Why recruiting matters, and the importance of signing day

[Mierin]

I don't see anyone mentioning musts. There's probability. No one is saying that the next team who wins it must have those traits. But it's wrong to say what happened does not predict what will likely happen in the future. It absolutely is a good predictor of what will happen. There was nothing wrong with any of those other examples you used. There is a high probability, based on the past 11 seasons, that the next team to win the national championship will have great recruiting and be from the southeast region of the country.

Look back at Husker Psycho's posts (and maybe others) that claim it is proven that only teams with a top ten recruiting class can win the national title. My issue is anyone claiming that no team could possibly win the title without a top ten recruiting class.

I looked back and completely agree with you that there's no guarantee. For the record I'm not arguing any of this because I give a crap about the topic. I just don't like when people say B.S. things about statistics.

There's no guarantee that only a team with amazing recruiting can win the national championship. But recruiting level is probably a good predictor for whether a team is going to win the national championship.

 

[junior4949]

Bill Snyder has gone 57-33 since he's got back in '09--~58% Ws. 1 CC, 3-6 in '05. Well, all in all, he does the best he can with 2* and 3* recruits and JUCOs.

57 wins and 33 losses computes to a winning percentage of 63.33% and 193 wins and 101 losses = 65.6%. Your math may be fuzzy.

KState was perhaps the worst division one football program in the Nation historically. Snyder made is a perennial top 35 and has had them ranked in the top 5 a handful of polls at least. He is one of the better coaches in the country and one of the top evaluators of talent and recruits. He finds many 'diamonds in the rough' and often in little towns across the plains states. You can find a good group of players on his starting units. Nebraska could instantly jump into the top twenty were we able to choose about a dozen or so of Bill's best players to add to our roster. Don't be fooled. K State play quality football and has for a long time since Snyder built that program. I dare say it is one of the 'miracle' program builds in division 1 history. In my view of course which I think would be agreed with by many.

Yeah, fixed: overall ~66% and conf. ~59%. I think Bill is a great coach and if he had the luxury of, say, a TX recruiting base, he'd surely have some Natty's under his belt. There's only so much you can do with 2 and 3* players.

How can you post something like this after completely calling Bill Snyder's coaching nothing more than hype a few responses back? Bill Snyder is one of the greatest coaches to ever coach college football. He took the worst D1 program and did something pretty remarkable. We all know what happened to KState football the first time Snyder retired. I think we can all assume that it will more than likely happen again when he retires the second time.

The only reason Snyder hasn't won a NC is because it's all but impossible to build any depth given KState's circumstances. In 2003, KState was probably the best team in the country. El Roberson goes down with injury, they struggle. KState will not win a NC because they just won't ever have the depth to do so.

 

[cornographic]

Bill Snyder has gone 57-33 since he's got back in '09--~58% Ws. 1 CC, 3-6 in '05. Well, all in all, he does the best he can with 2* and 3* recruits and JUCOs.

57 wins and 33 losses computes to a winning percentage of 63.33% and 193 wins and 101 losses = 65.6%. Your math may be fuzzy.

KState was perhaps the worst division one football program in the Nation historically. Snyder made is a perennial top 35 and has had them ranked in the top 5 a handful of polls at least. He is one of the better coaches in the country and one of the top evaluators of talent and recruits. He finds many 'diamonds in the rough' and often in little towns across the plains states. You can find a good group of players on his starting units. Nebraska could instantly jump into the top twenty were we able to choose about a dozen or so of Bill's best players to add to our roster. Don't be fooled. K State play quality football and has for a long time since Snyder built that program. I dare say it is one of the 'miracle' program builds in division 1 history. In my view of course which I think would be agreed with by many.

Yeah, fixed: overall ~66% and conf. ~59%. I think Bill is a great coach and if he had the luxury of, say, a TX recruiting base, he'd surely have some Natty's under his belt. There's only so much you can do with 2 and 3* players.

How can you post something like this after completely calling Bill Snyder's coaching nothing more than hype a few responses back? Bill Snyder is one of the greatest coaches to ever coach college football. He took the worst D1 program and did something pretty remarkable. We all know what happened to KState football the first time Snyder retired. I think we can all assume that it will more than likely happen again when he retires the second time.

The only reason Snyder hasn't won a NC is because it's all but impossible to build any depth given KState's circumstances. In 2003, KState was probably the best team in the country. El Roberson goes down with injury, they struggle. KState will not win a NC because they just won't ever have the depth to do so.

Snyder is a great coach. I wouldn't put him in the category of the greatest coaches of all time, so I don't know what the problem is. No Natty's and only a few CCs and Division Cs. You can't get great players to come to KState, so there's a limit.

Any coach that is as good or better than Snyder can repeat the relative success of Snyder @ KSU, so he is not unique in that regard. Ron Prince was not that guy, obviously.

 

[olddominionhusker]

I don't see anyone mentioning musts. There's probability. No one is saying that the next team who wins it must have those traits. But it's wrong to say what happened does not predict what will likely happen in the future. It absolutely is a good predictor of what will happen. There was nothing wrong with any of those other examples you used. There is a high probability, based on the past 11 seasons, that the next team to win the national championship will have great recruiting and be from the southeast region of the country.

Look back at Husker Psycho's posts (and maybe others) that claim it is proven that only teams with a top ten recruiting class can win the national title. My issue is anyone claiming that no team could possibly win the title without a top ten recruiting class.

I looked back and completely agree with you that there's no guarantee. For the record I'm not arguing any of this because I give a crap about the topic. I just don't like when people say B.S. things about statistics.

There's no guarantee that only a team with amazing recruiting can win the national championship. But recruiting level is probably a good predictor for whether a team is going to win the national championship.

Yep. Any time someone makes a statement based on statistics like this, there is always someone who will provide isolated examples of exceptions. Danny Woodhead!!! Tom Brady was a sixth round pick!!! They are called outliers for a reason.

If you count on being an outlier you are going to be disappointed very often.

However, I do think there are degrees of variance. By that I mean if a team with a recruiting average outside the top ten wins it it's much more likely to come from the top 25 IMO then it is a team consistently in the 30s or 40s

 

[cm husker]

You guys have it backward. The statistically faulty, or at least unsubstantiated, conclusion is that you have to be in the top X of the rankings to win an NC. That's not a sound conclusion.

The reason why the media is throwing that stat around is that they want to bolster the perception that the recruiting services (ESPN, rivals, scout, etc) are accurate and therefore fans should pay close attention to them (and funnel money into them). That's all well and good until people make the jump that if a coach isn't recruiting well according to the recruiting rankings, then he and his staff are not good recruiters. That's a faulty conclusion. And if coaches are being fired based on it, or arguments are made that they can "never get over the hump" because of it, that's wrong. And dangerous to a program if an AD is pressured into making a change based on a perceived recruiting shortfall.

The reality is that recruiting rankings are often inaccurate and it's fundamentally silly to spend much time and energy worrying about them.

I could probably pick from among top 15 to 20 programs during a decade, work the numbers (by bumping recruits) so that those picked finish in the top 10 in recruiting in my site, and then turn around and claim I'm a great prognosticator because 10 of 10 had at least one year in the top 10. But that would be a ridiculous conclusion.

really, the fundamental flaw in all of this recruitnik coverage is that it creates a perception that there's significant differences between a class rated 10th and a class rated 25th, when usually that may be a player or two.

But creating that 1-116 ranking, which consumers love, and sprinkling in "high drama" of a single singing day is a great recipe for spinning gold out of straw when all they are really "confirming" is what we all already know: recruiting is vitally important to a program's success.

I just don't believe these reporters really know how to evaluate and reward a coach who is getting the kids that work for his system best.

 

[Mierin]

There is no stat that says anything "has" to happen, anywhere. That's why they're stats. You're using a sample to make inferences on a long-run probability or population.

 

[olddominionhusker]

I just can't follow you here CM. You aren't really offering anything to substantiate that the statistics are "faulty". You can say the rankings are inaccurate or arbitrary but the fact remains teams with Top 10 classes win more NC in today's CFB landscape.

You say these stats are faulty and unsubstantiated, but they are far more substantial then anything you have offered to refute them.

And for the record I'm talking about the current landscape, not 20 years ago

 

[cm husker]

There is no stat that says anything "has" to happen, anywhere. That's why they're stats. You're using a sample to make inferences on a long-run probability or population.

let me state this another way. If I accept that 11 data points among 8 actors is sufficient to draw a conclusion, then the logical conclusions is:

If a team wins a national championship, it's likely that they had at least 1 recruiting class ranked in the top 10.

It is not purely logical to conclude:

A team won a national championship because they had at least one class ranked in the top 10 (and wouldn't have won had they failed to have a class in the top 10).

It's a subtle but important logical distinction that hinges on the necessity of the premise.

To your point of past performance dictating future results, that's irrelevant here (and actually untrue or we'd all be rich in the stock market). The past winners and their circumstances (i.e. The past data pints) have nothing to do with, and certainly don't dictate, future data points.

A simple example of the fault in your argument would be the notion that because 9 girls just walked by in a red dress, the next one will be in a red dress. Or more classically, because I just flipped 10 heads in a row, the next flip will be a heads.

 

[cm husker]

I just can't follow you here CM. You aren't really offering anything to substantiate that the statistics are "faulty". You can say the rankings are inaccurate or arbitrary but the fact remains teams with Top 10 classes win more NC in today's CFB landscape.

You say these stats are faulty and unsubstantiated, but they are far more substantial then anything you have offered to refute them.

And for the record I'm talking about the current landscape, not 20 years ago

Let me ask this another way: what do you think those stats prove?

That a top 10 class is a necessary condition to winning an NC?

Regarding the notion of shifting landscape, I'd submit that 95% of national championship winners have had what people would have thought to be top eschelon recruiting.

My whole point is that it's disengenuous for the recruitnik media to claim their rankings "matter" when in reality, for the NC, they are just calling out what we all know to be fairly common knowledge: certain programs are consistently top X% among programs in recruiting.

Point being, it's not like they are making accurate calls on the tough shots.

Another interesting stat, and I may run this, would be to check how many different teams have been in the top 10 or top 15 during a 4 year running period. If 30 top teams are represented over 4 years, it's absolutely unsurprising that 1 of them would win the NC during that time.

 

[NUance]

Who is it that wants to have *worse* recruiting? Anyone? Anyone?

:

 

[cm husker]

Just as a follow up, 19 different teams have had top 10 ranked classes since 2011. Is it really surprising that the NC winner came from one of those 19 teams when we can eliminate every non-P5 school and pretty much the entire lower third of any P5 conference from contention? That means that roughly 50% of the "eligible" teams for NC winning have had a top 10 class. The odds of one of those teams winning the NC during the past 11 seasons is pretty high.

Notably, the following teams also had multiple top 10 classes during the same span (and produced varying to mediocre results):

• Auburn (5)
• LSU (4)
• USC (4)
• Georgia (3)
• Texas A&M (2)
• Texas (2)
• Ole Miss (2)
• Tennessee (2)

Combine that with the chart about the top 25's average rankings that Mavric posted for this year, and I'm not surprised the recruitnik media wants people focusing only on the NC winner when evaluating the recruiting services relevance and accuracy.

 

[Bowfin]

but the fact remains teams with Top 10 classes win more NC in today's CFB landscape.

But are the classes the reason for success, or are the classes a result of success? When Nebraska was rolling, was it easier to get more guys with more stars?

Again, is the food great at a five star restaurant because the five stars make it so, or did the five stars come because the food was great?

 

[Husker Psycho]

Just as a follow up, 19 different teams have had top 10 ranked classes since 2011. Is it really surprising that the NC winner came from one of those 19 teams when we can eliminate every non-P5 school and pretty much the entire lower third of any P5 conference from contention? That means that roughly 50% of the "eligible" teams for NC winning have had a top 10 class. The odds of one of those teams winning the NC during the past 11 seasons is pretty high.

Notably, the following teams also had multiple top 10 classes during the same span (and produced varying to mediocre results):

• Auburn (5)
• LSU (4)
• USC (4)
• Georgia (3)
• Texas A&M (2)
• Texas (2)
• Ole Miss (2)
• Tennessee (2)

Combine that with the chart about the top 25's average rankings that Mavric posted for this year, and I'm not surprised the recruitnik media wants people focusing only on the NC winner when evaluating the recruiting services relevance and accuracy.

CM...you don't know what you're talking about... as usual.

The metric that is 100% accurate in predicting who can win a national championship is the Elite Player Ratio. As in 100% accurate.

The metric is easy to understand... obviously too easy for you to understand.

It simply works like this. You take the teams previous 4 years of recruiting and total up the number of elite (4 and 5 star players) that the team signed in the previous 4 years versus the number of average (3 stare or less)... before winning a national championship. Only teams that have recruited more than 50% elite players versus average players in the previous 4 years of recruiting have a chance to win the National Championship.

A perfect example is Alabama this year. In Alabama's previous 4 years of recruiting (2014-2013-2012-2011) Alabama signed 70 elite players (4 and 5 star) and only 29 average players (3 star or less).

So the totals for Alabama are 70 elite players versus 29 average players.

Alabama was the only team in the playoff this year that met the metric of having signed 50% or more elite players than average players.

Again... Alabama was the only team in this years playoff that had met the Elite Player Ratio and of course they won. This Metric has been 100% accurate for the last 11 years. Any team that has not met the metric has had no chance of winning a national championship for the last 11 years straight. Period

The Elite Player Ratio has Nothing whatsoever to do with recruiting class rankings. Nothing as in zero.

This metric was discovered by this writer last year: http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2014/2/18/5312840/college-football-recruiting-teams-championships



CM... please stop misinforming and confusing everyone.

 

[BigRedBuster]

but the fact remains teams with Top 10 classes win more NC in today's CFB landscape.

But are the classes the reason for success, or are the classes a result of success? When Nebraska was rolling, was it easier to get more guys with more stars?

Again, is the food great at a five star restaurant because the five stars make it so, or did the five stars come because the food was great?

It's a chicken and egg thing.

We need to now start winning games and getting to the CCG. Then, (would be nice right away) we need to start winning some of those. Throughout that, we should start getting better and better recruiting classes when recruits start seeing some success. Success builds on itself.

 

[cm husker]

Husker Psycho.

Your personal insults aside, it's clear you don't understand statistics or the relevance and accuracy of recruiting rankings (or lack thereof).

If you're confused by a nuanced discussion, that's not my fault.