Recruiting vs. Ranking College Football Team Performance: 2008

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Switch Years: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Caveats:

Each year's recruiting rating is an average of the rank order ratings from two major recruiting services.
The Recruiting Rating Average is weighted to give the most weight for 3rd and 4th year student-athletes, and the least for 1st year student-athletes.
The Recruiting Rating Averages are rank ordered to assign each team a Recruiting Ranting Ranking for the team's recruiting rating average.
The Post-Bowl Ranking is an average of 20+ ranking services. It is not simply the AP, Coaches, or BCS ratings.
Read the full explanation on the index page.

Updated 15 December 2008: 2008 pre-bowl rankings have now been included and the differences between those rankings and the recruiting ratings have been calculated.

The recruiting ratings on these pages are used to develop a weighted average rating for each Division I-A college football team and that average is used to rank order each team. That rank ordering can be considered an over/under for how well that team should do based strictly on how highly rated were the team's recruiting classes.

Their are a number of reasons why a team might have higher or lower expectations: perhaps a talented freshman class will see more playing time and improve the team, maybe there were a number of transfers when a team recently changes coaches, perhaps a team's schedule is especially tough or weak, maybe injuries or academic issues have set the team back, etc.

In any case, citing some hair-brained statistics to support an argument is an important part of college football discussion! :)

The ratings (from a couple of popular recruiting web sites) for each year were averaged. If ratings were missing from any of the recruiting web sites for a particular team and year that is noted (for example: 2005x1, 2004x2) in a "Missing Ratings?" column. Transfers generally aren't included. These could also significantly affect the results, depending on how many players transferred.

Because student athletes are more likely to be key contributors in their later years, the "Recruiting Rating Average" is weighted in favor of older recruiting classes. 4% weight is given to the 2008 rating average, 20% for 2007, 33% for 2006, 33% for 2005, and 10% for 2004. These percentages are based on an average of each class's depth chart participation for several teams.

These recruting rating averages were then rank ordered to assign each team a Recruiting Rating Average.

One other very important point to make is the end of season results don't mean a particular coaching staff is doing a good or bad job. There are many other possibilities:

If the coach is new to the team, he may not have the players that best match his system. Good coaches will adjust to the strengths of their team, but there may only be so much adjusting the coach can do.
If there is staff turnover, the chemistry between the players and new coaches may not mesh.
The recruiting analysts may be a little biased for or against the school.
The recruiting analysts may not be as knowledgeable as the coaching staff. (Although this reason does reflect well on the coaching staff.)
Injuries, academic problems or other misconduct may have affected the team. (However, in some of these cases, the coaches need to evaluate or plan for these possibilities.)

Two reasons to be concerned about a team are:

The team's recruiting is consistently low and the team doesn't overachieve. If this is the case, is there a good reason? For example: Are the facilities poor? Is there a limited number of majors? Is the social life lacking? These reasons can explain a lack of highly rated recruting classes, but not underachievement.
The team underachieves consistently and significantly, regardless of the recruiting rankings. This may be evidence of poor coaching if there are no other obvious causes.

Finally, these rankings may be skewed the further teams get from high-ranking classes. There is simply more room for improvement when a school has on average the 90th recruiting class. While overachievement in these cases is still commendable, high overachievement may mean a level of coaching improvement that is the same as moderate overachievement for a team that recruited better. On the other hand, a team whose high ranking closely matches its high recruiting ratings doesn't mean the coaches aren't helping their players improve. There simply isn't a way for them to get to a much better number.

Top 20 Overachieving Teams
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