Why the Big Ten West has been tough for us

knapplc

knapplc

International Man of Mystery
Really great analysis of recruiting and production by Reddit user hythloday1

Overachievers and blueblood duds: a comparison using 14 years of recruiting data vs actual performance, 2005-2018

The following chart is an expansion of a project I posted last year, comparing each team's performance to its recruiting average. Based on some feedback I got to that post and a desire to broaden the scope to all available data, this chart I believe represents the only comprehensive, long-term comparison between all FBS teams.

The starting point is each year's 24/7 composite recruiting rankings, which we have full data for each of the previous 14 cycles going back to 2005. I scraped all those rankings, then for each team calculated the rolling average for its previous five cycles, the first of which is therefore 2009. In the same timeframe (2009-2018), we also have the final Massey Composite rankings for each year. This lets us make a simple comparison between the rolling average recruiting rank and the final performance rank for each team in each year. I discovered last year that a single very good or very bad season distorts the average significantly, so since I have 10 years' worth of comparison points, I decided to drop both the most and least impressive season for each team and simply average the remaining eight.

The full chart is too unwieldy for easy viewing in a Reddit post, so the link to the complete spreadsheet with all 116 FBS teams for which data was consistently available is provided below. The "O/U -HL" column means how many ranks, on average, each team ranked on the Massey composite over or under their rolling recruiting rank for the matching season, dropping the highest and lowest scores (a positive number means overachieving). Here are the 65 current P5 teams.
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Nebraska rolls in here at #34.

But notice who is ahead of us - Wisconsin #1, Iowa #4, Northwestern #8, Minnesota at #30. All teams in our division, all of whom we've lost to at least twice since joining the Big Ten. For good measure, frequent conference opponent Michigan State is #9, and Ohio State is #15.

We're a combined 18-25 against these teams, and frankly, Ohio State is the only one we should be losing to with any kind of frequency, but we have a losing record against three of these guys, and we're tied with Northwestern (4-4). 

Our opponents have been overachieving, we've been underachieving, and by and large, that sucks.

 
Wisconsin and Iowa have good programs which have their recruiting strengths in the o-line and d-line, and less on the skill positions.

Northwestern is a program which to me doesn't change a lot from year to year, their record each year is based more on how their opponents are trending up and down.

 
Hilltop said:
This all boils down to a very simple explanation.  We have had the wrong person leading our program.  I don't care how great your recruiting rankings are (see Florida State for example) you have to have the right guy leading.
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Texas is even a better example.  They were at the top of the recruiting charts with coach that wasn't leading the program correctly.  

 
Haven't read the OP yet (I will) but this seems like a fairly straightforward answer. Our lines have pretty much sucked all the years we've been in the B1G (and for awhile before). Any team with subpar line play and strength is going to struggle against Wiscy, Iowa, Northwestern etc. I think it's way more of a player development issue and less of a recruiting issue.

 
JJ Husker said:
Haven't read the OP yet (I will) but this seems like a fairly straightforward answer. Our lines have pretty much sucked all the years we've been in the B1G (and for awhile before). Any team with subpar line play and strength is going to struggle against Wiscy, Iowa, Northwestern etc. I think it's way more of a player development issue and less of a recruiting issue.
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This is the correct answer along with the LBs who also overall haven't been good. We have been getting run over in the B10. Once we get our lines where they need to be there could be no looking back. Wisconsin, Iowa, NW, MN, Purdue, IL aren't going to get the QB and skill players that we can on a consistent basis. 

 
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Why this thread does have some merit, there is always an inherent issue in measuring recruiting rankings of NU vs. other teams in the Big Ten West.  My main thoughts are:

1.  Player rankings do get impacted by which schools offer them, and Nebraska still has a strong reputation, so guys offered and accepted by Nebraska can have a higher ranking than get offered and accepted by Northwestern, Minnesota, Illinois, and Purdue (and even Wisconsin and Iowa).

2.  Wisconsin and Iowa players tend to get skill players who are lower rated than Nebraska.  The lines are where the recruiting rankings are more even between Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska, and we have seen that those schools have been much better at developing the lines (on both offense and defense) than Nebraska.  The line play is less about talent coming out of high school and more about development and coaching.

3.  Northwestern's recruiting rankings are down near the bottom of Power 5 conferences due to their academic standards.  They are typically recruiting different players than NU is.  So, even Northwestern has a record near the middle of FBS (which a #47 ranking is) then it's going to look like they overachieve greatly.  I stated above that Northwestern typically doesn't over or under-achieve on a given year, they typically play consistent football year in and year out.  They end up with a variance of record each season more based on how their opponent's play and how the close games end up.

 
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Poor coaching and poor development. 

B1G West isn’t exactly full of trailblazers. They just mostly do the little things right.

Iowa, Wisconsin and NW have established coaches and systems. Disciplined teams, identity on both sides of the ball. Great strength and conditioning.

Minnesota and Purdue have promising up and coming coaches.

And Illinois is throwing darts. 

 
ColoradoHusk said:
I stated above that Northwestern typically doesn't over or under-achieve on a given year, they typically play consistent football year in and year out.  They end up with a variance of record each season more based on how their opponent's play and how the close games end up.
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I think his crossing out the team's best and worst season lowers NW the most as they are either a tomato can or stumbling into a 10 win season.  Otherwise the post confirms what we always believed about your division.  I found an article years ago that said Iowa had the highest ration of wins:draft picks in the power conferences (ND at the time was among the worst).

I'd love to see some data on upset potential compared to recruiting rankings. I suspect Purdue pulls off a lot of upsets ala Ohio St 2018 relative to their win total. 

 
Two of the main reasons that Wisconsin, Iowa, and Northwestern excel above their average recruiting rankings are:

1. Staying true (mainly) to the old school ground-and-pound offensive scheme.

2. Building a culture of strength & conditioning that bolsters both #1 above as well as guarding against that scheme on defense.

That's it in a nutshell. Sure there are other factors, such as obviously having pretty solid coaches that clearly teach the fundamentals and teach them well. 

But the thing is...that paradigm will never crack even Wisconsin into that upper eschelon of schools competing for national titles unless they were to start actually recruiting well above where they're at. You saw that over the last six-ish years when they'd face off against Ohio State.

Inb4 "we've sucked so hard that you can't possibly dog on Wisconsin"

 
For 90 years, (1905 to 1995) NW was the Big Ten door mat. They had one 8 win season in that span. Six 7 win seasons. 33 seasons with 2 wins or less. They have come a long way since Barnett pushed that program in the right direction. I guess Illinois and Rutgers are  taking over the 'door mat' mantle. Can we just get rid of Rutgers already?

 
cheekygeek said:
Uh, NO. The B1G new exactly what it was doing inviting Rutgers.

https://www.espn.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/2380/does-rutgers-really-bring-in-nyc-market

https://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/2017/06/its_official_rutgers_got_a_lousy_deal_from_the_big.html
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Yes, Rutgers was a very good idea, despite their lack of success on the field. That money is huge and every school needs it as we go forward with ever higher costs in recruiting, facilities, every aspect of the game. And, there are lots of B1G grads in the NYC metro.

Once they are getting a full share, they should be able to improve. I doubt they will ever be truly elite for an extended period, but there's no reason they cant compete well enough for a bowl game occasionally. And no offense intended for any RU fans reading. I like you guys and hope for better days for you all.

 
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One thing that has been often repeated and played out since we joined the B1G was the recruit rankings never came close to the on field results.....The three teams in the West in Iowa, Wisky and NW, as others have mentioned, have had a a definitive culture in place for years.  Scheme, identity, mindset etc...We've had three HC's now, I've lost track on how many schemes, how many position coaches, DC's, OC's etc......Failure to establish a culture, allowing kids to cut class, not work out etc....NU became a dumpster fire of epic proportion....

Biggest advantage we have this year is staff that is the same save Dawson.  A proven system, scheme, identity.  Frost and Co working their collective a$$es off to establish an identity.  Fast, physical, nasty.  Kids recruited for this system.  DEVELOPMENT if the kids.  A genuine S&C program.....Frost was correct when he said teams needed to take their shots when they can.  This year we see improvement across the board IMHO.  Next year we see teams start to worry about us being in the B1G.  

 
While I appreciate the time that went into this analysis, it has to be taken with a large grain of salt. The issue is that this is subtracting two sets of rankings from each other, which causes non-intuitive results. The most obvious way to see this is to consider the hypothetical of two teams: one that's the best in both recruiting and season rankings (let's call them team A) and a second that's the worst in both recruiting and season rankings (let's call them team Z). Notice that the very best possible (team A) and the very worst possible (team Z) would both have the exact same score of zero on the "O/U -HL" category and would have both ranked #19 among the above teams. There's no way for team A to over-perform (take a look at where Alabama scores) or for team Z to under-perform on this metric. Just looking at the numbers, I think a better explanation of what the metric tells us is that either the recruiting rankings or the Massey ranking or both aren't good predictors of the other.

 
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