An interesting question after this recruiting season has been whether having a highly ranked recruiting class corresponds with future success of the team. Of course, the recruiting guides just purport to tell you about the raw talent of the recruits. Clearly, a great deal more goes into a team's success, such as coaching, conditioning, team chemistry and the like. Moreover, some teams — though never attracting the favorable attention of the national recruiting guides — appear to put talented teams on the field nonetheless, or at least teams filled with players who can execute the team's system.
Still, you'd expect that if the recruiting guides know what they're talking about, a wonderful recruiting class should manifest itself as a wonderful team three or four years later when the players are juniors and seniors.
I managed to find both Lemming's and Superprep's top 10 recruiting classes going back to 1992. Taking these, I assigned each team "recruiting points" starting with play in 1996 as follows. If a team was ranked in the top 10, I assigned it points based upon the ranking -- 10 for 1st , 9 for 2nd, down to one for 10th. So, for instance, in 1996, Superprep had N.D. 3rd and Lemming had N.D. 8th. So, 8 points for the Superprep ranking and 3 for the Lemming ranking. I then multiplied each point total by the year of the class. So a multiplier of 1 for a freshman class, 2 for a sophomore class up to 4 for the senior class. I also multiplied by 2 for the 5th year class, figuring that on average many teams had good number of 5th year players left on their rosters. So, for instance, N.D.'s 1996 total is calculated as follows: 8 points for the SuperPrep and 3 points for the Lemming rating, 20 (2 times 10) points for the Superprep and 20 (2 times 10) for the Lemming rating in 1995 (N.D. was ranked first by both services that year), all the way up to a total of 165, which put N.D. second in recruiting points going into the 1996 season. This is a crude way of assessing the reality that seniors mean a lot more to a team's success than freshmen, and that the freshmen will mean more 3 years down the line. Now, of course, there are complications — transfers, players leaving early for the NFL, injuries, varying redshirt policies, etc. But, all in all, this gives us a broad picture of the talent level on the team, at least according to Superprep and Lemming. Using two rankings has the virtue of balancing out whatever biases each service might have. Superprep and Lemming also make for good choices because they've been around long enough to look at their and teams' performances over the years.
I then ranked the top 10 teams for that upcoming year based upon the number of recruitment points. I then found the ESPN top 10 at the end of the year. The number in the parentheses after the team is the total number of recruitment points. If the team did not wind up in the top 10, I show its ranking (11 to 25) in the brackets afterwards, or "NR" for not ranked.
Next to the poll results, I show the the team's total number of recruitment points if it did not make the top 10. So, for instance, in 1996, Nebraska finished 6th in the poll, but had only 20 recruitment points, which were not nearly enough to get it into the top 10, because the lowest total that year in the top 10 was Penn State's 58.
So, here are the results, with some comments afterwards.
1996
Recruitment Points
1. Florida St. (196)
2. Notre Dame (165) [21]
3. Michigan (153) [20]
4. Tennessee (130)
5. Miami (90) [14]
6. Florida (75)
7. Alabama (72) [NR]
8. Southern Cal. (64) [NR]
9. Ohio State (59)
10. Penn State (58)
USA Today/CNN Poll
1. Florida
2. Ohio St.
3. Florida St.
4. Arizona St. [0]
5. Brigham Young [0]
6. Nebraska [20]
7. Penn St.
8. Colorado [38]
9. Tennessee
10. North Carolina [0]
1997
Recruitment Points
1. Florida St. (203)
2. Tennessee (144)
3. Notre Dame (143) [NR]
4. Michigan (135)
5. Penn State (111) [17]
6. Southern Cal. (99) [NR]
7. Alabama (73) [NR]
8. Ohio St. (67) [12]
9. Florida (61)
10. Texas A&M (48) [21]
ESPN Poll
1. Nebraska [15]
2. Michigan
3. Florida St.
4. North Carolina [7]
5. UCLA [0]
6. Florida
7. Kansas St. [0]
8. Tennessee
9. Washington St [0].
10. Georgia [2]
1998
Recruitment Points
1. Florida St. (197)
2. Notre Dame (145) [22]
3. Penn St. (143) [15]
4. Michigan (127) [12]
5. Tennessee (102)
6. Florida (94)
7. Southern Cal. (93) [NR]
8. Ohio St. (73)
9. Texas A&M (54) [13]
10. Auburn (52) [NR]
ESPN Poll
1. Tennessee
2. Ohio St.
3. Florida St.
4. Arizona [0]
5. Wisconsin [0]
6. Florida
7. Tulane [0]
8. UCLA [19]
9. Kansas St. [0]
10. Air Force [0]
1999
Recruitment Points
1. Florida St. (178)
2. Penn St. (146) [11]
3. Notre Dame (136) [NR]
4. Michigan (123)
5. Florida (112) [14]
6. Tennessee (79)
7. Southern Cal. (75) [NR]
8. Texas (50) [23]
8. LSU (50) [NR]
10. Alabama (48)
ESPN Poll
1. Florida St.
2. Nebraska [26]
3. Virginia Tech [0]
4. Wisconsin [0]
5. Michigan
6. Kansas St. [0]
7. Michigan St. [0]
8. Alabama
9. Tennessee
10. Marshall [0]
2000
Recruitment Points
1. Florida St. (148)
2. Michigan (141) [11]
3. Florida (135)
4. Penn St. (109) [NR]
5. Notre Dame (107) [15]
6. Texas (98) [12]
7. Alabama (90) [NR]
7. Tennessee (90) [NR]
9. UCLA (65) [NR]
10. Georgia (50) [NR]
ESPN Poll
1. Oklahoma [0]
2. Miami [2]
3. Washington [0]
4. Oregon St. [0]
5. Florida St.
6. Virginia Tech [0]
7. Oregon [0]
8. Nebraska [12]
9. Kansas St. [0]
10. Florida
2001
Recruitment Points
1. Michigan (149) [20]
2. Florida St. (139) [15]
3. Texas (128)
4. Alabama (120) [NR]
5. Florida (116)
6. Notre Dame (109) [NR]
7. UCLA (105) [NR]
8. Ohio St. (60) [NR]
9. Penn St. (54) [NR]
10. Tennessee (50)
ESPN Poll
1. Miami [7]
2. Oregon [0]
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Texas
6. Oklahoma [10]
7. Nebraska [4]
8. LSU [49]
9. Colorado [8]
10. Maryland [0]
On average, the "recruitment points" top 10 only produces about 4 of the year-end top 10. This is certainly better than a random guess (with 115 teams, if you drew 10 names out of a hat, on average you'd get about one that would finish in the top 10). On the other hand, you'd do just as well projecting that next year's top 10 will be last year's, because about 4 teams out of 10 make it back.
Also, on average, 4 of the year-end top 10 teams have ZERO recruitment points, meaning that none of their previous 5 classes showed up on either Lemming's or Superprep's top 10. The most striking year was the 2000 season when 6 of the top 10 had zero recruitment points, including national champion Oklahoma. Runner-up Miami had 2 points, and the top 9 — excluding FSU — had a grand total of 14 between them.
Of the six national champions, only three have come out of the recruitment points top 10. It would have been four if I'd picked the AP poll (which made Michigan the national champ after the 1997 season), but, in any event, that's clearly better than a random result. If you picked 10 teams at random at the beginning of each year, you'd be fortunate to draw the national champion once in a six-year span.
Now, are the recruiting rankings meaningless? No, clearly not. But consider the enormous difficulties involved. Each year about 2000 high school football players get scholarships to play Division I-A football as freshmen. Most of them have never played against each other. Trying to evaluate whether a player is in the top 100 of those (i.e., top 5%) or merely the top 300 (i.e., top 15%) is a task of frightening complexity. Of necessity, times in the 40-yard dash, height, weight and strength measures go into determining whether, say, Booker is REALLY a better player than McKnight. But a good amount of that information is supplied by recruits or high school coaches, who are hardly unbiased observers. Most services had Booker rated higher than McKnight, but — as it turns out — they play in the same conference, and the coaches in that conference rated McKnight a perfect 10 and gave Booker an 8. So who's the better player? Evidently the services think more of Booker and would've given N.D. a large jump had he gone to N.D., but gave N.D. only a small bump for landing McKnight on the last day. Maybe the services will prove to be right, but there's a huge amount of subjectivity and guesswork that goes into the process. That's, of course, why you need a coach and assistants with an eye for talent and an ability to spot players who will fit into their system. Coaches who can do this can be extremely successful without ever catching the attention of the national services, and some (including you-know-who) can't win consistently even with highly regarded talent.
So, two awards. First, the Gerry Faust award for highly regarded classes and poor performance on the field goes to . . . Notre Dame, in a landslide. Never once out of the "recruiting points" top 10 — in fact, never out of the top 6 — and never once in the real top 10. The best finish ever for an N.D. team over this stretch was #15, which was essentially a mercy ranking for the team that got clobbered 41-9 by Oregon St. in the Fiasco Bowl (zero recruiting points). In truth, probably the best N.D. team over this stretch was the 1996 team which actually rolled up impressive statistics, but was a snakebit 8-3 (losing two games in overtime) and not going to a bowl. Honorable mention: Southern California. Also receiving consideration: Penn State.
Now, the "we don't need your stinking web site" award for consistently defying the recruitniks, goes to . . . (oh this pains me): Nebraska. Never once in the recruiting points top 10, only once out of the real top 10, and a national championship, a second place finish, and a berth in the national championship game in 2001. Second place tie: Oklahoma (national champions with zero points) and Kansas St. (4 times on the top 10 and never a point). Also receiving consideration: Miami, for building a team that looks like it could play in the NFL with only 7 points.
The point of this is NOT that talent doesn't matter. Talent matters a lot; it's probably 50% of the equation. But the recruiting services don't have a lock on the talent information market, and excellent talent can be ruined and good talent can be developed. N.D. has — it must be said — done the worst job of any major college program in developing its talent in the last few years.
OK, here's the 2002 "recruiting points" index. N.D. is still hanging in there at seventh. Here's to hoping we're one of the 4 that make it to the real top 10. And anybody who thinks that Miami's in trouble because the Canes didn't make this top 10, let's talk about a friendly wager.
2002
Recruiting Points
1. Texas (145)
2. Florida St. (125)
3. Alabama (117)
4. Michigan (114)
5. Ohio St. (100)
6. Florida (98)
7. Notre Dame (89)
8. UCLA (86)
9. Tennessee (77)
10.. LSU (66)
10.. Georgia (66)