Now it’s time for the fourth and final installation in our series that looks at who’s got the talent–and what they do with it.  You can read Pt. 1 here, Pt. 2 here and Pt. 3 here.  Hope you enjoyed our exhaustive study put together by site contributor MB.  He’ll be around to answer any questions you have about methodology…Download the full report in PDF Format here.

Converting Talent

So which teams are the best (and worst) at “converting” recruiting talent into NFL talent?  As noted above, we have used a weighting system to appropriately balance recruiting classes and draft timing and address some of the issues highlighted above.

At a high level, this data looks at the 2002-2007 recruiting classes (the 2008 recruiting class is not yet draft eligible) and the 2005-2010 drafts (2002 class began draft eligibility in 2005 draft). This weighting process is subjective and we will discuss it in detail at the end of the post.  Please note that the rankings in tables 15-20 reflect the weighted data and thus may not correspond to other un-weighted rankings elsewhere in this analysis.

Best Conversion of Recruiting to NFL Talent-Table 15

Obviously many of these teams rank high in conversion because they start with very little in terms of recruiting so just a little NFL success goes a long way.  USC and Ohio St are the only 2 programs in the top 55 in terms of recruiting to make this list.  It is important to note that Utah and Boise State, programs that both have had significant success on the field, are near the top of this list.

Conversely, here are the teams that have struggled to convert recruiting success into NFL draft success.   Continue Reading →

Here is the third installment in our look at talent and achievement over the last decade in college football.  Continued thanks to site contributor MB for his amazing effort in compiling these numbers.  Go here to read the first part of the series and here for part two.  Please note that the methodology used for these numbers will be explained at the end of the series!

Another stat that we like to follow is the talent gap between the most talented team and the second most talented team in the country.  What this shows is how much talent Miami and USC accumulated in 2000-2002 and 2006-2007, respectively. We also have the data for 1998 and 1999 which indicated talent gaps of 18 points and 10 points, respectively.  It is very rare to have 100+ point talent advantages (let alone 200+!) yet Miami did it three times and USC did it twice…interestingly…only one BCS title from those 5 occurrences.  Maybe those teams had too much talent?  That is a topic for another day.

Talent Gap Between #1 and #2 Most Talented Team in College Football 2000-2007 Based on NFL Draft-Table 10

We can also evaluate the talent metrics by conference. While it is no surprise that the SEC has been the most talented conference throughout the decade, there are some interesting trends developing since the ACC/Big East re-alignment in 2004… Continue Reading →

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.

Continue Reading →

This is the first in a series by a friend of the site, who we’ll call MB.  Hope you enjoy:

As avid college football fans, three of the topics we enjoy discussing (arguing about) the most are “which team is the best?” “which teams have the most talent?”  and “which team gets the most out of its talent?” The answers to these questions are almost by definition subjective, but we have developed a fact-based, “objective” system (really a set of systems) to measure and compare both on-field performance and talent levels for college football teams and conferences.

In an effort to keep this series of posts uncluttered, we will explain in detail the “formulas” for all the calculations we reference at the end of the post.  However, we want to make it clear that we recognize that these systems are not perfect….they have flaws, flaws that we will point out.  However, we do believe that these systems are very accurate and do a good job of putting objective, quantitative measures on subjective college football characteristics.  More important, we also believe this data provides a great basis for discussion among knowledgeable and reasonable college football fans.  We are always open to suggestions on how to improve the systems.  In this series, we will discuss performance, talent and performance vs talent (i.e. who gets the most/least out of their talent).

Summary

The data and analyses below will show that talent is critical for elite success in college football.  Over the last decade, the vast, vast majority of national title contenders have had elite talent.  Oklahoma in 2000, Nebraska 2001 (although one could argue the Huskers should not have been a title contender) and potentially Boise State in 2010 are the rare examples of teams without elite talent competing for titles.  However, collecting elite talent is not enough…in fact the data will show that once programs get to the very top end of talent levels, performance starts to decline (we intend to do a more in depth analysis on this counter intuitive pattern in the future).

Our take away from this is that coaching is also very important. There are several examples of programs that achieved high levels of success without top talent.  Virginia Tech, Boise, Utah, Oregon St, Oregon and West Virginia are examples of this.  Some programs achieve this by finding “diamonds in the rough” recruits and others achieve this by designing and implementing  systems that can be effective with less talent.  Those teams excel at getting the most out of their talent.

However, the programs that find the balance of assembling great talent (not the best talent in the country) and match that with outstanding coaching are the programs that consistently compete for titles.  That was USC 2002-2004. Good talent–not crazy talent–and great coaching.  From 2005-2008, USC’s talent gap over the rest of college football grew to unbelievable heights, yet the performance failed to keep up and the program got less out of the talent.

Conversely, there are programs that consistently aggregate good/great talent, but rarely if ever “convert” that talent to performance on the field.  Tennessee, Cal, Notre Dame and Wisconsin are some of those teams with legit NFL talent and little to show for it. UCLA and South Carolina consistently show up in recruiting rankings, but don’t get performance on the field and don’t “convert” their recruiting talent into NFL talent.  These are all key components in putting together a successful program over the long run.  None of these conclusions are shocking, but we believe the application of fact-based, objective analyses and ranking systems bring the facts into a clear light, away from the bias and subjectivity that is rampant in the media and with fans.  We hope you find the analyses helpful and interesting.

Performance

The bottom line in college football is how a team performs on the field.  To that end, we will start by ranking which teams have performed the best on the field (not talent, not potential, but purely on field performance) and then discuss the various ways those teams achieved their success (recruiting talent, developing talent, coaching acumen, etc) . We will describe our ranking system in detail at the end, but it is based on the Sagarin composite rankings and then adjusted to add points for national championships, top 10 finishes, wins over ranked teams and BCS performance.  Here are the top 25 teams of the decade based on our system:

Continue Reading →