Future All-Americans not top recruits

[kchusker_chris]

What might also be interesting, were somebody so inclined, would be to see if recruiting-class ratings (over a 2-3 year period) correlated to a team's final ranking. We all know that Mack Brown is notoriously unable to ride a top-rated recruiting class to the national championship, but in general, does having a bunch of 4/5-star (prima donnas?) translate into team success? And conversely, are 2/3 star teams doomed to fail?

And I'll continue w/ data (people hate when data doesn't correlate to their opinion)....ranking the 65 teams in the Big6 conferences by stars...Rivals came up w/ the following (this is all from one of their articles)

 

• Five-Star: Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas, USC.

• Four-Star: Arkansas, Auburn, California, Clemson, Miami, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Penn State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas A&M, UCLA, Virginia Tech.

• Three-Star: Arizona, Arizona State, Boston College, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Stanford, Texas Tech, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

• Two-Star: Baylor, Iowa, Kansas State, Kentucky, Louisville, Minnesota, N.C. State, Oregon State, Purdue, South Florida, Syracuse, Washington State.

• One-Star: Cincinnati, Connecticut, Duke, Indiana, Iowa State, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest.

 

I think you would agree that is a fairly solid assesment of a schools recruiting rankings.

 

256 games over the course of the 2010 season and you end up with this....

 

...as you know 2010 wasn't a good year for the 5* schools. Texas/Georgia had losing records with Florida, Michigan and Notre Dame barely finishing above .500. At the same time some of those middle-of the pack schools like Oklahoma State, Oregon, Stanford, and Wisconsin, Michigan State all ended highly ranked. Yet (based on star rankings) the higher ranked team still wins almost 65% of the time. (i'd bet based on this years date you'd be looking at closer to 75%)

 

A 1-star team only collectively managed a single win over a 5* team, and one win over a 4* team. (all of those teams must have pathetic coaches since the recruiting ranking don't matter).

 

[NUance]

^^ I'll bet Notre Dame skewed that data a bit. A 5* team that routinely got taken to the woodshed by lesser teams the past few years.

[Pedro Guerrero]

In the last 3 years we've lost to 2 of the 8 one star teams.

[kchusker_chris]

Let's try AP rankings....(i'm getting tired of looking this stuff up so i'll quit now).

 

 

Every single year except 2010...the top 6 rolling average (5 years) for the team ranking included the national champion. In 2010 they had a rolling average of #12. There are some outliers in there, some teams that had high team rankings that didn't finish ranked...but for the most part your top 5-10 teams are going to fall on this chart most years.

 

Those 13 schools alone have consistently produced a majority of the top five in the final polls, half of the top 10, at least half of the teams in the BCS and all of the national champions in the BCS era. only two of the top dozen recruiting powers have failed to win a BCS championship: Georgia and Michigan. Last year, Oregon was only the third team form outside of the group to even play for a BCS title, joining Virginia Tech in 1999 and Nebraska in 2001, and we might find the '01 Cornhuskers were a pretty highly regarded bunch themselves if those numbers were available

 

 

Point is, I'd rather the Huskers followed the rule than struggled to be the exception.

[I am I]

When handing out stars to schools, we were put in there at the 17th place, in the 4 star category. Interesting that has been about our ranking the past 2-4 yrs.

 

Obviously we are getting talent. It takes a special player like Ahman Green, Grant wistrom, or Tommie Frazier to put us over the top.

 

But what, I think, makes Nebraska fans generally dismiss the notion that we won't really be competitve with all the 5* schools, is that for generations we had great recruits AND something unique with our unparalleled walk on program.

Do we need Tommie Armstrong and Andrus Peat? YES.

But what we also 'like' to see is the kid from welfleet and dickens run through brick walls for 4 yrs until he gets his shot, and makes that shot count. Proving that heart, hard work, passion, and turning down smaller green pastures for the dream of wearing the N still mean something.

[FrankWheeler]

But what we also 'like' to see is the kid from welfleet and dickens run through brick walls for 4 yrs until he gets his shot, and makes that shot count. Proving that heart, hard work, passion, and turning down smaller green pastures for the dream of wearing the N still mean something.

 

Have you seen the walk-on class this year?

[I am I]

But what we also 'like' to see is the kid from welfleet and dickens run through brick walls for 4 yrs until he gets his shot, and makes that shot count. Proving that heart, hard work, passion, and turning down smaller green pastures for the dream of wearing the N still mean something.

 

Have you seen the walk-on class this year?

 

Yeah, so?

[FrankWheeler]

If that doesn't prove that the N still mean's something you've lost your mind.

[kchusker_chris]

If that doesn't prove that the N still mean's something you've lost your mind.

it means something to Nebraska kids - but at the end of the day Florida, Texas, California and Louisianna kids are the ones winning championships.

[I am I]

I know it does. I must not be expounding very well. I'm saying, "we need loads of 4 and 5 star guys. But what has made N special for so many yrs is that we supplement that with guys who are 2* in-state players...rankings be damned. They turn down UNK and s Dakota to play here. They'll bust their asses and in the 4th quarter run a FB trap right past future hall of famer Warren Sapp...rankings be damned"

 

Of course we need top talent, but one reason some Husker fans dismiss them is because theyll take a kid with guts over the guy with stars (or so they profess). IOW, we're saying the same thing

[zoogs]

"A glance at this year's American Football Coaches Association's first team shows that two-thirds of the first-team players were not among Rivals.com's Top 100 coming out of high school."

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this has been covered extensively in the other posts, so just to reiterate:

 

1/3 of first-team players were on the Top 100 => ~33%

2/3 of first team players were part of the other, let's say 2500 rated players in the country => ~2-3%

 

In the end, the top programs all need fantastic players and top recruits. Only very rare exceptions to this. But for these top teams, the difference is not necessarily what they get out of those 5-star guys. It's what they get out of the rest of the group, the unheralded and the overlooked.

[KJ.]

The thing is, a given highly ranked recruit is more *likely* to develop into an All American than a particular lower ranked recruit at the same position. But a lot of things can happen to derail a recruit's career--injuries, drugs, drinking, girls, grades, laziness, and an assortment of other distractions. If nothing ever happened to players to derail their careers, and they were allowed to develop into their full potential, then stars would be a better predicter than they are. But sh#t happens. That's why predicting the future is a very difficult thing to do.

On an individual basis. But who really cares about that? There's 85 guys on a football team, and if you know all the probabilities based on the stars, you can probably predict how many all americans the team will have pretty well.

 

I am not exactly sure what your point is. But looking at the graphic in kchusker_chris’s post above, if we recruit a 5* guy he has a 1/13 chance of becoming an All American. A 4* guy has a 1/53 chance. And a 3* guy has a 1/172 chance. Sure, you could use those odds to figure out how many guys on the team should eventually become All Americans. Since we don’t care about individuals or anything.

 

But the OP’s post is correct also: two-thirds of the first-team All Americans were not among Rivals.com's Top 100 when they were recruited. This is mostly because the pool of 3* players (4,982) is so much larger than the pool of 4* players (1805) or 5* players (171). But it's also because evaluating talent, projecting a guy's improvement, and predicting whether he will shoot himself in the foot and derail his career are difficult things to do. In other words, predicting the future is a difficult thing to do.

My point was just that predicting the future can be an easy thing to do. It just depends what you're trying to predict. Example:

 

"Dorial Green-Beckham will be an All-American one day" = Hard to predict

"One of the top 13 will be an All-American one day" = Easy to predict

 

Which means evaluating the ability of a team in the future is easy to predict. When evaluating a team, you don't really care who the contributors are...you just care how many there are and how good they are. Look at 85 guys, sort them by star ranking, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what their overall output will be in the future (i.e., wins). What you can't predict is which specific player will be the best, but that's not the question we're really interested in answering anyway.

[Joe_5700]

Even if Nebraska got every single recruit that they had their eye on, it would not guarantee a NC. I would rather have a few blue chip guys and mostly 3 and 4 star guys that had team chemistry any day.

[kchusker_chris]

Even if Nebraska got every single recruit that they had their eye on, it would not guarantee a NC. I would rather have a few blue chip guys and mostly 3 and 4 star guys that had team chemistry any day.

And you would likely get a 9 win season. That's good enough for most. There will never be any "guarentees" when it comes to recruiting. That's the argument 99% of the star haters put forth. "Just because he's a 5 star doesn't guarentee he'll be an all-american". The thing is, no one is claiming that. Just like no one ever claims that 3* won't be any good. Recruiting (and the rankings) is about potential. It's about increasing your odds. If nebraska got every single recruit they had their eye on...they would have FAR more potential, and MUCH higher odds to win an NC than a team of 3*'s with great chemistry. Every bit of data proves that. Doesn't guarentee it, just gives you a better chance.

[junior4949]

I know it does. I must not be expounding very well. I'm saying, "we need loads of 4 and 5 star guys. But what has made N special for so many yrs is that we supplement that with guys who are 2* in-state players...rankings be damned. They turn down UNK and s Dakota to play here. They'll bust their asses and in the 4th quarter run a FB trap right past future hall of famer Warren Sapp...rankings be damned"

 

Of course we need top talent, but one reason some Husker fans dismiss them is because theyll take a kid with guts over the guy with stars (or so they profess). IOW, we're saying the same thing

 

I'm guessing those days are over. They are over because college costs have skyrocketed. College tuition has inflated at a significantly higher percentage than normal economic inflation. The kids and their parents can't afford to go to NU and walk-on giving up a full ride scholly to a smaller school. Put yourself in a parents shoe. Would you wish thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt upon your son in student loans just to have bragging rights that he's on the Husker team? I'd venture to guess more and more of the instate kids are telling Bo and crew give me a scholly or I'm taking the full ride to UNK, Chadron State, etc.