Is NU draft bust U?

RedSavage

RedSavage

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Which college football program is the NFL Draft's real Bust U?
By Ryan Nanni @celebrityhottub on Apr 27, 2016, 3:42p

College football programs and their fans LOVE to argue about who's superior at producing defensive backs or tight ends or linebackers. Someone's probably arguing on Twitter right now about who really deserves the title of Long Snapper U.

But if you're going to get these titles when players have successful careers in the NFL, we need to have a title for the school that churns out the most picks that disappoint. We need to determine which program is Bust U.

To do that, I compiled the numbers on every Power 5 school's first-round picks from the 1990 NFL Draft forward, then judged them on three escalating measures of success.

  1. How many of those picks played at least four seasons in the NFL?
  2. How many were regular starters for at least three seasons?
  3. How many of the first rounders made the Pro Bowl at least once?
<---->

Nebraska isn't the worst on any of these metrics individually, but the Cornhuskers don't do well in any, either. Therefore, despite valiant efforts by Colorado, Penn State and, yeah, fine, Florida, I have no choice but to award the Huskers the title of Bust University.
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http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/4/27/11517760/nfl-draft-worst-ncaa-football-teams

I think the problem Nebraska has here is we've been getting good players but not great players. We rank fairly well in guys that have played 4+ seasons but really struggle in the category of first round picks who have started 3+ seasons and first round picks that have made a pro bowl, which are obviously your elite players. So to me, we've either not done a good enough job recruiting talent that would likely start one day in the NFL or we haven't done a good enough job developing the talent to get the players to that level, either way, that needs to change if we truly want to start winning again. Here's to hoping MR and co can get us back there!

It would be interesting to see what this list looked like, especially for NU, if it were from 2000 to present.

Side note how has Cal underachieved so much?!

 
i wonder if many of the offensive busts were because of never having a pro-style offense here at DONU to prep them for the NFL style of play?

 
I was thinking probably just by shear number's NU probably wouldn't have the most, no.

Percentage? Maybe.

Cuz NU doesn't send many to the NFL to begin with.

 
So SB Nation found three obscure draft related stats that NU is mediocre at? And they label us Draft Bust U because of it? This is the most contrived bunch of baloney I've ever seen. Typical SB Nation.
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I remember hearing discussion from the 80's and 90's about Husker players not doing well in the League and the reason often cited then was that many if not most players had reached their peak here and there wasn't much left to improve on. A kid from a smaller school or one from a school with a poor record often received less than stellar coaching and had room to improve. Not saying that is the reason lately or the last 15 years.

 
Looking at a sample size from 90s til now may skew numbers, but I could be wrong. Also, funny to see a pic of an undrafted Husker representing an analysis of First Round Draft Busts

 
I suspect there are several factors in play here. I don't have the time or inclination or perhaps the know how to research into all the date to fully and accurately consider the topic.

My initial thoughts would be:

1. Nebraska has for a large portion of the recent decades, not run a 'pro-style' offense and has therefore had many fewer NFL type receivers, TEs, QBs and RBs and linemen. This is dramatically changing under the new coaching and schemes it appears.

2. The time periods, stats and so on seem rather randomly selected or perhaps even carefully selected so as to give a desired indication. They may well have selected 4 years as a pro rather than 3 or 5 or some other period after looking at the lists, etc, finding those that may indicate Nebraska lower.

3. NFL draft picks is a measure of something but may not be a fair measure either. Maybe one should simply add up the numbers of years of NFL play by all players graduated from each school and compare the total. In other words, compare the total NFL player years. Perhaps that would be more meaningful in terms of indicating which school may be the 'best' at producing NFL football players. Then again, maybe not. Injuries, etc play a factor as well.

4. Comparing the number of players who signed contracts over the past 30 years? 40 years?, 50 years? 10 years? 5 years? All could give dramatically different lists.

 
84HuskerLaw said:
I suspect there are several factors in play here. I don't have the time or inclination or perhaps the know how to research into all the date to fully and accurately consider the topic.

My initial thoughts would be:

1. Nebraska has for a large portion of the recent decades, not run a 'pro-style' offense and has therefore had many fewer NFL type receivers, TEs, QBs and RBs and linemen. This is dramatically changing under the new coaching and schemes it appears.

2. The time periods, stats and so on seem rather randomly selected or perhaps even carefully selected so as to give a desired indication. They may well have selected 4 years as a pro rather than 3 or 5 or some other period after looking at the lists, etc, finding those that may indicate Nebraska lower.

3. NFL draft picks is a measure of something but may not be a fair measure either. Maybe one should simply add up the numbers of years of NFL play by all players graduated from each school and compare the total. In other words, compare the total NFL player years. Perhaps that would be more meaningful in terms of indicating which school may be the 'best' at producing NFL football players. Then again, maybe not. Injuries, etc play a factor as well.

4. Comparing the number of players who signed contracts over the past 30 years? 40 years?, 50 years? 10 years? 5 years? All could give dramatically different lists.
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Can always respect the tin foil hat. That angle didn't take long.

US against the WORLD

 
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TonyStalloni said:
I remember hearing discussion from the 80's and 90's about Husker players not doing well in the League and the reason often cited then was that many if not most players had reached their peak here and there wasn't much left to improve on. A kid from a smaller school or one from a school with a poor record often received less than stellar coaching and had room to improve. Not saying that is the reason lately or the last 15 years.
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It wasn't that they reached their peak. Until even the very late 90's multiple NFL franchises were laughably behind NU in training. There were dozens of stories from guys who would leave NU and go to the NFL and break down due to poor training and nutrition reaquirements compared to what their bodies were accustomed to.
Lots of guys from NU lost their legs running endless windsprints and having to do wrong freeweight reps in the pros whereas guys that did those inferior programs in college were generally fine.

Now virtually everyone does what NU was doing 15 years ago so it is less common, we just haven't been as good getting those dudes here first the past 8-10 years.

It also doesn't help that we traditionally turn out lots of runningbacks, a position notorious for a short career

 
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Dumb. How about we look at something besides first round picks? Barrett Ruud and LaVonte David are two examples of guys with great NFL careers that weren't first round.

 
Maybe its just the coaching we have had. I remember reading we had the most players in the NFL, when we were in the Big 12.

Coaching ????

GBR!!!

 
Nanni used bizarre made up metrics. If you're going to make something up (a heuristic) at least it shouldn't be lame.

Here's what would work ok (imo)

1. 3 x probowl years plus 2 x nonprobowl starter years plus non starter years (the last two converted to decimal years from game start data)

that is the total player value

2. total draft value "paid" for the school's players (something like 10 for 1's, 7 for 2's , then 4, 3, 2, 1 (there are metrics on draft position and "value")

1 above (total player value) / 2 above total draft "cost paid" for the players

Edited to say...I should have stayed out of this. Nanni is only talking about round one and I wouldn't ever do a round one only analysis by school (nor would I chose an arbitrary number of years to look back as I'd want to use different start years for schools for example Kansas State or Oregon as opposed to Notre Dame USC Alabama and Ohio State)

 
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