2018 SEC Talent Rankings W/Ls

[ShotgunDawg]

Was following the Bo Bounds & Jake Wimberly conversation on twitter about how Tennessee has the edge in our game this year.

Bo threw out the statement that the better recruiting team wins 80% of time.

So I did a little fact checking, &, while I didn't have enough time to peruse the last 5 years, using 247's team talent rankings for 2018, the current trend does not seem to indicate that Bo is incorrect in his statement.

In 2018, SEC only football games.

- The higher talent ranking team won 71% of the time. Duh, many of those games are obvious blowouts
- Take out Bama's games & that % falls to 65%
- When the difference between team talent rankings is 10 spots or less, the % falls to only 60%, which means it's basically a coin flip on any given Saturday unless those teams plan on playing 10 times.

Conclusion:

Of course team talent matters, but not as much as the gap in recruiting rankings indicates that it does. The recruiting rankings mostly get the teams in the right order, but, due to poor evaluations & bias towards blue bloods, they make the gap appear larger than it really is.

When two SEC teams matchup & their teams talent rankings are separated by 10 or less spots, the game comes down to everything else, not the talent on the field.

I say all this to say; I wish our in-state media cut out the bullshit. I can't imagine there is another state in the SEC footprint that has more media guys dampering enthusiasm than this one. Just a bad part of our state.