings were used to measure recruiting. For each season, we used an average of the five previous recruiting classes. Even though upperclassmen generally contribute more than underclassmen, we avoided weighted averages because upperclassmen also transfer schools, declare for the NFL draft early, and have career-ending injuries.

To give an example of how we rated teams, 2009 teams are made up of recruiting classes from 2005-09. In 2009, USC had a 3.2 average, since the five recruiting classes that made up that team were, on average, ranked 3.2.

We then averaged results from 2009-2013 and compared the metrics. Doing this tells you that from 2009-2013, USC finished 22nd in Massey's poll on average with teams that had recruiting classes ranked 4.2 on average, meaning they "underperformed" their recruiting rankings by 17.8 spots on average. Perhaps as a consequence, Lane Kiffin got fired.

The further teams are from the chart's dotted red line, the greater the discrepancy between their recruiting and on-field rankings. Teams in the blue region did better on the field while teams in the red region were better at recruiting.

Of teams in the red region, Kansas had the most distance between its talent and team success. The Jayhawks are near the middle of the horizontal axis, so it's not like they recruited blue chippers. They've just been so awful on the field, as Charlie Weis lost 19 of 20 contests against Power 5 schools, that they haven't come close to meeting the expectations of their mediocre recruiting classes, underperforming their recruiting classes by 48.9 spots on average.

Of teams in the blue region, Navy had the most distance between talent and success. Despite military-academy restrictions that make recruiting top players difficult, Navy made bowl games in four of the last five seasons as they outperformed their recruiting expectations by 57.4 spots on average.

---