Signing Day Analysis of Recruits Is a Crap Shoot

It is National Signing Day, and a lot of people are out ranking the recruiting classes that the various schools have signed up.

Did Nebraska get some help for its anemic offense?  Will TCU find some more “diamonds in the rough"?  Can Syracuse turn around their recent woeful on-field performance with a heaping helping of stud muffins?

I don’t know.  And anyone who says they do is a lyin’ dog.

Oh, I can tell you that such and such a University has recruited so many three-, four-, or five-star athletes.  But I really can’t tell you how these athletes will perform once they hit the big stage.  Or if this performance will translate into victories on the field.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

The Texas Longhorns will, as usual, have what is considered to be a great recruiting class.  A combination of tradition, extensive recruiting resources, being in a state that churns out great high school players, and winning virtually guarantees that Texas will garner another crop of studs.  But, will they pan out?

The Horns have had trouble running the ball for the past few years, and thus have concentrated on recruiting some of the highest ranked running backs coming out of high school.  But, despite this, the Horns are still having trouble running the ball.  So sometimes the players just don’t produce at the next level, even at a place like Texas where they have a great team around them. 

On the other hand, Colt McCoy and Sam Bradford, while highly recruited, were “only” rated at three stars.  Three bright and shining stars, as evidenced by their subsequent performance.

Even when recruits do perform well, sometimes it does not translate into team performance.

Notre Dame has put eleven players into the NFL since 2006.  Obviously, if you’re good enough to make an NFL roster, you’ve performed on the field.  Yet all this talent did not translate into a huge win total for the Irish in the last three years. 

How do teams recuit?

TCU has made a habit of having one of the fastest and best defenses in the country in the past decade.  Their secret?  They just recruit for speed and decent size, and then convert the guys to defense.  This past year’s mongo stud, Jerry Hughes, was a three star recruit…at running back. 

Gary Patterson has figured out a couple of things.  You can teach someone how to play another position.  You can make them bigger and stronger via weight training.  But you can’t teach raw speed.  Hence, the Frogs continue to field great teams made up of recruits who were “only” three stars or worse.

In general, however, I find the annual appraisal of this years recruiting grab bag to be much ado about nothing. 

Why?

1. The traditional powers, like Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, USC, Notre Dame, etc., will continue to garner classes of studs.   I don’t need an analysis to tell me that. 
2. There is no real way to tell which of these kids will pan out and which won’t.  They are 18.  Some will make it, some won’t.  No one can tell who.
3. Saying “he couldn’t recruit” is often a cop out for “he couldn’t coach”.  Notre Dame fans have said that both Willingham and Weis “couldn’t recruit”.  They recruited just fine, as evidenced by the number of Domers in the pros.  Couldn’t coach worth a dang, however.
4. There are plenty of surprises, both positive and negative.  LaDaniel Tomelson didn’t get a lot of attention from name programs despite great stats.  In the past, stars like Doug Flutie and Jack Ham were amongst the last offered a free ride by the schools they attended.

So the analysis of the recruits being proffered is, while interesting reading on a gray winter day, pretty much just intellectual fluffer nutter for the college football fan in the off season.

Who has the best recruiting class of 2010? 

Whoever wins the most games in 2014 and 2015, that’s who. 

And we won’t know until then.