Recruiting rankings based on offers

[thf24]

Faced with what looks like an uneventful work day for me, I thought I'd try to quantify something I've been curious about for a while: recruiting rankings based solely on offers. I've assigned each FBS school an arbitrary ranking 1-10, considering historical significance, where they are as a program as of right now, and conference. I'm thinking I'll rank classes based on the average of the top 5 or 10 offers for our and a few of our neighbors' current commits, but before I do, I was wondering if anyone similarly curious would scan over my scores and see if you think any stick out as needing to be higher or lower relative to the others.

http://i.imgur.com/wp92otD.png

[Big4Dawg]

Oregon State looks a little high. Clemson prob should be a 9. Texas should probably be a 9 also. OM probably a 8 as well.

So are you going to look at one player, look at his offers, and give him a total score? Or what?

[RC3]

i would move texas to a nine...maybe even a ten

[thf24]

So are you going to look at one player, look at his offers, and give him a total score? Or what?

I'm thinking give each player the average of his offering schools' scores (probably the top 10 to avoid dragging down the elite guys who technically have an offer from every school out there), then rank a few schools based on the average of their commits' scores.

[Big4Dawg]

I'm thinking give each player the average of his offering schools' scores (probably the top 10 to avoid dragging down the elite guys who technically have an offer from every school out there), then rank a few schools based on the average of their commits' scores.

Top 10 seems like a lot, esp if you want to do our class. We have a lot of guys like Nero Nelson who only have 4-5 offers.

Nelson's Offers:
State
FSU
ULM
UL
Memphis
OM
Southern Miss

His average would be 5.57. While guys like Parker (http://247sports.com/player/dareuan-parker-80923), would average 7, since we are his only offer. Nelson is a lot better of a prospect than Parker.

[missouridawg]

Fun exercise, but I think a lot of offers you will find listed aren't committable. Still will be interesting to see the result. Good luck.

[DancingRabbit]

Don't know how you're weighing historical vs current stature but some changes I'd probably make ...

Cal 6
Miami 7
Nebraska 7
Oklahoma 9
Oregon State 6
USM 3 or 4
Texas 9 or 10

[thf24]

Top 10 seems like a lot, esp if you want to do our class. We have a lot of guys like Nero Nelson who only have 4-5 offers.

Nelson's Offers:
State
FSU
ULM
UL
Memphis
OM
Southern Miss

His average would be 5.57. While guys like Parker (http://247sports.com/player/dareuan-parker-80923), would average 7, since we are his only offer. Nelson is a lot better of a prospect than Parker.

Good point, I may need to come up with some kind of modifier that rewards higher numbers of offers, or penalizes fewer than the sample number (thinking I may lean towards 5 instead of 10).


Fun exercise, but I think a lot of offers you will find listed aren't committable. Still will be interesting to see the result. Good luck.

Yeah I thought about that, I'm thinking it wouldn't skew it too badly though since even a non-committable offer shows interest in most cases.

[mcain31]

Where's Wisconsin?

[thf24]

Don't know how you're weighing historical vs current stature

Purely arbitrary to be honest, I'm going for relativity more than anything.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, here's the updated version (added Wisconsin).

http://i.imgur.com/BYrtznm.png

[archdog]

I would move us and Ole Miss down to 6 personally. We may be trending towards a 7, but if we were to take into account the time we were not relevant nationally there is no way I would equate us to Penn State, Nebraska, and Miami.

[archdog]

As of today, we are more relevant than Penn State, Nebraska, and Miami though.

[thf24]

I would move us and Ole Miss down to 6 personally. We may be trending towards a 7, but if we were to take into account the time we were not relevant nationally there is no way I would equate us to Penn State, Nebraska, and Miami.

That was my first thought, but I gave us +1 for conference.

[DancingRabbit]

Here's the 247 Composite ranking for last year, and the 4-year average. Don't know if that would be helpful for your project.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/2/6/7987571/recruiting-rankings-ratings-2015-college-football-teams

[Dawgtini]

Here's the 247 Composite ranking for last year, and the 4-year average. Don't know if that would be helpful for your project.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/2/6/7987571/recruiting-rankings-ratings-2015-college-football-teams

My word. Take a look at that list and tell me again how terrible our recruiting has been. Again, we could improve in a couple of areas (OL,??) but our recruiting is not terrible.

[TXDawg]

My word. Take a look at that list and tell me again how terrible our recruiting has been. Again, we could improve in a couple of areas (OL,??) but our recruiting is not terrible.

I agree we're doing well on a national average (23rd), but the unfortunate reality is that 23rd in the country ties us for 10th in the SEC and 7th in the SEC West. I think that's what everyone is complaining about when saying our recruiting is "terrible".

[sandwolf]

Purely arbitrary to be honest, I'm going for relativity more than anything.

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far, here's the updated version (added Wisconsin).

Wisconsin has finished in the top 25 in 5 out of the last 6 years (and they finished in the top 15 in 3 of those years) and has played in the Rose Bowl in 3 out of the last 6 years, so I am thinking you ought to have them at at least a 7 and possibly an 8. Also, I don't know if it was intentional, but you bumped OM to an 8 in the updated version, which is too high.....they ought to have the same rank as us, and it is debatable as to whether that number should be a 6 or a 7.

[TUSK]

I do a similar exercise when I look at recruits that I otherwise know little about...

Schools I look for are (no particular order): Alabama, LSU, USC, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, FSU....

Conversely, if the recruit's best offers consists of the likes of USM, UCF, Memphis, Troy, ULL, etc, I'm wondering if the offer is for "political" purposes...

[Taog Redloh]

thf24.....this could be cool. Only comment I would say is to assign the number values based on revenue, something like that, NOT who is relevant at this moment. That will factor in everything - history, resources, etc. It would have to be somewhat of a sliding scale too. And, I would probably use the recruit's top 5 schools, to factor out the committable/non-committable garbage. It's all assumptions.

[thf24]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'm factoring everything in as I go. Any suggestions on the teams I should do? It takes a good minute to do a team since I don't have a database I can automatically pull from, so I can't do all of them. I've done us and UNM so far, thinking I'll probably do Auburn and Michigan State next (my main interest in this is to see how teams with flashy recruiting rankings vs. teams who overachieve based on their rankings line up). I'm going to do Bama as a benchmark since we know they'd be #1 regardless. Any others?

[NeedMoreCowbell]

How about doing TCU? There's a team that is 10 or more spots below us in recruiting rankings, but seems to be pretty talented.

[Lumpy Chucklelips]

Totally off topic, but someone mentioned we weren't doing that badly overall at #23, but that equaling 10 in SEC and 7th in West.....

When/if finding the time, I wanted to list every team in the Power 5 plus Notre Dame and BYU who finished with a better than 4-4 record in their own conference this past season. Then take our 2015 schedule and evaluate each team on that list to see what record I thought they would finish with playing our schedule. I used the 4-4 record for choosing teams because that is what we finished with in the SEC. I figure any team outside the SEC who didn't finish at 4-4 in their own conference surely wouldn't finish 4-4 with an SEC schedule.

What did we finish up? 26 in the final poll? Just guessing, but I bet you couldn't list 25 teams with a better than 4-4 SEC record after playing our schedule. Which shows to me that losing 4 games in the SEC hurts your ranking, and doesn't show how truly talented a team that you are. Thus the overall lack of respect that we get due to being compared to the Bama's, LSU's, Auburn's, Ga's, Fla's, etc. of the world year in and year out.

[thf24]

Disregard for now, I think one of my excel formulas didn't copy right.