Recruiting Ratings Don't Give Non-BCS Schools Enough Credit

Recruiting ratings don't matter much, just like preseason polls, but a lot of people pay money to see them and the related information. The ratings also can help to show if a coaching staff is moving in the right direction, but that link is tenuous as we will see from some of the points below. 

In any case citing some strange statistics for or against a certain team is a long-standing tradition in college football arguments.

After conducting an analysis of recruiting ratings and comparing them to each team's pre-bowl game rankings, non-BCS schools (particularly those from the Mountain West and Mid Atlantic Conferences) outperformed other schools. 

Teams may outperform their recruiting rankings because they are better judges of talent, they don't get enough credit for selecting student athletes or they are better at coaching players up among other reasons.

The top 20 overachievers and bottom five under performers are noted below, but the full results can be found at Recruiting Vs. Ranking College Football Team Performance

These results where 11 of 20 teams are not in BCS conferences show that the recruiting rating services seem to put too much emphasis on which schools have "offered" a particular recruit when considering that recruit's talent.  There are several reasons (besides talent) for why a recruit may not get offers from major programs:

• Some recruits may decide early and not get attention from other programs.
• Some recruits may stay under the radar, even in this information age.
• Some recruits may have academic or character issues that make them less likely to get scholarship offers, especially when coaches need to consider the NCAA's academic progress report system.
• Some programs don't have the prestige they once had. Recruiting services need to consider this when determining a student athlete's "rating."

That said, the recruiting services can't evaluate a couple thousand recruits to the same degree as most schools.  They have to rely on which schools are giving a recruit a scholarship offer because combined the schools have many more times the number of people evaluating the student athletes.

But the recruiting services need to give more credit to programs that are outside the past few year's top 20.

With that out of the way, there are other possible reasons why some programs overachieved:

• The team might have had one particularly good recruiting class that is relied on more than the others, but counts the same as for other years.  (In the methodology, a junior class counts more than a sophomore or freshman class, but each school's junior class has the same weight in each school's average.)
• The team might have had fewer injuries, transfers or academically ineligible players than others.
• The team may use a unique offensive or defensive system that allows them to compensate for marginal players in some spots.
• The coaches may be much better than average at making adjustments, clock management, etc.
• The coaching staff may be particularly effective in coaching up talent.
• The coaching staff might be a better judge of talent.

Also, keep in mind that a team that consistently has highly rated classes, can't overachieve much because there it can't go much higher.

Top Overachievers

1. Navy
2. Air Force
3. Ball State
4. Cincinnati
5. Boise State
6. Buffalo
7. Utah
8. (tie) Rice
8. (tie) TCU
10. Western Michigan
11. Central Michigan
12. Nevada
13. Brigham Young
14. Georgia Tech
15. Tulsa
16. Northwestern
17. (tie) East Carolina
17. (tie) Florida Atlantic
17. (tie) Wake Forest
20. Northern Illinois

Under-performers (Worst performers first)

While it is naive to believe a team's lack of success can be summed up in just a sentence or two, since it works for the news reporting on the stock market, here goes:

1. Michigan

A new coach with a new system and rumors that many players didn't buy into the system or the coach.

2. Washington

A coach who was seen as a good recruiter, but many felt he couldn't do much with that talent.

3. Texas A&M

Another new head coach, but in this case one who hadn't coached in college for over 10 years.

4. Auburn

A team that brought in a new offensive coordinator to run the spread offense, but when the offense sputtered early the coach was fired part-way into the season.

5. (tie) Washington State

Injuries made another first-year head coach's job difficult.

5. (tie) UCLA

Another new coach trying to turn around a program.  Maybe they had to take a step back to take two steps forward, but time will tell.

Methodology

The ratings (from a couple of popular recruiting web sites) for each year were averaged. 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 percent weight is given to the 2008 rating average, 20 percent for 2007, 33 percent for 2006, 33 percent for 2005, and 10% for 2004. These percentages are based on an average of each class's depth chart participation for several teams.

These recruiting rating averages were then rank ordered to assign each team a Recruiting Rating Average so that each team was given a ranking from one to 120.  These rankings were compared to the team's average ranking based on a number of polls and computer results. 

The recruiting ranking average for each team was subtracted from the ranking that the team earned based on the team's games played.  The higher the number, the more the team overachieved.