An Unscientific Analysis of 2009 Recruiting

Many, if not most, who frequent BR, follow recruiting.  It seems every recruiting service, rivals, scout, ESPN et al have crowned a different team as having recruited the No. 1 class for 2009.  For the purposes of this article, I used Athlon's consensus top 100 ( http://www.athlonsports.com/college-football/12724/athlon-consensus-100 ).  The fact that only 100 recruits were considered fails to allow for the total depth of a given class and is the primary reason I titled the article as being unscientific. 

For the purposes of the article, I considered only those schools, which had a legitimate claim to have the No. 1 class, Alabama (ALA), LSU, Ohio State (OhSt), and University of Southern California (USCw). 

To reach the total for each class, I used the sum of three factors: 

AVG—The purpose of this factor is to give weight to the ranking of each recruit in a given class.  One hundred points were awarded for No. 1 rated recruit, 99 points for the No. 2 recruit and so on to one point for No. 100.  The total points for the recruits a school had was divided  the number of recruits in the top 100. 

#Players—The purpose of this factor is to show the depth of the class.  It shows the number of players each school has in the top 100.

Quartile Pts—This factor is a hybrid of the first two.  It gives value for individual rank and the number of players in the class.  Each player in the top 25 was awarded four points.  Those from 26 to 50 were awarded three points.  Those from 52 to 75 were awarded two points.  The remaining 25 were awarded one point.

School...................AVG....# Players...............Quartile Pts................Total

LSU.......................76.7...........6............................22.........................104.7

USCw....................73.7...........7............................22.........................102.7

ALA.......................64.7...........7............................23...........................94.7       

OHST....................45.4...........7............................17...........................69.4

As can be seen the most players any one team had in the top 100 was seven, which is between 1/4 and 1/3 of the total signed in an average class;  albeit the top 1/4 to 1/3 of the class.