Linked from Deadspin: http://regressing.deadspin.com/char...ource=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
Kind of interesting.
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Recruitment Rankings vs. On Field Success
- Thread starter TimmyDUBs
- Start date
Linked from Deadspin: http://regressing.deadspin.com/char...ource=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
Kind of interesting.
depressing validation of our general evaluations of both our recruiting and coaching since 2005. The nice thing is that even average coaching is going to do a whole lot for us.
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It also looks like there's something off. P5 schools are under-represented on the "better on the field" side of the line.
Maybe the recruiting services over-rate P5 recruiting classes.
Maybe the ranking system under-rates the SOS of P5 programs.
Probably a combination of the two.
Take CU for example. If we took our same recruiting classes and played in the Sun Belt, Buffs would have been winning 8+ games a year during our recent struggles. Our exact same recruiting classes would have been ranked lower, though. But our power ranking would have been higher. That would have not meant that Hawkins and Embree were worse recruiters and better coaches, but I think this analysis would have painted them that way.
FlatironsBuff
Well-Known Member
Isn't that the hope we have, that MM will coach up the under-utilized talent we have, and use that to leverage into better talent? Seems to be working so far. Just a longer process that most hoped for.
Nik - its not wins against competition hey are looking at it is team rank in a similar fashion to the BCS so some of that is off-set for-instance an 8-3 sunbelt team wouldn't register you'd have to be Boise or NIU good to get recognized. I agree it doesn't eliminate the bias but it reduces it significantly beyond what your asserting.
Disagree but the article says it, there are out-liers like: Snyder, Boise, Wiscy, Stanford, TCU, Cincy and on on the up side. On the Down look at schools like Tenn/Cal/Memhis/us. We should be somewhere in the 60-80 range with how we've recruited ye we manged to touch the 100+ range, Cal and Tenn have pulled repeated top 25 classes of late and cant even finish .500
The combination of inflated recruits that shouldn't have had the rating they did, attrition issues, plus bad coaching all pretty much make it look like we recruited well yet never played well. I'd say we both recruited horribly and had horrible coaching, and I doubt that is a controversial statement....
I'm not bored enough to do it but if you fit the data, you'd find that the line in the middle is probably pretty dead on. I doubt there are many programs that fall outside 2 standard deviations (there are some, of course).
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gone native
Club Member
Welcome to statistics 101. In a normal distribution, approx. 95% of observations always fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean. Because the way you calculate the standard deviation is based on the amount of variation in the data set. So, the more variation, the larger the standard deviation.
There is is a good linear correlation here, and also a very large amount of variance not explained by recruiting rank.
2 standard deviations is a pretty ****ing high bar.
Too bad the study didn't go a step further and with a regression analysis
Bufffan68
Club Member
Be interesting to see a multiple regression. I'd like to see a few more independent variables, like AD budget, prior year record, SOS etc.
The Massey rating incorporates SOS, but yeah there's a lot of other variables that could be significant that are missing
There is also a huge difference between recruiting class rankings and the actual quality of the class.
CU had some classes under Hawk and Embree that were perfect examples of this. On LOI day they ranked fairly highly based on a number of highly ranked players. Six months later the guys at the bottom of the class were all in camp but missing were a number of 4* or high 3* guys who weren't admitted or had other problems like Katoa. Other guys had their injury issues surface like MTM and others showed why they were overrated like Scott.
An interesting study would be to correlate the schools that see the majority of the top ends of their classes end up contributing and wins. Bama would be a good example of this. Off the top of my head I'd bet that over time Michigan State, Wisconsin, Stanford, and some others would head this list.
CU had some classes under Hawk and Embree that were perfect examples of this. On LOI day they ranked fairly highly based on a number of highly ranked players. Six months later the guys at the bottom of the class were all in camp but missing were a number of 4* or high 3* guys who weren't admitted or had other problems like Katoa. Other guys had their injury issues surface like MTM and others showed why they were overrated like Scott.
An interesting study would be to correlate the schools that see the majority of the top ends of their classes end up contributing and wins. Bama would be a good example of this. Off the top of my head I'd bet that over time Michigan State, Wisconsin, Stanford, and some others would head this list.
1buffs88
New Member
Or you recruit as well as you perform. Not clear which drives the other. There's an argument to me made -- not one I necessarily agree with -- that Alabama wins so they recruit well and their recruits are rated higher because the Tide wins so much. You can certainly over- or under-perform your recruiting. Boise obviously has the reputation.
Also, if you just graph the P5 teams and Norte Dame by total wins (especially conference wins) and recruiting ranks, I bet there are fewer teams far from the line. Teams like Colorado, Maryland, Illinois and Tennessee are going to have higher recruiting rankings than most MAC and MWC teams even though many of them will win more games and, as a result, get higher computer rankings.
gone native
Club Member
Good idea. Got any recommended convenient sources of this kind of info?
How would you be able to gather that data objectively / not stacking the deck towards a favored conclusion?
This would be pretty easy to validate.
I wouldn't mind crunching some of these hypotheses. Maybe I'll open up a bottle of rye whiskey and give it a whirl.
Sorry, you're right, of course. I'm too old to remember back that far.
The deviation in that data just doesn't look very large to me.
But it's almost like 90% of teams are within that range. Who would expect that?
Part would be subjective. On the other hand you could do a recruiting ranking using the same methods they use on signing day but do it on the opening day of the first season and second season subtracting off the kids who failed to be admitted or otherwise aren't on the teams. Beyond that you could subtract the kids who either not participated or been on injured list for injuries that they are documented as having prior to signing. I.E. by the time MTM got to CU he had already missed a season of HS due to a full knee reconstruction. In less than a year at CU he had re-injury of the same knee. He was highly ranked coming out of HS but his first choices including USC backed off because of the injury and fear of re-occurance. His high rating bumped up our ranking in that class but he never contributed much, unfortunately.
You could make the same discussion about Shane Dillon who had known injuries before he ever signed, turned out that due at least in part to those injuries he never played for us but he counted in the class.
A non-injury example would be Ed Nuckols, 4* DT who was so bad academically that he had trouble staying eligible at his JC where he landed but he gave our LOI day ranking a big boost. Again other schools looked at him, a number of major schools offered but then pulled the offer when it became obvious that he wasn't going to qualify.
That's kind of what I expect out of hcmm ceiling wise unless he proves he can recruit at a higher level. That's where cu needs to get to before taking the next step
I'm terrified that we will have 5 years of 7 and 8 win seasons, maybe hit 10 once and then decide we need a coach to get us to the next level so we part ways with Mac. We will then the wrong coach and suck again.
somebody
Well-Known Member
Don't worry, he'll leave for a better job before that happens.
I'm glad you're so certain
I am more worried about him getting tired of losing and leaving for greener pastures