Solid Analysis of Recruiting Success vs Big Ten Pecking Order

Donate To GopherHole
N

NewEngland_Gold

Member
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
616
Reaction score
0
Points
16
over at TDG.... http://www.thedailygopher.com/2009/10/6/1072577/do-recruiting-class-ratings-matter

Nice job by Buck Bravo and hammers home one key reason the Gs are in the BTs low-tier now, but might be moving well into mid-tier over the next two years.

Reinforces what many GHers have been saying about giving Brew 4-5 years to make a real "tier-changing" impact on the GG program. If TB develops into a HC that can really develop talent and operate as a high-level field general, there could actually be some big things to crow about on this board.
 

would be interesting to see how consistent this is over a period of several years. Would also be interesting to know what the weighted values he used were.
 


Schnoodler....

If you have done recruiting analysis vs BT finishes going back annually over the past five years or so...do post the results! Many would like to learn where we actually stood in the latter years of Mase's regime and just "how bare" the cupboard really was when TB arrived compared to our BT brethren.

Not to bash mindlessly Mase yet again, but to give everyone a realistic understanding of just how difficult Brew's task really is in attempting to elevate the program to mid-tier. More understanding might lead to a little more sustaining patience with the process...a process that might be supported thoughtfully by most GHers through the inevitable painful, frustrating and perhaps outright depressing setbacks possibly on the horizon in the real world of BT fb.
 

I did excactly what buck bravo did. Nothing more. I wanted to see if there was a correlation so i only looked back five years to compare against the finish last year and to project for this year. So i have nothing more to add. I think tho, that one doesn't have to exptrapolate too much too see that because Mason's classes weren't great Minn wouldn't rise if you went back further with a possible small bump. Although, some other programs might sink a little.

I do still have the data and it wouldn't be too much trouble to move back another year or two. I'll see if I can find the motivation.
 


I think they should sticky this thread so everyone can see the statistics. It would eliminate a lot of debate and make the vision that much clearer. We need to give Brewster more time.
 

interesting statistics. Although as someone who uses statistics in my job a lot, I get suspicious when you're drawing conclusions off of subjective data like Rivals stars data, with all its inherent biases. And I've yet to see a sportswriter (other than that one baseball/political whiz) who would know what a p value is if he tripped over it.

I think the data does show that Brewster has had a significant impact on recruiting, looking at the last table. And Michigan has a long tradition of underachieving, given the level of talent they get in recruiting just by virtue of being michigan. As for using this data to predict Brewster's future success, I've got two words for you. Ron Zook. Guys a master in some blue chipper's living room. On the sidelines on Saturday, not so much. I'm hoping as much as anyone Brewster continues to learn from his mistakes and doesn't go down that path (to his credit he usually doesn't make the same mistake twice). I guess that's the risk we took when Maturi decided to make the Gopher football head coaching gig an OJT position.

One other note. From that last chart we've actually out-recruited both our closest rivals the past two years. Assuming that Rivals rankings actually mean something that means there's no excuse for getting our butts whipped by either UW or Iowa at home the next two years when Brewster's first two real recruiting classes (I'm not counting 2007) are becoming juniors and seniors.
 

Unfortunately my system was based on the RR values and they don't go back beyond 2004. Which means I can only produce data for the 2007 season and later. I'd have to devise one based on stars to go back any further.

Using my system this is what I get. The values will be different as I use a different formula.

Mich--- 82.7 --- Finish --- 2t
OSU --- 82 --- Finish --- 1
PSU --- 72.6 --- Finish --- 5t
Iowa --- 59.9 --- Finish --- 5t
MST --- 59.2 --- Finish --- 7t
Wisc --- 57.3 --- Finish --- 4
Ill --- 53.1 --- Finish --- 2t
Pur --- 52.8 --- Finish --- 7t
Minn --- 44.6 --- Finish --- 11
NW --- 36.5 --- Finish --- 7t
Ind --- 32.5 --- Finish --- 7t

What of course isn't shown is the schedule difficulty. But in general one team over achieved (ill) and one under achieved MST. Otherwise within two spots of what would be expected.
 

Decent analysis and I agree with it. It just doesn't go far enough in my opinion.

I'm not here to bash Mason, but we have to be honest that he didn't recruit particularly well. On the other hand, it's hard to argue that he did not get the best out of the players he recruited. He had a consistent approach and molded players to that approach (at least on offense). But outside of running back, Mason's teams had little or no depth and he didn't appear interested in developing players behind the starters at the other skilled positions. Instead, he'd have Abdul-Khaliq and Cupito still taking snaps in the fourth quarter of a cupcake blowout, which made transition years very difficult.

Brewster is bringing in better athletes and is building depth, but his challenge, in my view, is two-fold: (1) maintaining a consistent coaching staff, which leads to (2) optimum development of talent to a system. This, in turn, should lead to the development of a consistent approach and a team "image," the lack of which was rightfully bemoaned in a thread after the Wisconsin game.

As for the subjective nature of the Rivals/Scout/ESPN star system, from what I can tell, it's largely based on "buzz." In other words, the more highly-recruited a kid is, the more stars he's going to be awarded. Subjective? Yes, but likely somewhat accurate. Of course, it needs to be noted that high school football and college football are entirely different animals and that skills do not necessarily translate in full, but football has become a sport increasingly based on raw athleticism and it's always nice to start there when recruiting.
 



I have kept a spreadsheet for the past few years very similar to this. It includes more than just the Big Ten too, but I haven't done it for every conference. All I did was list the rank within the conference that each team recruited at (according to Rivals back to 2002) and averaged the past 4 years to determine what on the field rank they should get. This doesn't include players that didn't qualify, but I didn't want to spend so much time. Then I plotted the actual on the field rank next to it. I don't have the spreadsheet here right now, but I think it predicted the Gophers to finish 7th in the Big Ten this year vs 8th last year.
It'll be nice in a few years when there is more data to sample from, but so far there are interesting trends in which teams typically outperform their rank, and which underperform. It's also interesting to see when major events like coaching changes have a big impact.
 

Good post. Agree with your comments on athleticism.

There's the old story of some kid getting a bonus star for committing to a school like USC or tOSU, or losing a star if they commit to a school like us. Aside from the ratings themselves being subjective (doing statistics on things where you get a rating of 1-5 or 1-10 is thin ice at best), there's the issue of the services like Rivals or Lemming pandering to their clientele. Its safe to say they get more subscribers from a school like Michigan, Alabama, or PSU than from our faithful. You can't tell me that this doesn't factor in to how they rank the schools. If nothing else it happens at a subconscious level. Do you PO one of your biggest blocks of subscribers by telling them they're #27 when they expect to be in the top 10 every year?
 

Mr. Wasteland, I agree that there is some measure of pandering in what Lemming and the rating services do, which in turn, plays back to the "elite" teams, at both the high school and college levels.
 

Too Long in the Wasteland said:
Good post. Agree with your comments on athleticism.

There's the old story of some kid getting a bonus star for committing to a school like USC or tOSU, or losing a star if they commit to a school like us. Aside from the ratings themselves being subjective (doing statistics on things where you get a rating of 1-5 or 1-10 is thin ice at best), there's the issue of the services like Rivals or Lemming pandering to their clientele. Its safe to say they get more subscribers from a school like Michigan, Alabama, or PSU than from our faithful. You can't tell me that this doesn't factor in to how they rank the schools. If nothing else it happens at a subconscious level. Do you PO one of your biggest blocks of subscribers by telling them they're #27 when they expect to be in the top 10 every year?
Click to expand...

This probably does happen on some level. To what degree is anyone's guess. But this effect only affects the spread between the teams not the order of their rankings. The possible exceptions are closely rated teams, which should not be looked at as one being better than another anyway. But in practicality the effect is mitigated anyway because the depth and level of talent raises the level of play of a team anyway since it's hard to exploit a weakness. While a lack of depth multiplies the lack of talent since a team can more easily be exploited.

It is a complicated thing, and certainly there are factors at play that can affect the outcome. I like to use this to see how a program or coach is doing. This only provides a baseline to judge them by.
 



This does beg the question

if anyone has compared statistically which recruiting service performs the best. Face it, they're all subjective, but which one performs the best; Rivals, Scout, ESPN? I am amazed at how different the projections are for some of the players among the services. The top guys don't vary much, but many of those other guys vary quite a bit. For example Willie Tatum, a LB verbal to us, is unranked & a 2 star on Rivals, ranked 145 & 2 star on Scout Rivals, and ranked #65 & 3 star on ESPN.

Scout & Rivals are PPV, but it seems a fair bit of info on ESPN is freely available (some PPV content though). So, using the logic of not PO'ing your subscriber base, would ESPN be a better choice to make comparisons? Or would it be best just to avg the evaluations/stars?

Just some thoughts.

Go Gophers!!
SK Gopher
 

It would be interesting to look at how the various services have done in their rankings. I could see comparing stats for the skill positions, but I don't know how you'd compare the rest. Maybe NFL draft picks?
 

If anyone is interested - I compiled some data dating back to 2002 for my own interest. I would share but it is in a word file with charts and I don't know how to upload it to the internet. If anyone is interested and is a bit more tech savvy than I could upload it.
 


You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom