[Husker] Average 4-year Recruiting Rankings and WL%

[Paul Dalen]

It looks to me like someone from Stanford has already answered the question
about geography.

Check out his work at
http://www.stanford.edu/~tbrennan/football/summary.html

He calculated a probability of a recruit attending a school based on
distance from his home, and then mapped the cumulative expected number of
recruits to each school location.

There's a obvious center of gravity that combines # of recruits and
probability of school of choice...and the center of mass appears to be
Tallahassee, FL.  Great stuff here.



On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 5:25 AM, Scott Stewart <fourtwophd at gmail.com> wrote:

> OMG, now I am obsessing about this. LOL.
>
> Question 1: Which way does the correlation run? Does success improve
> recruiting or recruiting breed success?
>
> Question 2: How does geography factor into recruiting? My impression has
> been that there are "pockets" of highly rated recruits (California, Texas,
> Florida come to mind) with a sprinkling randomly distributed throughout the
> country. My second impression is that recruits generally stay relatively
> local (I guess that could be defined as a 1,000 mile radius and/or attend a
> school in conference that represents their area). Again there are those
> that don't fit this trend.
>
> This is truely contagious and evil. LOL.
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Scott Stewart <fourtwophd at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Excuse the last post. I fired off to quick. I tried to pull it back, but
>> don't know how.
>>
>> I will give you that there is a correlation between recruiting and
>> performance. However, I do think you are overanalyzing this correlation and
>> in overstepping the data.
>>
>> My first concern with the data was in your original post. It was that the
>> best correlation between recruiting and performance (ranking) occurred at
>> six years past the recruitment class. As you noted that is an odd result.
>> Most of the recruits, if granted a red-shirt year would be gone in the
>> sixth year (I am assuming that year 1 would be the recruits first year out
>> of high school, not their Senior year in high school). To me that suggests
>> there is a third factor influencing the data. Does good recruiting begat
>> better recruits? or is something else at work.
>>
>> I was less concerned when that data did not hold for CFB as a whole.
>> Suggesting there is something going on in the NU data. I would suspect it
>> has something to do with coaching changes, or lack of them, during periods
>> of time.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Scott Stewart <fourtwophd at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I am sorry maybe I misunderstood your post.
>>>
>>> When you said, "My next project is to reject/fail this hypothesis:
>>> recruiting *affects* a great deal at the most elite levels"...I thought
>>> you were saying that better recruiting ratings lead to higher BCS rankings
>>> in elite football programs vs. non-elite programs. So to evaluate that
>>> recruiting affects, or causes, better rankings in these elite programs
>>> versus non-elite programs are you planning on employing some form of
>>> structural equation modeling design. And if so, what factors are you
>>> including with recruiting?
>>>
>>> Scott
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 9:11 PM, Paul Dalen <quesohusker at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Do you think I don't know the difference between correlation and
>>>> causation?
>>>>
>>>> Paul Dalen
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 31, 2013, at 8:03 PM, Scott Stewart <fourtwophd at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Paul,
>>>>
>>>> Be careful when using correlations to imply "effect" or causation.
>>>> Correlation does not imply causations. There is a large correlation between
>>>> number of penguin populations and temperature and (my favorite) number of
>>>> pirates in the Caribbean and global warming though no one would believe
>>>> that penguins or pirates make the climate cold.
>>>>
>>>> It is equally likely that success is related to high recruiting
>>>> classes, or that a third factor (climate, coaching, conference) is a
>>>> co-variate.
>>>>
>>>> Scott
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Paul Dalen <quesohusker at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I forgot to mention that for the 8 years looked at, when comparing the
>>>>> 4-year recruiting rank averages, 6 of 8 times the higher ranked team
>>>>> of the
>>>>> two won the National Championship.  The exceptions were Texas in 2005
>>>>> (an
>>>>> extremely close game and generally accepted upset) and Alabama in 2009
>>>>> (remember Colt McCoy went down minutes into the game).
>>>>>
>>>>> My next project is to reject/fail to reject this hypothesis:
>>>>>  Recruiting
>>>>> affects a great deal at the most elite levels of college football, but
>>>>> that
>>>>> effect diminishes significantly outside the Top-5 or Top-10.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Paul Dalen <quesohusker at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> > Looking at teams that have played in the BCS Championship Game, they
>>>>> have
>>>>> > the following 4-year recruiting averages:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > ................................Top
>>>>> >
>>>>> 100..............................5-stars....................4-stars........................3-stars......................4-year
>>>>> > Recruiting Rank Average
>>>>> > BCS 1&2....................5.3 per year.....................3.3 per
>>>>> > year...............10.0 per year...............7.6 per
>>>>> > year........................9.8
>>>>> > AP Top 25..................2.3 per year.....................1.4 per
>>>>> > year................5.6 per year................9.7 per
>>>>> > year.........................31.7
>>>>> >
>>>>> > BCS CG participants average twice the number of top-100s, 5-stars,
>>>>> and
>>>>> > 4-stars as the rest of the AP Final Top-25.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > It's well established that exceptional recruiting does not predict
>>>>> final
>>>>> > record or ranking, but final ranking, particularly for the highest
>>>>> ranked
>>>>> > teams, predicts a great deal about sustained recruiting.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Paul
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Skylar Dodds <sklarbodds at cox.net>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> >> Lastly, and probably the most convincing start of them all for
>>>>> >> recruiting.  Not one team... Not one has won a BCS title without
>>>>> consistent
>>>>> >> top 15 recruiting leading up to it.  And most average in the top
>>>>> 10.  That
>>>>> >> is NOT an accident.  Yes, some teams can vastly outperform their
>>>>> ranking,
>>>>> >> but there's zero question those are exceptions or outliers.  Boise
>>>>> State
>>>>> >> had been an example for a while, Kansas State this year, etc.  But
>>>>> make no
>>>>> >> mistake, there is a strong correlation between recruiting and top 25
>>>>> >> finishes, and especially if you want a championship.
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >>
>>>>> >
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>