Why recruiting matters, and the importance of signing day

[huskerhill]

 

So... You include TO in that group as someone who doesn't understand football. Interesting.

 

Thanks for bringing that up... I knew you would.

 

NO person no matter how great is great at everything.

 

TO... one of the greatest football coaches of all time... has been a disaster at hiring coaches and for our recruiting. The disaster and downfall of our great program and the hubris at the top of our program... started the day his hand picked successor was announced.

 

Frank Solich's last two recruiting classes were ranked 40th in 2002... and 42nd in 2003.

 

Here's how the recruiting for Nebraska in the big 12 looked in those two years with Frank Solich as head coach:

 

2002:

1: Texas

2: Oklahoma

3: Colorado

4: Kansas State

5: Texas A&M

6: Oklahoma State

7: Missouri

8: Iowa State

9: Nebraska

 

2003:

1: Oklahoma

2: Texas A&M

3: Oklahoma State

4: Texas

5: Colorado

6: Missouri

7: Kansas

8: Nebraska

 

Solich was a disaster for Nebraska recruiting and started the long spiral downward to where we are at now. Solich's inability to recruit was alarming to many in those days, including me.

 

Nebraska's willingness to allow Oklahoma and Texas to out recruit us was a disaster for our program. A disaster we have never recovered from.

 

Texas won the national championship in 2005 based on their great recruiting in the previous 4 years.

 

 

And the same great coach... Tom Osborne... also hand picked another coach for Nebraska... you may remember his name... Bo Pelini ring a bell ? You know... the guy who sabotaged our football program. I'll have more on him later.

 

[Moiraine]

 

 

I don't want to look one-sided so I need to say you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

 

 

You didn't understand the sbnation article ?

 

Then you are incapable of understanding football.

 

 

 

And you are incapable of understanding of statistics or what the word prediction means. Something happening 300 times in a row doesn't mean there's a 100% chance it's going to happen the 301st time. There's a huge difference between likelihood and certainty. That's why companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on statistics. You and cm are both wrong.

[cm husker]

You're still not getting it moirane.

 

The results of the last 11 years have no bearing on what will happen this year. Going back to the girls' dresses analogy, 11 girls walking by in a blue dress doesn't mean the next will definitely, or even probably, walk by in a blue dress.

 

Is there a 100% chance that

 

Again, the services are point to the fact that a team had a top X class during the 5 years prior to winning a championship. Well, we know that the services put 50% of reasonably eligible NC winners in the top 10 at some point each 4 years.

 

That hardly makes the recruiting services predictive of who will win a NC. Unless we consider a monkey throwing darts predictive too.

 

Couple that misleading statistic with the fact that they are often wildly wrong in conference championships and the top 25, and most of us see that the recruiting services are pretty useless.

[Enhance]

Couple that misleading statistic with the fact that they are often wildly wrong in conference championships and the top 25, and most of us see that the recruiting services are pretty useless.

I may have listened to someone 10-15 years ago who felt that recruiting rankings didn't mean much, but the amount time, effort and research that goes into recruiting services today dwarfs even what was being done five years ago.

 

Nobody will say that recruiting rankings are always accurate. But, the only reason any one would deny the value of recruiting rankings is because they simply refuse to believe, comprehend or accept the facts that are put in front of them. It would be ignorance and stubbornness and nothing more.

 

I suggest reading this article. http://athlonsports.com/college-football/dont-deny-climate-change-recruiting-rankings-matter

 

Some interesting tidbits.

The 2014 College Football Playoff featured three of the top four rosters according to the recruiting rankings. Based on the last five classes, Alabama had the No. 1 roster in the nation in ‘14, Florida State was No. 2 and Ohio State was No. 4 nationally. Oregon wasn’t far behind with the 14th-ranked roster in America.

 

The good folks at SB Nation — Matt Hinton and Bud Elliott — have done marvelous work breaking down the statistics as it relates to recruiting rankings. I suggest reading the articles, but the gist of their research reveals two telling and undeniable truths: 1) Teams with better recruiting classes win more games and 2) players with more stars are more likely to be drafted.

 

Elliott provides the real data. The ratios indicate that four- and five-star recruits are 995 percent more likely to be drafted in the first round than a three- or two-star prospect. Additionally, based on the 2014 NFL Draft, a five-star recruit has a 60 percent chance of getting drafted (16 of 27) and a four-star has a 20 percent opportunity (77 of 395). Meanwhile, three-star recruits have just a 5.5 percent chance (92 of 1644) and two-stars/unranked players have less than a three-percent likelihood of getting drafted (71 of 2,434).

[Moiraine]

You're still not getting it moirane.

 

The results of the last 11 years have no bearing on what will happen this year. Going back to the girls' dresses analogy, 11 girls walking by in a blue dress doesn't mean the next will definitely, or even probably, walk by in a blue dress.

 

If we assume the girls don't know each other and these are independent trials with the same probability of wearing a blue dress for each girl, then it has the memoryless property and the previous 10 blue dress wearing girls have no bearing on whether the 11th girl wears a blue dress.

 

That does not however apply to the topic at hand. We're not dealing with independently and identically distributed Bernoulli trials here.

 

"Given that the probability p is known, past outcomes provide no information about future outcomes. (If p is unknown, however, the past informs about the future indirectly, through inferences about p.)"

 

It's you (and Psycho) who are "Still not getting it."

 

You're arguing with the millions and millions of $ being spent by thousands of companies, whose decisions affect you every single day. But apparently they have no idea what they're doing and it's all going to waste because you can't use the past to get information on what might happen in the future. You should be one of their consultants.

 

I guess I'll post a little football example.

 

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=10200

[NUance]

 

There is no stat that says anything "has" to happen, anywhere. That's why they're stats. You're using a sample to make inferences on a long-run probability or population.

<snip>

 

A simple example of the fault in your argument would be the notion that because 9 girls just walked by in a red dress, the next one will be in a red dress. Or more classically, because I just flipped 10 heads in a row, the next flip will be a heads.

 

Coin flipping is stochastic. Girls in blue dresses, not so much. Carry on...

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

I've fought raw numbers and metrics most of my life, preferring heart, moxie and life's little intangibles.

 

But in the last few years the data analytics business has gone to stunning new levels in every aspect of our lives.

 

I don't doubt the algorithms anymore, but I do find them depressing.

 

fwiw, the girls in blue dresses analogy misses the point.

 

If 11 girls in blue dresses walk by, and the dresses are short and the girls are really hot, the recruit will go to Michigan.

[wanderful]

 

 

There is no stat that says anything "has" to happen, anywhere. That's why they're stats. You're using a sample to make inferences on a long-run probability or population.

<snip>

 

A simple example of the fault in your argument would be the notion that because 9 girls just walked by in a red dress, the next one will be in a red dress. Or more classically, because I just flipped 10 heads in a row, the next flip will be a heads.

 

Coin flipping is stochastic. Girls in blue dresses, not so much. Carry on...

 

 

 

Those are skirts.

[cm husker]

 

Couple that misleading statistic with the fact that they are often wildly wrong in conference championships and the top 25, and most of us see that the recruiting services are pretty useless.

I may have listened to someone 10-15 years ago who felt that recruiting rankings didn't mean much, but the amount time, effort and research that goes into recruiting services today dwarfs even what was being done five years ago.

 

Nobody will say that recruiting rankings are always accurate. But, the only reason any one would deny the value of recruiting rankings is because they simply refuse to believe, comprehend or accept the facts that are put in front of them. It would be ignorance and stubbornness and nothing more.

 

I suggest reading this article. http://athlonsports.com/college-football/dont-deny-climate-change-recruiting-rankings-matter

 

Some interesting tidbits.

The 2014 College Football Playoff featured three of the top four rosters according to the recruiting rankings. Based on the last five classes, Alabama had the No. 1 roster in the nation in ‘14, Florida State was No. 2 and Ohio State was No. 4 nationally. Oregon wasn’t far behind with the 14th-ranked roster in America.

 

The good folks at SB Nation — Matt Hinton and Bud Elliott — have done marvelous work breaking down the statistics as it relates to recruiting rankings. I suggest reading the articles, but the gist of their research reveals two telling and undeniable truths: 1) Teams with better recruiting classes win more games and 2) players with more stars are more likely to be drafted.

 

Elliott provides the real data. The ratios indicate that four- and five-star recruits are 995 percent more likely to be drafted in the first round than a three- or two-star prospect. Additionally, based on the 2014 NFL Draft, a five-star recruit has a 60 percent chance of getting drafted (16 of 27) and a four-star has a 20 percent opportunity (77 of 395). Meanwhile, three-star recruits have just a 5.5 percent chance (92 of 1644) and two-stars/unranked players have less than a three-percent likelihood of getting drafted (71 of 2,434).

 

 

 

Couple that misleading statistic with the fact that they are often wildly wrong in conference championships and the top 25, and most of us see that the recruiting services are pretty useless.

I may have listened to someone 10-15 years ago who felt that recruiting rankings didn't mean much, but the amount time, effort and research that goes into recruiting services today dwarfs even what was being done five years ago.

 

Nobody will say that recruiting rankings are always accurate. But, the only reason any one would deny the value of recruiting rankings is because they simply refuse to believe, comprehend or accept the facts that are put in front of them. It would be ignorance and stubbornness and nothing more.

 

I suggest reading this article. http://athlonsports.com/college-football/dont-deny-climate-change-recruiting-rankings-matter

 

Some interesting tidbits.

The 2014 College Football Playoff featured three of the top four rosters according to the recruiting rankings. Based on the last five classes, Alabama had the No. 1 roster in the nation in ‘14, Florida State was No. 2 and Ohio State was No. 4 nationally. Oregon wasn’t far behind with the 14th-ranked roster in America.

 

The good folks at SB Nation — Matt Hinton and Bud Elliott — have done marvelous work breaking down the statistics as it relates to recruiting rankings. I suggest reading the articles, but the gist of their research reveals two telling and undeniable truths: 1) Teams with better recruiting classes win more games and 2) players with more stars are more likely to be drafted.

 

Elliott provides the real data. The ratios indicate that four- and five-star recruits are 995 percent more likely to be drafted in the first round than a three- or two-star prospect. Additionally, based on the 2014 NFL Draft, a five-star recruit has a 60 percent chance of getting drafted (16 of 27) and a four-star has a 20 percent opportunity (77 of 395). Meanwhile, three-star recruits have just a 5.5 percent chance (92 of 1644) and two-stars/unranked players have less than a three-percent likelihood of getting drafted (71 of 2,434).

 

 

Enhance,

 

No one is saying that recruiting is unimportant. I'm simply saying that the recruiting rankings are not as consistently accurate or predictive as people are claiming.

 

The predictive value of recruiting rankings is very very limited. Not much more than if you let a reasonably informed fan make "informed guesses" each year.

 

For example, if you let, let's use Mavric, if you let Mavric choose a top 15 each year, he'll likely end up with a national champion in 4 to 5 years who had been in his top 15 once or twice or more, and he won't have spent a dime on researching and supposedly evaluating them.

 

The entire underlying fault in the system is that the recruiting industrial complex pretends that because teams with high rankings win a lot of games, the rankings are acccurate and should be followed closely. They drive up their "accuracy" numbers by including all DIA teams, even though everyone and their mothers know that only about 40 teams each year are in reasonable contention (i.e., the top 2/3 of the P5 plus ND). The reality is, the only rankings that should matter and would be interesting to evaluate would be is "how accurately are the top 2/3s ranked each year."

 

I'm not saying that the rankings are wildly off. I'm saying that they aren't predictive and that the ones that are accurate aren't that hard to gauge. It's not hard to pick the top 50 to 100 players in the country (that's predicting 1 to 4 per state). The recruiting services 25 years ago were good at that too. All one needs to look at is some raw numbers and who is recruiting the kid to make those picks. I think you could safely get to 200 or so, though it's all arbitrary after a while.

 

I'd go further and say there are all sorts of externalities around the recruiting industrial complex that are absolutely ruining CFB.

[cm husker]

 

You're still not getting it moirane.

 

The results of the last 11 years have no bearing on what will happen this year. Going back to the girls' dresses analogy, 11 girls walking by in a blue dress doesn't mean the next will definitely, or even probably, walk by in a blue dress.

 

If we assume the girls don't know each other and these are independent trials with the same probability of wearing a blue dress for each girl, then it has the memoryless property and the previous 10 blue dress wearing girls have no bearing on whether the 11th girl wears a blue dress.

 

That does not however apply to the topic at hand. We're not dealing with independently and identically distributed Bernoulli trials here.

 

"Given that the probability p is known, past outcomes provide no information about future outcomes. (If p is unknown, however, the past informs about the future indirectly, through inferences about p.)"

 

It's you (and Psycho) who are "Still not getting it."

 

You're arguing with the millions and millions of $ being spent by thousands of companies, whose decisions affect you every single day. But apparently they have no idea what they're doing and it's all going to waste because you can't use the past to get information on what might happen in the future. You should be one of their consultants.

 

I guess I'll post a little football example.

 

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=10200

 

Your wiki search aside, you're trying to apply a statistics principle that is not applicable in the world of college football recruiting rankings. You've misapplied the probability in this discussion by conflating the "P" of winning a NC with the P that the next NC winner will be comprised of X% of "elite recruits" or have X number of classes in the top 10 or 15. Your analysis would be correct if we were talking about whether Alabama will finish with another top 10 class, The probability of that is technically unknowable (unlike a coin flip), so we could look at the last 5 years and infer that Alabama will finish in the top 10 during 2017. However, that is much different than inferring that because the last X teams who won a NC had rankings of X, then the next team must have X rankings. It's an even further leap, and I think we are in agreement here, to claim that a ranking of X is a necessary condition to winning a NC.

 

To really understand if recruiting rankings are predictive of who will will a NC (or, as many people are arguing, a necessary condition of winning a NC), you don't compare the winners stats to the general population (and certainly not to the 116 teams... maybe you could do it to the top 40 teams). You look at the other teams that have top 10/top 15 classes and you see if they consistently skew higher than others. So far, none of the evidence posted shows that there isn't a wide volatility in the teams that finish between 1-15 over a four year running average.

 

If recruiting rankings were truly accurate, they would map back much more closely to who is finishing with the most wins over the next echelon down of rankings (i.e., the teams consistently ranked in the top 15 would consistently have more wins than those consistently ranked between 16-25 (or 16-40). But the numbers indicate that's not the case. What is the case is that some top performers happen to be teams that have highly ranked classes and some highly ranked classes also post very average or below average records.

 

Again, I'm not arguing that recruiting isn't important. It's vitally important. I'm arguing that the recruiting industrial complex is foisting faulty analysis upon people in an effort to bolster their own relevance. Why? Because it's a $100m industry. Calling the easy shots and then pointing to your success rate is a great way to encourage consumption.

Saying that a team needs to recruit well to be in a position to win an NC is not the same as saying that a team needs to be ranked in the top 15 of Rivals in order to be in position to win a championship. Why? Because Rivals et al. just aren't that accurate, even if they have "gotten it right" during the past 10 years (a very limited set of data).

 

P.S. your post about FGs is interesting, but even further afield from the discussion about recruiting ranking service value. That's the real problem here. People are trying to build "analytics" into everyotng, but people need to pick their head up think about the context of the analysis and the impact of that analysis.

 

For example,

 

let's assume the premise is true: To win a national championship, you really need to be finishing in the top 15 of recruiting rankings.

What does that leave the other teams to do? Fire coaches until they find ones who can recruit that type of class (according to the recruiting rankings) consistently? Cheat to recruit those types of classes? Give up on championships if they can't?

[Moiraine]

cm, I did not apply any statistics to anything. I merely showed that your coin flip/dress example is irrelevant in this discussion. And my knowledge isn't from wikipedia. I just liked the wording of that particular part and thought it made it easier to understand.

 

The probability of winning a NC is based on many factors and what happened in the past is what is used to figure out that probability. The traits of past national championship teams can be used to predict the traits that are required of future national championship teams. This is done all over the place in the real world. It's what the UNL sports analytics department does. It's what was done with the field goal data. It absolutely is applicable when it comes to recruiting and national championships.

 

I'm perfectly fine with you saying the recruiting sites aren't good indicators of NC winners but I'm tired of you saying incorrect things about statistics itself. I frankly don't give a crap whether the recruit rankings are accurate. I just don't like reading dumb things stated about statistics.

 

To your last paragraph, you (and Psycho) are stuck on musts and for sures. I don't understand why it keeps needing to be repeated but these are probabilities and they're less than 100%.

[Elf]

cm husker getting schooled on statistics. I love it.

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

 

let's assume the premise is true: To win a national championship, you really need to be finishing in the top 15 of recruiting rankings.

What does that leave the other teams to do? Fire coaches until they find ones who can recruit that type of class (according to the recruiting rankings) consistently? Cheat to recruit those types of classes? Give up on championships if they can't?

 

 

Let's assume the premise is true because it is.

 

And yes, that leaves all the other teams to compete for lesser prizes, assuming that college football continues to be a popular entertainment product and staple of the University experience, with many rewards that fall short of national or even conference championships. If firing, cheating and giving up are your options, you shouldn't be in the college football business.

 

But you could still continue to strive for excellence, to land better recruits and coaches, to enjoy your underdog upset of a national powerhouse, or celebrate the years where the stars align for a season or two. You might get lucky and you might have some fun along the way. But dynasties become dynasties because they use their power to get a disproportionate share of the best resources. Happens in politics and business, too, to no one's surprise.

 

You could also take comfort that every dynasty collapses and clever upstarts take their place all the time. It will take talent, coaching, scheme, a bit of time and a little luck, none of which disproves the premise that national championship teams are most often born from top recruiting classes.

[Husker Psycho]

What's happening here is the same thing that always happens when problems with the Nebraska football program come up.

 

A group of people here attempt the hide and sweep the problems under the rug and hope that no one will notice.

 

Of course opposing coaches and programs notice it. Urban Meyer notices it... Harbaugh notices it... Michigan States coaches noticed it. Those coaches and programs cleaned our clock this year in recruiting. Those programs are well on their way to bigger and better results from their football programs. We aren't.

 

Nebraska had a loosing season and only landed 4 elite players in this years class. Recruits noticed it too.

 

Everyone noticed it but a few people with an agenda to hide the truth and to advocate for not holding those responsible accountable.

 

The hubris and crazy lack of accountability in our football program in beyond belief.

[BigRedBuster]

What's happening here is the same thing that always happens when problems with the Nebraska football program come up.

 

A group of people here attempt the hide and sweep the problems under the rug and hope that no one will notice.

 

Of course opposing coaches and programs notice it. Urban Meyer notices it... Harbaugh notices it... Michigan States coaches noticed it. Those coaches and programs cleaned our clock this year in recruiting. Those programs are well on their way to bigger and better results from their football programs. We aren't.

 

Nebraska had a loosing season and only landed 4 elite players in this years class. Recruits noticed it too.

 

Everyone noticed it but a few people with an agenda to hide the truth and to advocate for not holding those responsible accountable.

 

The hubris and crazy lack of accountability in our football program in beyond belief.

Really???? MSU cleaned our clock in recruiting?

 

Nebraska

 

24th ranked class

21 players

.8707 average rating

218.54 class score

5th in Big Ten

Top ten recruits average .8992 (4 star)

 

MSU

 

22nd ranked class

19 players

.8852 average rating

230.67 class score

4th in Big Ten

Top 10 recruits average .9154 (4 star)

 

That's cleaning our clock?