Does a Highly Ranked Recruiting Class Translate To Success On The Field?

Recruiting rankings have taken on a life of their own. People proclaim a recruiting championship based on having the No. 1-rated class by any of the evaluating services and web sites. Fans even proclaim future National Championships because of highly-rated classes.

Is there relevance to these rankings? Yes and no.

Let’s take a look at the class of 2005, which would be the senior class that just finished the 2008 season.

According to Scout.com, the top-10 classes belonged to:

1. Tennessee

2. Michigan

3. Florida State

4. Georgia

5. Oklahoma

6. USC

7. Ohio State

8. Iowa

9. Cal

10. Nebraska

The top 10 teams in the AP ranking of 2008 were:

1. Florida

2. Utah

3. USC

4. Texas

5. Oklahoma

6. Alabama

7. TCU

8. Penn State

9. Ohio State

10. Oregon

That’s only an overlap of three teams in USC, Oklahoma and Ohio State.

How did the other recruiting classes finish? Both Tennessee and Michigan finished below .500, with Michigan having their worst season in many years.

Georgia, Florida State, and Iowa finished in the top-25, and Cal and Nebraska both had winning seasons as well, including bowl victories.

So, where did the 2008 top-10 finish in recruiting back in 2005?

Florida was actually No. 11 on the recruiting ranking, while Texas and Alabama were top-20 teams. Penn State and Oregon were top-30. TCU was ranked 63rd and Utah was ranked 71st for their recruiting efforts that year.

What’s the lesson here?

A highly-ranked recruiting class (look at Tennessee and Michigan) does not always translate to success. Even more, low-ranked recruiting classes (Utah and TCU) do not always mean that teams can't have great success.