Our Class Ranking?

[Warrior10]

Saw a lot of people today express displeasure with our current class, then a read a tweet that caught my eye.

@JoshHarveyScout "Average rating of the #Huskers recruiting class is No. 25 in the nation (3.17) on @scoutrecruiting. Ahead of #Baylor, #MSU, #OU, #SC #Mizzou"

What he is talking about is the average ranking for our committed players, not our total team ranking where it takes # of commitments into count (we are ranked #37) with scout. I looked up the teams ahead of us in team rankings that we have a higher, or dang near even "average player ranking" with. Here are the results.

Right Behind: OklaSt, Tied with Wisky, UNC.

Ahead of: Arizona, Baylor, North Carolina St, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, MichSt, Virgina Tech, Penn St, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisville.

So of the 36 teams ahead of us...we have better ranked "talent" (I'm not a fan of star gazing, but some are) per recruit then 12 of those teams, and basically dead even with 3 more.

So what I am trying to say is, be careful looking at those rankings because different teams can take a different # to sway their ranking. But looking at the quality of recruit, instead of # of recruits, we aren't that far off a top 20-25 class. Combine that with our Top11-25 classes from few years and we are in the right direction.

Here are our past couple years "average".

2014- 3.17

2013- 3.31

2012- 3.00

2011- 3.35

 

[JJ Husker]

I don't get overly excited about recruiting rankings, one way or the other. I mean sure I like to see us land some of the highly ranked top recruits, especially in positions we need. Problem is lots of rankings change based on the team that signs them. It is anything but an exact science. There are no guarantees a high ranked player is going to perform any better than a walk on. I'm much more interested in player character and what our staff can get out of them once they've got that red N on their helmet. I might get pretty harsh with our coaches during the season when they offer excuses for why the players aren't getting the job done but I'm not about to go bouncing off the walls over a 20th or 40th ranked recruiting class. It's our coaches jobs to get the execution out of whoever shows up regardless if they're a two star or five star guy.

 

[Foppa]

I always think about the saying in jobs: 'It's not what you know, it's who you know.' In recruiting, if you're good at it and you know how you want your team to work, maybe it's similar. 'Don't rely on what every one else says, rely on what you want and need.' I'm not sure if Osborne operated under that mantra, but I'm not so sure he didn't always look at it that way either.

 

[NUance]

I don't get overly excited about recruiting rankings, one way or the other. I mean sure I like to see us land some of the highly ranked top recruits, especially in positions we need. Problem is lots of rankings change based on the team that signs them. It is anything but an exact science. There are no guarantees a high ranked player is going to perform any better than a walk on. I'm much more interested in player character and what our staff can get out of them once they've got that red N on their helmet. I might get pretty harsh with our coaches during the season when they offer excuses for why the players aren't getting the job done but I'm not about to go bouncing off the walls over a 20th or 40th ranked recruiting class. It's our coaches jobs to get the execution out of whoever shows up regardless if they're a two star or five star guy.

What he said. +1

 

[Landlord]

According to the average star ranking on Rivals we are 39th.

So all this tells me is that Scout is lousy. I mean it doesn't actually say that, but that's already been believed, and it just reinforces it.

Doesn't make me feel any better or worse about our class.

 

[whateveritis1224]

There are a number of guys who can end up being very good players for the team. Everything I hear about Pierson-el is he's super athletic, and can really play just about anywhere. Might be ready to take over Punt Return duties. You look at every single one of the guys we have, and there is something you can say you love about the guy.

I like what Bo has done with the program, I would like to see some improvement on the field, and I definitely don't want to see a repeat of the Iowa game. It seems that last year the focus was way too much on Bo. The tape, talking about his job, just everything. Next year needs to be focused on the players and the team as a whole.

 

[strigori]

Back to the rankings don't matter line of thinking as a feel better pill. Unfortunately, the long term has proven that the composite rankings over several years do, in fact, matter. And its the class rank, not the individual average, that is important. Two star players end up All Americans and five star players never see the field. And numbers do matter, to carry the 85 total. The CFB Matrix guy picked games strait up better than 75%, in March, for the whole season with the 5 year average composite rankings as the primary factor in the formula.

Even the defense argument is being made against teams we don't want to be. And many of those even are coming off their best seasons in program history in the last couple of years.

Yes development does matter, no one is saying it doesnt, BUT it only goes so far. It cant make a guy taller, or faster, or more athletic.

And also by this different metric in the OP, it is still only average for what this staff has done. Do the same thing, get the same results. Any way it adds up to more of the stead 9-4 diet we are now accustomed to.

 

[Count 'Bility]

Ranking of individual players are over-analyzed. They tell some of the story, but they're not the science. Class ranking are a manipulated bunch of bullsh#t. Theyre adjusted to fit agendas. Bottom line is you still have to get the guys to fit your system and get them developed to properly contribute. Not that this class is overly exciting right now, but Bo could put together the #1 class in the nation, and folks would still want him gone if he didnt win 4 straight national titles with it. That's just the atmosphere we live in right now.

 

[KJ.]

Ranking of individual players are over-analyzed. They tell some of the story, but they're not the science. Class ranking are a manipulated bunch of bullsh#t.

Giving Bo a pass on his first year (which works to his advantage in this post), he has fielded 5 teams with an average rivals recruiting ranking of 21.76. Those same 5 teams have finished their seasons with an average AP ranking of 21.80. It's crazy how well 'manipulated bullsh#t' does at predicting results!

That alone should make you concerned about our low recruiting rank this year. But what you should probably be even more concerned about is the slopes of those two graphs. Taking red minus blue:

So in the first two years looked at, our AP ranking was better than recruiting would indicate. In the last three, it's been worse. On average, it's spot on. But does that trend look good to you? Since you probably can't visualize it, here it is:

 

[MinnwiscowaSker]

Just for clarification, your recruiting number for 2009, would be an average of the five recruiting years leading up to 2009 (2005-09), correct?

 

[Mavric]

Giving Bo a pass on his first year (which works to his advantage in this post), he has fielded 5 teams with an average rivals recruiting ranking of 21.76. Those same 5 teams have finished their seasons with an average AP ranking of 21.80. It's crazy how well 'manipulated bullsh#t' does at predicting results!

Good work on the graphs. +1

A couple comments:

- That's fine to "give Bo a pass" on his first year but being has he had all of about two months on the job before NSD, I really don't even think that's worth discussing.

- You looked at one team that happened to correlate the recruiting rankings to team rankings. That is an incredibly small sample size. If you can run 30+ teams and find the same thing, then it would be interesting. In particular, try running Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, USC, Mississippi, Michigan and Miami over the same time frame and see how that works out.

 

[Junior]

Saw a lot of people today express displeasure with our current class, then a read a tweet that caught my eye.

@JoshHarveyScout "Average rating of the #Huskers recruiting class is No. 25 in the nation (3.17) on @scoutrecruiting. Ahead of #Baylor, #MSU, #OU, #SC #Mizzou"

What he is talking about is the average ranking for our committed players, not our total team ranking where it takes # of commitments into count (we are ranked #37) with scout. I looked up the teams ahead of us in team rankings that we have a higher, or dang near even "average player ranking" with. Here are the results.

Right Behind: OklaSt, Tied with Wisky, UNC.

Ahead of: Arizona, Baylor, North Carolina St, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, MichSt, Virgina Tech, Penn St, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisville.

So of the 36 teams ahead of us...we have better ranked "talent" (I'm not a fan of star gazing, but some are) per recruit then 12 of those teams, and basically dead even with 3 more.

So what I am trying to say is, be careful looking at those rankings because different teams can take a different # to sway their ranking. But looking at the quality of recruit, instead of # of recruits, we aren't that far off a top 20-25 class. Combine that with our Top11-25 classes from few years and we are in the right direction.

Here are our past couple years "average".

2014- 3.17

2013- 3.31

2012- 3.00

2011- 3.35

But average ranking of the player doesn't tell the whole story either. Recruiting is a numbers game. If a team takes more players, there is more likely to be a star within that class. Thus, a class with more players really is sometimes better.

For example, this year, according to rivals, Nebraska has 13 three star and 2 four star players. Baylor has 2 four star and 16 three star players. Yes, they also have 5 two star and 2 unrated players that bring down their average. So does the "average star ranking" tell the story here? Clearly not.

 

[Junior]

Additionally, as I mentioned, recruiting is a numbers game, as well as an odds game. Can a 2 star player become an All-American? Absolutely. Can a 5 star player be a bust? Clearly. But here is why recruiting rankings matter:

http://sports.yahoo....-214251813.html

On All-Americans, for example: If you were to go back and review the projections for the 47 players named to one of the five All-America teams officially recognized by the NCAA — American Football Coaches' Association, the Associated Press, the Football Writers of America, the Sporting News and the Walter Camp Foundation — in 2011, only seven came into college as can't-miss, five-star blue chips, the cream of the crop.

By contrast, more than twice as many of those All-Americans — 18, to be exact, more than a third of the total —were rated three stars or lower by the recruiting services. According to the gurus, the top three or four recruiting powers in the country should field more talented rosters than that by themselves, right?

Right, if your standard involves zero margin for error, in which case you may as well stop reading. Fortunately, because we've been bestowed by the American education system with the magic of basic arithmetic, we do know better. If you look more closely at the relationship between initial expectations and eventual production, there's a very good reason for the heavy distribution of lower-ranked players among the nation's best, beginning with the distribution of stars at the beginning of the process, according to Rivals' extensive databaseof signees to I-A schools over the last five years:

I would hope that two and three-star players could acquit themselves well enough to produce a large number of big names, since they account for more than 85 percent of signees nationally. Again, using the rosters of the five NCAA-recognized All-America teams, the situation changes dramatically when you look at the All-America numbers in light of those ratios:

Maybe a raw ratio of 1 in 12 — or even 1 in 10, or whatever the "adjusted" number is after accounting for the early departures, injuries and academics that these numbers make no attempt to reflect — isn't all that impressive by itself. After all, that means far more elite recruits are falling short of their star-studded birthright than are reaching it. Across the board, failure and mediocrity are the norm, but if you think of a four or five-star player as a guy who is supposed to become an All-American — and a two or three-star guy as someone who is definitely not supposed to become an All-American — then yes, the rankings frequently miss.

On the other hand, if you consider the initial grade as a kind of investment — a projection of the how likely a player is of becoming an elite contributor compared to rest of the field — well, you'd put your money with the "experts" over the chances of finding the proverbial diamond in the rough every time:

EDIT: I don't know why the pictures won't post... they are showing up in my window when I am typing. But the take home of the images is that the raw numbers of recruits who become All-Americans breaks down like this

5* - 1:12

4* - 1:32

3* - 1:133

2* - 1:1218

So yea, the odds are that a three star player isn't going to be an All-American. And this is why recruiting rankings do actually matter.

 

[sd'sker]

i agree with jj's post, but the reason i am more upset about recruiting than usual (i have never really cared about recruiting) is because that is what so many people used to defend bo. his classes are improving! it was what gave me hope that maybe we would see things turn around. now it is just another thing to be disappointed at and hard to argue that it is not just another area the coaches are under-performing at.

 

[Warrior10]

Saw a lot of people today express displeasure with our current class, then a read a tweet that caught my eye.

@JoshHarveyScout "Average rating of the #Huskers recruiting class is No. 25 in the nation (3.17) on @scoutrecruiting. Ahead of #Baylor, #MSU, #OU, #SC #Mizzou"

What he is talking about is the average ranking for our committed players, not our total team ranking where it takes # of commitments into count (we are ranked #37) with scout. I looked up the teams ahead of us in team rankings that we have a higher, or dang near even "average player ranking" with. Here are the results.

Right Behind: OklaSt, Tied with Wisky, UNC.

Ahead of: Arizona, Baylor, North Carolina St, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, MichSt, Virgina Tech, Penn St, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisville.

So of the 36 teams ahead of us...we have better ranked "talent" (I'm not a fan of star gazing, but some are) per recruit then 12 of those teams, and basically dead even with 3 more.

So what I am trying to say is, be careful looking at those rankings because different teams can take a different # to sway their ranking. But looking at the quality of recruit, instead of # of recruits, we aren't that far off a top 20-25 class. Combine that with our Top11-25 classes from few years and we are in the right direction.

Here are our past couple years "average".

2014- 3.17

2013- 3.31

2012- 3.00

2011- 3.35

But average ranking of the player doesn't tell the whole story either. Recruiting is a numbers game. If a team takes more players, there is more likely to be a star within that class. Thus, a class with more players really is sometimes better.

For example, this year, according to rivals, Nebraska has 13 three star and 2 four star players. Baylor has 2 four star and 16 three star players. Yes, they also have 5 two star and 2 unrated players that bring down their average. So does the "average star ranking" tell the story here? Clearly not.

I like the examples Junior! As far as the compared to Baylor thing, we can't just look at one years rankings to determine recruiting success. Because like you said maybe they are set up to take a larger class this year. Hell look at Tennessee, they are way up there is "team rankings" but its mainly because they have 30+ recruits.

So if we finish out with lets say 3 more 3*'s and 1 4* (feel like I am being generous with those numbers) then we'd have 16 3*'s and 3 4*s. Would we have the better class then Baylor then? (I have no clue how close Baylor is to "full" but with 25 commits they have to be close you'd think). Some real good info you posted.