With National Signing Day approaching on Wednesday, we wanted to see how teams performed relative to their recruiting rankings.
Recruiting, as we know, is an inexact science. There are many stories of five-star recruits not becoming the college stars we thought they would be and one and two-star recruits becoming high NFL draft picks.
And ranking a team's annual performance relative to its recruiting rankings is an inexact science too. There are transfers and early departures. And on the whole, freshmen classes don't contribute to a team as much as a junior and senior classes.
With that up front, we'll admit that this post is not a definitive guide. However, it does give us a chance to identify which teams outperform their Rivals recruiting rankings and which teams underperform and what the possible reasons are for the over and underachieving. As you'll see below, the biggest underperformers are very recognizable.
We used the final AP poll rankings for the past five seasons including the 2014 season. We then went and found the four-year composite of those teams' Rivals.com rankings. So for the 2014 Ohio State Buckeyes, we used the rankings from the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 recruiting classes. We took the average of those four rankings and then compared it to the AP poll rank. The difference is shown in the "Difference" column.
Let's start with 2010.
2010
TCU's overachievement gives us our first indicator of a possible trend. You'll see that the best overachievers relative to average Rivals recruiting rankings are teams not in a Power Five conference (TCU didn't join the Big 12 until 2012). And it's not fair to Alabama to say the Tide "underachieved" because as you'll see over the last five years, it's basically impossible for Alabama to "overachieve."
Notable teams that didn't finish in the top 25 with strong four-year averages are Florida (Average Rivals rank of 4.25), USC (4.25), Texas (6.75) and Tennessee (14.25). You'll also notice that these four teams have a significant discrepancy between their recruiting ranking success and their on-field success. And that they've all gone through coaching changes recently and one has had NCAA penalties. We don't think those are coincidences.
2011
See, we told you it was hard for Alabama to overachieve. Kansas State is the best team in the Power Five conferences relative to its Rivals rank, but that's because Bill Snyder is a wizard. Boise State holds the non-Power Five mantle while Houston is a close second. Their common denominator? Great quarterbacks. Boise State had Kellen Moore while Houston had Case Keenum.
Teams with great average recruiting rankings outside the top 25 were Auburn (12.5), Texas (6.25) and Florida (7). We promise we're not doing this to spite you, Gator and Longhorn fans.
2012
All hail Chuckie Keeton. Utah State crazily outperformed its average as Keeton was first team All-WAC as a sophomore. San Jose State is up there because of, you guessed it, a good quarterback. The Spartans had David Fales while NIU had Jordan Lynch. And hey, Texas and Florida are in the top 25!
Our underachievers in 2012 are headlined, predictably, by USC (4). Also on the list are Auburn (10) and Miami (19).
2013
You'll notice Wisconsin is a consistent overachiever. So is Missouri, as this is the second of three appearances for the Tigers with a solid performance relative to its Rivals rank. UCF takes the non-Power Five mantle with help from Blake Bortles and seven teams with Rivals rankings higher than their AP ranks in 2013 is the most of these five seasons.
The teams outside the top 25 with great recruiting marks are headlined by, you guessed it, Florida (5.25) and Texas (7.25).
2014
Georgia Tech's differential looks non-Power Five-like while Kansas State is there again being Kansas State. Memphis officially leads the non-Power Five teams after its Miami Beach Bowl win over BYU.
Yes, Florida (6.75) and Texas (11.5) are outside the top 25 again. They're joined by LSU (8) and Notre Dame (11) along with Tennessee (14). All four of those teams struggled with quarterback play in 2014.
It's not a surprising coincidence. You'll see that in a lot of cases of extreme differential among these teams that quarterback performance correlates with the differential. Recruiting rankings can give us a pretty good idea of a team's future success – you'll see that there aren't a lot of big differences throughout the charts. But the performance of a quarterback helps immensely.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
From Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo Sports - The Rivals recruiting rankings of the top teams from 2010-2014
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