Yesterday I compiled some data from 247sports.com on the recruiting class rankings of the Big 12 over the last decade (2010-19). Btw, that website is remarkably easy to use and a tremendous resource for doing quick research on most anything you could want to examine.
What I compiled was the average class ranking for every Big 12 team in every year of the decade, how many players they signed every year, how many of those players were “blue chips” (4-star or higher), and then their league record over the course of the decade. Here are the results:
Average 247 ranking was compiled by averaging out every team’s finish. TCU, while they scored higher than the other teams listed as 5th, didn’t tend to finish as high as third on average. Blue-chip ratio means the percentage of players signed that were rated as 4 or 5-stars, in parenthesis you can see how many players each team signed and how many were blue chips. Big 12 record should be self explanatory.
Some notes…
Two of these things are not like the other…
Texas and Oklahoma obviously enjoy a massive advantage over the rest of the league. Everyone more or less knows this but when you put it all out like this it becomes more apparent the degree to which they’re privileged.
You could also argue that this reveals that the gap between 3-stars and 4/5-stars is more marginal than many would have you believe but there’s little doubt that the weight of Oklahoma’s resources have often been felt on the field.
The Sooners signed about 4x as many blue chips as the next highest team, TCU while Texas signed about 4.5x as many.
Blue chips are essentially the obvious talents that everyone agrees are good prospects. You can end up with a very talented team without recruiting them but it’s obviously harder because the consensus regarding which players are most talented is going to end up being right more often than not. Texas and Oklahoma’s ability to pull in the most sought after players in the region is a massive advantage.
Two of these things are not like the other…
There are two teams who’s actual performance doesn’t correlate at all to their recruiting rankings, the two teams at either end of the spectrum. Texas and Kansas State.
Kansas State has punched above their weight through a combination of strong culture, superior strategy and tactics, but then also that their teams tend to be filled out by older players. As frustrating as it often has been to K-State fans to put a low emphasis on HS recruiting and impact freshmen in the era of recruiting coverage, the program has long gained a big edge from having an older team than anyone else in the conference and consequently managing to either play more advanced tactics or to execute with greater precision and fewer mistakes.
Texas on the other hand has really leaned into their identity as Goliath, despite AD Chris Del Conte’s insistence that they haven’t…
As I detail in the book…
Texas was on the cutting edge of utilizing pro-style passing concepts from the spread in 2009 when Colt McCoy was injured, Mack Brown lost his nerve, and the program wandered in the wilderness for the entire decade. They’ve repeatedly tried to be a team that imposes their will in the trenches, which is the inferior way to play the game and gave everyone else in the league a chance to keep up while granting Oklahoma a much easier path to the Big 12 title every year.
In the 2010s Texas had three receivers go for 1k yards in a season. Three. Over the entire decade. John Harris in 2014, Lil’Jordan Humphrey in 2018, and Devin Duvernay in 2019. They had two seasons in which their starting QB threw for 3k yards or more, both seasons came from Sam Ehlinger (in 18 and 19).
That’s a major reason for Texas’ futility this decade.
Are we sure Gary Patterson is good?
This may have to become a reoccurring segment as I’ve gotten into a lot of debates recently with TCU fans about whether old Gare is slipping as a defensive mind and the Horned Frogs’ prospects for 2020 and the new decade.
Who else was surprised that TCU ended up ranking as the 3rd best recruiting team in the Big 12 over the course of the last decade? The narrative around the Frogs has always been that they make the best of smart scouting and uncovering gems in recruiting, and certainly they do that, but so does everyone else in the B12. TCU has recruited more blue chips than any other non-TX/OU program in the conference and have been outperformed by OSU, Baylor, and K-State.
Their main claim to fame from this decade has been their regular thrashings of Texas, which have also started to dry up, and their reputation for defense which is also increasingly questionable.
An easy counter is that with better luck regarding QB injuries the Frogs would be closer or higher than Baylor or OSU. Of course the reason they had to thrust Max Duggan into the starting role this season wasn’t injuries so much as how Patterson interacted with Shawn Robinson, so it’s not like the staff are helpless victims here.
Texas Tech…
Another team that has benefitted greatly from Texas’ malaise has been Texas Tech, who’s similar post-Mike Leach collapse has drawn less national attention.
Hypothetically a massive state school with money flowing on rivers from the Permian basin and a large base of alumni in DFW and Houston should be able to recruit competitively with OSU, Baylor, and TCU. At times they have, only to fail to leverage that talent into results. Being stationed out in the ocean of West Texas is certainly a disadvantage in some regards but this is still rather stunning.
I’m guessing that in the 2020s Texas Tech will start to work out this problem.
What are your takeaways from the raw data?
Unfortunately, two coaching changes and leaving Kliff on the hot seat for three seasons seems to have had a negative effect on our recruiting. As Tuberville (and Chris Beard and Kingsbury’s 2015 class) has shown, you can recruit talented kids to Lubbock with a good sales pitch and at least a little winning. But it doesn’t seem like Wells is or has ever been much of a recruiter, and I’m not convinced there’s going to be a lot of winning in the near future.
I noted at the time that Wells got some plus talent to Utah State by taking risky guys kicked out elsewhere. Then a story dropped during the season about Utah State’s unimpressive response when such a player was accused of villainy. Just not a good way to do things in the Big 12 right now.
Yeah, that was definitely troubling. The reporting on that was bad, though. The initial article insinuated that Wells allowed that guy to stay on the team after learning of the allegations and meeting with the guy, but looking the dates in the story (and Plaintiff’s petition) the meeting with Wells and the player was after the last game of his senior year, so the “allowed to stay on the team” part was inaccurate. Of course, as you point out, when you take on risky guys like he did, those sorts of things can happen.
And now news is coming out that Tulane and Central Michigan rejected Jett Duffey’s transfer because of a second Title IX allegation that occurred in 2019. If it turns out that this allegation was initially made during the season and they allowed Jett to continue playing, that may be the end of the line for Wells. And maybe Hocutt too, depending on what he knew and how involved he was in that decision.
Yikes.
“They’ve repeatedly tried to be a team that imposes their will in the trenches, which is the inferior way to play the game”
Bizarrely, there were some lean years (in the Charlie Strong era, I believe) where UT really bottomed out in line recruiting. And that’s after the OL really stopped producing in the late tenure of Brown.
That seems to be one of the biggest flaws in recruiting rankings is that the rankings don’t in any way account for the actual positional make up of a class. It’s like how in the Texas A&M Sumlin era, they were always rated pretty high in recruiting, but most of their blue chip players were offensive skill position guys.
Just as a goof, I used the 247 class calculator to create a class comprised of only the top rated receivers. If a team signed only the 18 highest-rated receivers, it would have the number 1 recruiting class in the country. It seems like it wouldn’t be hard to build something into the algorithm to punish teams that over-recruit at certain positions. But I’m not a computer programmer or mathematician so who knows, maybe it would be.
Wholeheartedly agree.
As a start, why not just breakup classes into offense and defense? There are only about 5% of players you’d be wrong about.
OL recruiting rankings should have 80% as 3-stars because development, nutrition, and technique are more important than “talent” so frequently.
Charlie kicked out all of the talented OL that Mack had recruited, then Joe Wickline replaced them in part with the sorts of kids he’d recruited at Oklahoma State. 2/3 star developmental types. Left a gaping crater in the roster that it took a while to fill in. The 2017 OL that Herman ended up fielding after injuries to Elijah Rodriguez and Connor Williams was amazingly bad.
Very glad that Holgo let Wickline just coach the line and recruit his son. By rep, he’s gotta be one of the worst assistant coach recruiters out there.
That said, the line was pretty terrible last year so maybe Wick still held back recruiting. I guess we will see next year when the kids brought in over the last two years are playing everywhere.
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[…] In a piece looking at recruiting in the Big 12 over the last decade, this line about blue chips was spot […]
Ian, who do you think had a worse decade as a blueblood: USC or Texas?
Definitely Texas.
I always felt that Gundy was underrated as a coach and he is able to do more with less. Also felt that Ok. St would suffer mightily if he were to move on. I think the above numbers support my thoughts. Numbers don’t lie!
Ian, I wanted to get your take on Herman’s QB recruiting strategy. Specifically, the reasoning behind taking 2 QBs in the same recruiting class. It looks like they took Rising and Thompson a few years ago and did that again with Card and Johnson. Johnson and Card seem to be different types of QBs, so I am assuming its more opportunistic recruiting? Hope that one of them pans out and move the other to a different position? In this age of the Portal, its pretty amazing that they are able to pull this off to begin with.
Card is the QB, JQJ is a pure football player that might end up being any number of things.
Taking two in the next class that has Milroe is more bizarre.
Right now BU has big question marks overall. The change of staff, including adding more recruiters, resources, & administrative support will be very beneficial. Going forward, this will increase the potential for much improved rankings going forward, most likely during 2022. At least compared to specific measurable Rhule wanted.
The O returns a significant number of starters, but the D doesn’t have much in the way of starters. So, if BU can put some decent results on the field through player development, this will complement the improved recruiting BU wants to accomplish.
Baylor is in great shape for the next 5 years and then in iffy shape beyond that because of the threat of realignment.
As long as BU continues to make the necessary investments in their overall athletic structure, they’ll be fine. Rhoades made sure the regents understand the importance of making sure the athletics department, especially FB, have the necessary $ and on field success to ensure they won’t get hosed. Of course, we’ll find out what’s what the next 5-6 years. Stay tuned…
Investment isn’t the issue. It’s fanbase, they simply aren’t an attractive team when everything is driven by TV money. They need to expand their brand within Texas, which is tough.