Football recruiting analysis

psychlone99 · 02-08-2008, 05:18 PM

I sat down during my afternoon off to take an objective look at 3 recent recruiting classes. I wanted to compare, for the sake of discussion, Chizik's first full class (2008) to McCarney's last 2 full classes (2005 & 2006). I decided to exclude the 2007 class from my analysis as it was somewhat of a hybrid, which is difficult to analyze. I was hoping to include a few more classes for a stronger sample, but the work was daunting and I have plans this evening!

Before I explain my process, I want to preface my findings by saying this was not done to tear down one coach and build up another. As I said, I just wanted to take an objective look at the numbers and see how things shake out.

What I did was look at the total number of commits from each class, the total offers EXCLUDING IOWA STATE, and the total BCS offers EXCLUDING IOWA STATE. I then calculated the average offers per commit and the average BCS offers per commit.

Keep in mind that this is entirely based on the Rivals database, which isn't perfect. An example from this year is Ruempolhamer who, according to Chizik, had late offers from Nebraska and Texas Tech. These offers are not listed in the database, but for the sake of consistency I used Rivals data only.

Here's what I found:

2005 Class
Average offers/commitment: 2.04
Avg BCS offers/commitment: 0.96

2006 Class
Average offers/commitment: 2.03
Avg BCS offers/commitment: 1.17

2007 Class (excluded)

2008 Class
Average offers/commitment: 2.43
Avg BCS offers/commitment: 1.65

Again, keep in mind that these averages do NOT include Iowa State. I checked, double-checked, and triple-checked my counts, so I'm confident they are correct based on the Rivals database.

Without adding too much in the way of commentary, I will simply say that I think this shows a strong start to the Chizik era. Mix in an improvement in player retention, and I think we're heading in the right direction.

cymonat · 02-08-2008, 05:30 PM

Have you already quadrupled your rep with this thread?

psychlone99 · 02-08-2008, 05:33 PM

Originally Posted by cymonat

Have you already quadrupled your rep with this thread?

No idea. I don't post here often, but I've been visiting here occasionally since this site was started.

cymonat · 02-08-2008, 06:05 PM

Pretty sure when I first looked at this, your rep was around 20K. Not that it matters, just kind of interesting to me.

lennon3 · 02-08-2008, 06:08 PM

I posted the exact same thing last year comparing Chizik's first class compared to the last two by D-mac, and there was a very noticeable difference in offers by BCS schools!

CYCLONE STATE · 02-08-2008, 06:22 PM

Looks very encouraging. Nice work.

jumbopackage · 02-08-2008, 06:56 PM

Those numbers don't really mean anything without comparative data from other teams. What does Nebraska look like? Colorado? Texas? Oklahoma? Missouri?

I mean if the average is still something like 5 or 6 for other schools, a very very minor improvement isn't really saying much.

And, again, there are a ton of assumptions made when you're using rivals data. Some schools are better represented in rivals than others.

That being said, I do feel this is a better class than DMac's last few.

ultracreative · 02-08-2008, 07:06 PM

Originally Posted by jumbopackage

Those numbers don't really mean anything without comparative data from other teams. What does Nebraska look like? Colorado? Texas? Oklahoma? Missouri?

I mean if the average is still something like 5 or 6 for other schools, a very very minor improvement isn't really saying much.

And, again, there are a ton of assumptions made when you're using rivals data. Some schools are better represented in rivals than others.

That being said, I do feel this is a better class than DMac's last few.

F other schools, we're talkin' about ISU baby!

jumbopackage · 02-08-2008, 09:27 PM

Originally Posted by ultracreative

F other schools, we're talkin' about ISU baby!

Yes, but you don't know how big of a change it is. 50% off of a 2 dollar item is only 1 dollar. That's the same as 1% off of a 100 dollar item.

ripvdub · 02-08-2008, 09:38 PM

It means were getting better players. Couple that with a better coaching staff and weight trainer... and we win more games. We dont need to concern ourselves with what other teams are doing, its more important we get better.

Wesley · 02-08-2008, 09:41 PM

Or recruiting is getting tougher with more competitive offers than ever.

singsing · 02-08-2008, 11:31 PM

Gotta love the way we're making headway in Florida.

psychlone99 · 02-09-2008, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by jumbopackage

And, again, there are a ton of assumptions made when you're using rivals data. Some schools are better represented in rivals than others.

Some schools may be better represented when it comes to star ratings, but this analysis had nothing to do with stars. This is all about confirmed offers, which is pretty solid information in the Rivals database. It's not perfect- there may be some offers missing- but it's extremely accurate in most cases.

Regardless, there's no real way to manipulate the data. A recruit either has an offer from a school or he doesn't, and I think offers is a probably the most objective tool for judging a recruit. Do you learn more about a recruit by seeing that he is a 2-star? Or do you learn more by seeing that he was offered by Iowa State, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, and Kentucky? (Jeremiah Schwartz)

jumbopackage · 02-09-2008, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by psychlone99

Some schools may be better represented when it comes to star ratings, but this analysis had nothing to do with stars. This is all about confirmed offers, which is pretty solid information in the Rivals database. It's not perfect- there may be some offers missing- but it's extremely accurate in most cases.

Regardless, there's no real way to manipulate the data. A recruit either has an offer from a school or he doesn't, and I think offers is a probably the most objective tool for judging a recruit. Do you learn more about a recruit by seeing that he is a 2-star? Or do you learn more by seeing that he was offered by Iowa State, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, and Kentucky? (Jeremiah Schwartz)

No, confirmed offers are NOT reliable, since schools can't disclose that information. While it may be fairly accurate, you can't guarantee that, because nobody really knows for sure except the schools that offer, and it's an NCAA violation for them to tell you that.

On top of that, offers isn't necessarily a reliable indicator, since a guy might or might not be offered by a school based on the needs and desires of that school. We aren't going to be offering a bunch of QBs because we've already got enough in the pipeline.

And it DOESN'T mean we are getting "better" players based solely on how many guys have offers. Just like stars, a million offers doesn't make a guy a better player, just a more popular one. Also, it does matter what everyone else is doing in our conference, because we can be an awesome team, but we won't win any more games if everyone else gets better at the same rate we are.

My main point is that you don't know how much of an increase .4 or .6 is without comparing it to other schools who are at the tier we wish to reach. If the "average" for top 25 teams is 10 offers/kid, .4 probably isn't statistically significant, especially given the accuracy of the data.

At the end of the day, it's totally pointless in the first place, since all that matters is how they perform once they are in the program.

isugcs · 02-09-2008, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by jumbopackage

No, confirmed offers are NOT reliable, since schools can't disclose that information. While it may be fairly accurate, you can't guarantee that, because nobody really knows for sure except the schools that offer, and it's an NCAA violation for them to tell you that.

On top of that, offers isn't necessarily a reliable indicator, since a guy might or might not be offered by a school based on the needs and desires of that school. We aren't going to be offering a bunch of QBs because we've already got enough in the pipeline.

And it DOESN'T mean we are getting "better" players based solely on how many guys have offers. Just like stars, a million offers doesn't make a guy a better player, just a more popular one. Also, it does matter what everyone else is doing in our conference, because we can be an awesome team, but we won't win any more games if everyone else gets better at the same rate we are.

My main point is that you don't know how much of an increase .4 or .6 is without comparing it to other schools who are at the tier we wish to reach. If the "average" for top 25 teams is 10 offers/kid, .4 probably isn't statistically significant, especially given the accuracy of the data.

At the end of the day, it's totally pointless in the first place, since all that matters is how they perform once they are in the program.

I disagree with most everything you just said simply because there's no perfect way to analyze a class before they hit the field. That said, this is a pretty good analysis.

A comparison to other schools would be useful, in that it would be a good indication of a "offer inflation rate", of sorts, year over year. However, an increase is an increase and that's a trend. The trend is positive that indicates we're getting better and I think the results reflect that.

I like the use of this data because an offer indicates that a school feels confident enough in the ability of the player that they would rather have that guy on the team, as much or more so than someone else. You make a valid point if it is true that schools cannot release information about who they offer, however, it would be awfully ballzy for a recruit (or recruiting service) to claim an offer from a school when in fact they do not. If anything offers are probably under reported. That's my opinion.