Football Recruiting: Predictive but not Destiny, and what it says about OSU

Now that the high season of recruiting is past us, it is an apt time to take a bigger picture look at what recruiting means for a college football program--and the OSU Buckeyes in particularly.  Helpfully, Dr. Saturday took his annual look at the state of recruiting.  I highly recommend all seven parts.  But the upshot?  Recruiting is highly predictive of success, but is not destiny.  The kicker: 

Since 2006, only 25 different schools have finished in the top 10 of the final Associated Press poll at least once; 15 have finished that high at least twice, accounting for 40 of the 50 top-10 slots in that span. And fully half of those slots – 26 of 50 – have been occupied by one of 10 schools: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas and USC. Those 10 also happen to be among the 13 schools – along with Florida State, Miami and Tennessee – that have consistently finished at the top of the recruiting rankings:

Here is the Doc's graph reflecting this fact:

As a result,

Those 13 schools alone have consistently produced a majority of the top five in the final polls, half of the top 10, at least half of the teams in the BCS and all of the national champions in the BCS era.

In other words, "In any given season, you can count on at least 50 percent of the nation's elite teams on the field coming from the 10 percent that routinely dominate the recruiting rankings."  Thus, while consistently top-10 classes is not a guarantor of success, it is certainly a better position to be in than those schools on the outside looking in.  What does this tell us about Ohio State?

Helpfully, this graph essentially covers recruiting in the Jim Tressel era.  Here are a few key takeaways:

• While OSU does not make the Doc's 'overachievers' list, Jim Tressel's squads nevertheless consistently outperform their (Rivals) recruiting rankings.  OSU's recruiting classes average out to a rank of 10.2, but OSU's final AP finish is 5.2.  There is not a single frame for which OSU underperformed their ranking.  Jim Tressel is thus signing highly touted classes, and getting even more from them.
  
• Recruiting is best measured in multi--not single-year--metrics.  The Doc's rankings best demonstrate this.  One recruiting class is not going to make or break a program.  But, the accumulation of good (or bad) classes over time can drastically increase or decrease a team's chances for success.   
  
• A slight recruiting uptick.  With the exception of OSU's exceptional 2002 class, OSU's recruiting classes have undergone a small, but nonetheless noticeable uptick.  This is particularly noticeable when you subtract the 2002 class from those early rankings, which was somewhat of an outlier.  My personal observation is that Tressel & Co. stepped up recruiting efforts following the 2006 National Championship loss to Florida. 

Oftentimes, people get caught up in the micro-battles of recruiting.  But a micro level is not predictive of success.  Instead, it is at a macro-level, as a multi-year endeavor, that provides teams the opportunity for success.  The Jim Tressel led-OSU squads seem to be capitalizing on this opportunity.