Is Signing More Football Recruits a Key To the SEC's Success?

Here's a stat that might be interesting to all college football fans- the SEC led all major BCS football conferences in the average number of recruits it brought in from the years of 2006 to 2010.

Does this one staggering statistic explain why the SEC is constantly one of the best, if not the best major football conference in the country?

Let's take a closer look at these numbers to get some more insight on the situation.

The overall recruiting numbers from 2006 to 2010 show that the SEC dominated other major conferences on a team by team basis due to the conference having five of their schools in the top five schools for total recruiting during this span.

Auburn led the way with a grand total of 119 recruits in the five year span, which is an average of a whopping 30 recruits per season.

Mississippi, Mississippi State, Alabama and Arkansas all followed closely behind Auburn with each averaging at least 27 recruits per year.

With all these recruits coming in for these respective SEC schools, the question now becomes does having more recruits per year help you have more successful seasons than your opponents?

The answer for this question varies depending on which school you would look at.

For example, the Auburn Tigers have gone 33-18 from 2006 to 2009, with their ridiculously high number of recruits for these years.

A prespective fan could say that by looking at those favorable numbers for Auburn, and other schools such as Alabama, who ranked fourth on the same list, that more schools should try to recruit as many players as possible each year and almost overload their team so to speak.

However, on the other side of the coin, there are schools like the University of Florida who was 47th on this same list and compiled an overall record of 48-7 during the same years. Looking at other conferences, Kansas State out of the Big 12 is ranked sixth on the list and they haven't had much success in the last four years, by posting a record of 23-26.

Another strong argument against the large recruiting numbers for each program helping them be more successful is that it doesn't affect a team's record the year they bring in the recruits as much in larger Division I football programs.

For example, at small programs and Division II schools, more teams rely on junior-college transfers each year and have more immediate impact players than conferences such as the SEC and other major conferences in college football.

So you could say that some of these recruiting numbers, as in the last couple years, still haven't affected the overall records of some of these teams due to many of the players from those classes not seeing the field yet.

Overall, the SEC has had the most success compared to other schools during this span. By examining these numbers, I determined that having more recruits has definitely helped some teams in the SEC have success, but for others, the strategy of not recruiting as many each year, such as Florida, has been just as if not more successful.

After all, in recruiting, many coaches well say that the end product they want is quality players rather than getting more recruits than anyone.