Who’s Got The Talent and Who’s Doing What With It — Part Two

Here is part two in a series of comprehensive looks at talent and performance in college football by site contributor MB.  Part one measured performance on the field over the last decade….

More interesting to us than absolute performance is analyzing how these teams achieved this success on the field.  It all starts with talent.  Talent is not everything, but it is a big factor in college football success. We recognize that talent is subjective, but we believe that by looking at recruiting rankings as well as NFL draft results, one can make objective observations about talent.  For what its worth, we believe the NFL draft is the far superior way to measure college football talent, but it all starts with recruiting so lets evaluate recruiting over this time frame.  We believe Rivals.com provides the best overall recruiting rankings. Below are the top 25 aggregate Rivals points for the 2002-2009 classes (we stretched to 26 to include Virginia Tech).  We recognize this is not a perfect overlap with the time frame above, but Rivals data does not go back before 2002 and when we analyze the data in detail below we employ a weighting system to address this shortfall.

Most Aggregate Rivals Points 2002-2009 Recruiting Classes-Table 6

By combining charts 1 (from part one of this series) and 6, we can look at recruiting and performance rankings side by side and draw loose conclusions (while also recognizing that the time frames do not match up exactly).  In a more detailed analysis below, we use weighted data that matches timing much better.

Rivals Ranking and Performance Ranking as Presented Above-Table 7

By looking at the chart we can glean that teams such as Virginia Tech, Boise, Oregon, Oregon St, TCU, Utah, West Virginia have found a way to perform better on the field than in recruiting, while teams like Clemson, Florida St, South Carolina, Michigan, Notre Dame, North Carolina have done the opposite.  Teams like USC, Florida, and LSU recruit well and perform well.  What we don’t know is how does Virginia Tech do it? Do the Hokies find diamonds in the rough? Does Boise just coach up their talent better? Does Oregon State employ a system designed to maximize the college potential of their players and teams? Does Notre Dame just recruit off of lists or does it not properly utilize its talent?

In order to help answer some of these questions, we need to evaluate one more data set….NFL draft results.  While recruiting rankings project the potential success of a high school football player, the NFL draft provides more of a backward looking hindsight analysis of how talented a college football player is….thus we believe it is the most accurate measure of college football talent. We recognize that some outstanding football players do not translate to the NFL and this is a flaw in the system…fortunately, this is the exception not the rule.  By looking into the NFL draft, we can fill in the gaps to the questions above.  For example, if a team recruits well, performs poorly, but has many NFL players drafted…the problem is likely the coaching or utilization of talent.  If a team recruits well, performs poorly and has poor NFL draft success, the problem is likely either lack of player development or poor talent evaluation in recruiting.

Most NFL Draft Points 2001-2010 Drafts-Table 8

If you look at the top 10 most talented teams during this time period, those teams won ten of the eleven (two in 2003) national titles in the decade. In addition to the ten titles, those teams also lost in the title game 9 times.  Of the 21 national championship game participants, the top 10 teams in this chart accounted for 19 participants.  NFL talent matters big time in terms of achieving elite success in college football.

The concentration in talent becomes even more clear when you look at the 25 most talented singe season teams. Note that this list is for 2000-2007 as the 2008 and 2009 teams cannot be completely judged until the 2011 and 2012 drafts are complete.  Despite still having the 2011 draft to add to the total, USC’s 2008 team made the list.  We would expect that 2008 and 2009 Florida will be on the list when all the points are in.

If you look at the top 10 most talented teams during this time period, those teams won ten of the eleven (two in 2003) national titles in the decade. In addition to the ten titles, those teams also lost in the title game 9 times.  Of the 21 national championship game participants, the top 10 teams in this chart accounted for 19 participants.  NFL talent matters big time in terms of achieving elite success in college football.  The concentration in talent becomes even more clear when you look at the 25 most talented singe season teams. Note that this list is for 2000-2007 as the 2008 and 2009 teams cannot be completely judged until the 2011 and 2012 drafts are complete.  Despite still having the 2011 draft to add to the total, USC’s 2008 team made the list.  We would expect that 2008 and 2009 Florida will be on the list when all the points are in.

Most Talented Single Season Teams 2000-2007 Based on NFL Draft Points-Table 9

Note that a single season is represented by the 3 drafts following that season (with the third draft only counting 50%). For example, a 2006 team will receive full credit for players drafted in the 2007 and 2008 drafts and 50% credit for those drafted in the 2009 drafts.  The idea is to try and give appropriate weightings to players that contribute to the success of a team…while we believe this method is the best and most accurate way to measure talent, it is certainly not perfect.

USC and Miami have ALL of the top 7 spots and 10 of the top 15. USC, Miami and Ohio St have 13 of the top 15 spots. That is pretty amazing.  Also interesting to note that only one of the top 10 teams (Miami 2001) won a national title and only 5 of the top 25 (Miami 2001, USC 2004, Ohio St 2002, USC 2003 and Texas 2005) won national titles.  An additional 4 of the top 25 lost in the title game (Miami 2002, USC 2005 and Oklahoma 2003 and 2004).  Florida St has 3 teams in the top 25 for the decade…and those teams went a shockingly bad 27-11.

We will discuss performance relative to talent later, but the top 5 teams from table 9 above in terms of getting the most out of their considerable talent are (in order) Texas 2005, USC 2004, USC 2003, Ohio St 2002 and Miami 2001.  The 5 biggest underperformers relative to their considerable talent from table 9 above are (in order) Ohio St 2004, Georgia 2000, Florida St 2003, Florida St 2004 and Miami 2005.

Only 6 teams produced single season draft scores of 175+ points in the decade (draft year listed):  2006 Ohio St (194 pts), 2002 Miami (192), 2008 USC (191), 2004 Miami (183), 2004 Ohio St (181) and Florida 2010 (177).

Stay tuned for part three of this series when we look at the talent gaps and conference talent levels.