[Husker] *Matt Hayes* discovers discrepencies between recruiting rankings and results

[Nick Chevance]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Mike Jaixen <mikejaixen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As you might expect, teams like Texas Tech, Missouri, and Kansas came out pretty high on the list.  And Nebraska, Kansas State, and Texas A&M came out near the bottom of the BCS conference teams.
> Mike Jaixen

Thanks, Mike -

This is an interesting article, and it certainly is additional fodder
for sports lists, but its not exactly clear what all of this means.
Rivals was the only ranking service used and billions upon billions of
electrons have been redirected from useful purposes in the debate over
whether Rivals means anything at all.  It would have been a bit more
useful if more than just Rivals had been used.  But a main criticism
of the article is that comparing success of a recruiting class to wins
in the same year is really meaningless, since there is almost always
(not a perfect correlation) a lag of a couple of years before recruits
become juniors and seniors and their true abilities can be seen in
team performance.  A second concern is whether success can only be
measured by number of wins.  We won more games this year than last,
but was that due to the recruits that came in this last year, or the
year before, or the year before that?  I sorta thought it may have had
something to do with how that recruited talent was put into play on
the field, but I could be all wet.

One person commented on that article that journalism and statistics
shouldn't mix.  I'd agree with that.  Just like what Scott Adams said:
"Science is a good thing. News reporters are good things too. But it's
never a good idea to put them in the same room."

Nick
-- 
Cognito Ergo Spud (I think, therefore I yam)
          Anon.