Ranking College Football's Rosters for 2020 (Minnesota: 9th in BT; 43rd nationally)

[BleedGopher]

per Athlon:

Recruiting is the foundation for winning national championships, competing for CFB Playoff berths or performing at a high level in college football. While recruiting rankings aren’t 100 percent accurate, there is plenty of truth in the rankings and evaluations by the experts. Additionally, with advances in technology to watch more prospects, along with more offseason camps, the rankings for prospects and classes as a whole are more accurate than they were just a few years ago. Since the start of the CFB Playoff era, all six champions have come from teams ranked inside of the top five in overall roster talent. It’s no secret what a program needs in order to win big at this level. Great coaching, support staffs, state-of-the-art training facilities and luck certainly helps, but talent on the roster (and player development) provides a significant head start in the race to win it all each season.

Just how important are recruiting rankings and the overall talent evaluation? Alabama (No. 1) has won five national championships since 2009. Additionally, the Crimson Tide, LSU, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State - the top five teams in this metric - have all played for or won a national title in the CFB Playoff era. Three teams from the SEC rank inside of the top four for 2020, with Ohio State (No. 3) and Clemson (No. 5) rounding out the top five.

Below are the national recruiting ranking averages for the Power 5 schools, Notre Dame and BYU over the last five classes according to 247Sports Team Composite rankings and each team's record over the last five seasons. Obviously, this doesn't take into account attrition. However, with a five-year window in place, this should be considered relatively even across the conference.

Ranking College Football's Rosters for 2020

Recruiting is the foundation for winning national championships, competing for CFB Playoff berths or performing at a high level in college football. While

athlonsports.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[Pete smith]

Wait till the NCAA changes the transfer rule to allow immediate eligibility to anyone transferring one time in their college career. Will create parity so that the OState and Alabama’s of this world won’t be able to stockpile players. Then we can talk rosters. PJ Fleck is the worst nightmare for the top rated teams.

 

[Plato]

per Athlon:

Recruiting is the foundation for winning national championships, competing for CFB Playoff berths or performing at a high level in college football. While recruiting rankings aren’t 100 percent accurate, there is plenty of truth in the rankings and evaluations by the experts. Additionally, with advances in technology to watch more prospects, along with more offseason camps, the rankings for prospects and classes as a whole are more accurate than they were just a few years ago. Since the start of the CFB Playoff era, all six champions have come from teams ranked inside of the top five in overall roster talent. It’s no secret what a program needs in order to win big at this level. Great coaching, support staffs, state-of-the-art training facilities and luck certainly helps, but talent on the roster (and player development) provides a significant head start in the race to win it all each season.

Just how important are recruiting rankings and the overall talent evaluation? Alabama (No. 1) has won five national championships since 2009. Additionally, the Crimson Tide, LSU, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State - the top five teams in this metric - have all played for or won a national title in the CFB Playoff era. Three teams from the SEC rank inside of the top four for 2020, with Ohio State (No. 3) and Clemson (No. 5) rounding out the top five.

Below are the national recruiting ranking averages for the Power 5 schools, Notre Dame and BYU over the last five classes according to 247Sports Team Composite rankings and each team's record over the last five seasons. Obviously, this doesn't take into account attrition. However, with a five-year window in place, this should be considered relatively even across the conference.

Ranking College Football's Rosters for 2020

Recruiting is the foundation for winning national championships, competing for CFB Playoff berths or performing at a high level in college football. While

athlonsports.com

Go Gophers!!

I must have missed ND and BYU in the final four this year.

 

[noamfromm]

I must have missed ND and BYU in the final four this year.

quite the perspicacious post

 

[KillmeNow]

I conclude 2 things looking at the recruiting rankings, imo, recruiting rankings really DO NOT mean much until you get up into the Top 5-10. Far more important seems to be coaching as far as I can tell. For example, Wisconsin, Iowa & Minnesota all perform much better than their rankings indicate they should, while teams like Nebraska, Texas, Florida St and Texas A&M perform well below how their recruiting rankings indicate they should. And even when you get up into the Top 5-10, I think that Clemson under Dabo outperformed how it's recruiting rankings indicated it should have, and Bama, honestly, has arguably underperformed, along with possibly Michigan, so to me it seems that coaching is the only factor that truly matters, because the very best coaches end up bringing in the best recruits/players and do the most towards developing them and getting them to play together as a team.

The other thing I noticed is...
If you look at the average rankings of the recruiting classes for the last 5 years, compared to just the last 3 years, shows that 5 of the B1G East schools average rankings would drop while 5 of the B1G West school's rankings would rise, and NW's would stay basically the same though technically would rise slightly. The Illini's would drop only because their 2020 class was ranked horribly.

If you can believe it, UW/IA/Mn/Neb/Purd are all closing the gap recruiting wise with OSU and Michigan, keeping ahead of Indiana and widening the gap between MSU, Maryland & Rutgers who are all dropping in the recruiting rankings.


The biggest movers are Purdue whose last 3 yr average being 16 places better than it's 5 yr average, and Minnesota's whose 3 yr average is 6 places better than it's 5 yr average, with Wisconsin's 3 yr average being 4.2 places better than it's 5 yr average and Iowa's 2.2 places better than it's 5 yr average. Now this is also significant because last week I did an analysis of the UW/Iowa/UMn/Neb's recruiting rankings movement going back 9 years and found the same pattern just continuing steadily back. So the B1G West has been closing the gap on the East for awhile now, slowly, but surely. And is it any wonder, with Purdue paying so much for their coach and the Gophers bringing in Fleck, if Frost has a similar bump in on field performance in his 3rd year similar to Fleck, combined with Iowa & NW having stability with their coaches and UW seemingly making a smooth transition to their new coach, the West should be able to almost dominate the East, with OSU being an exception, at least for now. But no longer will it be the Big 4 of the East and the little 5 of the West. MSU's situation might not get any better any time soon, and as long as Harbaugh is in Michigan and Michigan's recruiting keeps slipping while UW/Iowa/Mn/Neb/Purd keep rising and Fitz stays at NW, the West should make up the vast majority of the B1G's bowl bids going forward.

 

[Plato]

Making serious judgements based on data that is math malpractice brings to mind the old saying about data generated by early computers "garbage in and garbage out".
But Kill has a hobby to make the long doldrums of winter go faster and that is a good thing for him. I just hope he doesn't bet the mortgage money on his assumptions.

 

[Gophergrandpa]

Making serious judgements based on data that is math malpractice brings to mind the old saying about data generated by early computers "garbage in and garbage out".
But Kill has a hobby to make the long doldrums of winter go faster and that is a good thing for him. I just hope he doesn't bet the mortgage money on his assumptions.

“Math malpractice” conveys my feelings about the granular aspect of 247 ratings. Giving a kid a grade that appears to differentiate out to the fourth position to the right of the decimal point is pretty ludicrous. The five star kids are five stars for good reason, essentially freakish athletic ability and physical dominance at a young age. If you get a lot of five star or high four star kids, your program should dominate year in and year out. But, as you dip below the clear set of truly exceptional athletes, to think one player will have a better five year playing career than another because their relative rankings (based on a limited data set) are, say, 0.8654 vs. 0.8576, when the formula for these ratings is opaque, is putting too much faith in numbers that have a substantial “unreliable” factor going in. Over the long haul, with good strength training and coaching, and even some mental health counseling (Fleck is a leader in this regard), similar ratings based instead on college performance and player maturation would change, in some cases dramatically. Plus, the pre-college rankings, I believe, don’t account for football IQ, coach-ability, character, desire, etc., which, IMHO, is one possible factor in why Nebraska gets higher rated classes than WI/IA/MN every single year, but has trouble competing with those programs. Whew! That’s a lot of speculation for one post, but I had a lot of coffee this morning.