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Recruiting Landscape Revelation

Posted by Scipio Tex on January 21st, 2009 under Football, Recruiting

A great article on recruiting including some excellent data mining tools (look at the right hand side of the article) that illustrate some pretty clear principles related to the art of convincing cocky 18 year olds to come to State U.

Think local

If you want to understand Mack Brown’s obsession with recruiting locally, perhaps even to his occasional detriment, it’s because he intuitively understands this little fact:

An SI study of 2004-08 recruiting data for the 65 BCS-conference schools and Notre Dame revealed that programs which draw at least 50 percent of their players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not

That’s the hallmark of consistent winning. And that’s what Mack Brown is about. It is not predictive of optimization – that is to say, what % mix is ideal (i.e. what a program should do in a down year for in-state linebackers). So that’s still an important debate to have.

Indeed, localism is also the most decisive factor in school choice by recruits:

Those data complement the findings of a trio of economists who, in 2005, designed a model to predict the college choices of sought-after recruits. The model created by Mike DuMond, Allen Lynch and Jennifer Platania — rabid college football fans who met while Ph D. candidates at Florida State — found that among heavily recruited players choosing from among only BCS-conference schools, distance from home is the most important factor in a recruit’s choice. The model was published in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of Sports Economics.

I will grant that a Florida State PHD economics candidate is academically proximate to a UT undergrad in the school of Education, but the data here are fairly easy to crunch and as they confirm a number of beliefs that I’ve always held, I accept them as relative truth.

The model found that a school’s academic standing — whether it’s in the top 50 of the US News and World Report rankings — provides a miniscule bump. So does the final poll ranking of the school the previous season. What didn’t matter to players shocked the economists more. According to the data, the players weren’t, on the whole, worried about the depth chart, how many national titles schools had won or how many players the school put in the NFL.

No kidding about the academic standing. Every time I read in a recruiting interview that a kid is focused “on his education” and wants “to major in engineering or business” it’s fairly predictable that he’ll end up at LSU, OU or Florida State majoring in Stacking Things!, Tickling Studies, or Does This Object Taste Good When Placed In Your Mouth.

Depth chart, tradition, and NFL participation as overrated predictors is a bit of a surprise to most, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that Florida, Miami and FSU are relative Johnny-Come-Latelies to college football dominance – their ascendance in the 1980s was directly tied to the hire of coaching catalysts who created programs healthy enough to allow localism. This also explains the rise of LSU – a place with far less winning tradition than the average college football fan believes. To put it in geopolitical terms, there are a lot of very poor countries sitting on resource goldmines and a lot of very wealthy countries without a resource pot to piss in.

Governance is key.

State loyalty often supersedes straight-line distance. “If I’m a recruit in south Georgia, and it’s 200 miles to Gainesville and 200 miles to Athens, the physical distance is the same either way,” DuMond said. “Georgia still has an advantage because I live in that state.”

Great point, but that also reveals a regional data bias. Some states have a stronger regional loyalty than others. It’s quite strong in the South, almost non-existent in New Jersey. So often is the key word there. Additionally, if you don’t see a viable program in-state, you may be a fan, but you’ve got to look elsewhere. See Southern California pre-Carroll, Texas mid to late 80’s, Florida pre-1980’s.

This also explains why Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin hire makes some sense. And Kiffin’s subsequent hiring of a staff that is single-mindedly dedicated to recruiting. The Vols know what they are in a way that, say, Auburn does not. Tennessee is one of the few SEC schools with a poor natural recruiting base and they’re hugely reliant on talent from neighboring states – several of them featuring SEC schools with strong in-state localism. You must possess a crack staff of recruiters at Tennessee if you want to get it done; you have to overcome powerful regional biases. Expect Kiffin to make his raids into ACC country to battle North Carolina and Virginia as much as into Northern Georgia and Mississippi. State loyalties are less closely held in ACC country when it come to football.

The other great exception here is JUCOs. They’re the Hessian hired guns of the college football landscape and they’ll go wherever they can find easy admission requirements, a forgiving class schedule, and a friendly depth chart.

Underachievers and Overachievers

Some coaches in sparse areas are better than others at convincing talented players to leave home. The state of Oregon produced only 44 BCS-conference signees in five years, but Oregon and Oregon State combined to win 81 games. What does that mean? It means Ducks coach Mike Bellotti and Beavers coach Mike Riley deserve raises.

Agreed. The Pacific Northwest is a football recruiting wasteland. I’ve always laughed when people are dismissive of Mike Bellotti when Oregon loses a few games in a down cycle, although having Phil Knight is an extraordinary X Factor. Not so Mike Riley. These outlier schools exists on a razor’s edge and they know that one or two bad years of recruiting decisions or program strife can ruin their programs. And, unlike a Texas or USC, reviving them once they’re down is a bitch.

Ask Washington.

Conversely, some programs have failed to take advantage of their nearby recruiting bounty, meaning coaches either are choosing the wrong players, or they aren’t developing those players. Even if it draws only the second-best 25 players from Southern California every year, UCLA should win more than 33 games in five years. That may seem a cold analysis, but at least those coaches don’t have to convince players accustomed to wearing flip-flops in December to come to a place that requires Gore-Tex boots.

UCLA and Texas A&M are key examples of this and college football’s most extraordinary underachievers. UCLA made a conscious decision, somewhat similar to Texas during the late 80s, that football simply wasn’t a priority and that a robust football program is opposed to academic standing. They may be moving past that now, so it will be interesting to see.

A&M is fully dedicated to a winning football program in theory, but they possess self-imposed cultural handicaps that allow them to be bullied by the triangle of powers (Texas, LSU, OU) around them. Their inability to make quality secular hires has been debilitating. Despite all of this, it’s still a Top 20 college football job.

Your thoughts?

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23 Responses

  1. Big Satan said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Wow. No thoughts. But a great read.

  2. roni said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    i wonder if this is the sometimes baffling reason that mack brown doesn’t seem to pursue players from further away that at least profess some interest in texas (pryor being a recent example).

    also, i wonder what the analysis for usc is. it seems that while they get every 5 star in cali, they also cherrypick talent from other places as well, as opposed to more regional powers such as osu, texas, and florida

  3. Scipio Tex said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    BigSatan:

    Thanks, dude.

    roni:

    The article I linked talks about USC explicitly. Take a gander. USC does recruit nationally, but Pete believes in filling his trough in SoCal before going elsewhere.

  4. HenryJames said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    An SI study of 2004-08 recruiting data for the 65 BCS-conference schools and Notre Dame revealed that programs which draw at least 50 percent of their players from within 200 miles or from within their home state stand a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not

    Or those schools that are most successful just happen to be located within 200 miles of talent-rich areas.

  5. JDLooneyII said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    Out of curiosity, Scip, do you know whether the DLP study data were self-reported by the high school recruits, or instead compiled from observed behavior and/or reasoned conjecture? Because test subjects are notoriously unable or unwilling to explain their true behavioral motives, I’m always skeptical of self-reported data. For a quintessential example, look no further than the ou recruits who cite academics as an influential or determinative factor.

  6. Scipio Tex said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    HJ:

    Yes. Thank you for your mastery of the obvious. That’s why they brought up Wiscosin/Oregon/Rutgers in the article and contrasted them to the state of Florida, Southern Cal, Texas. Obviously, the economists aren’t positing that Montana can become a powerhouse simply by offering more scholarships to second rate local players.

    JD:

    Excellent point. I agree on your concern.

    I found the study here:

    http://facstaff.elon.edu/jplatania/footballrecruiting.pdf

  7. Scipio Tex said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:26 pm

    JD:

    I scanned the paper and abstract and it would appear that they used no subjective data (recruit opinion). All of the data inputs they used were objective (W/L record, bowl games, or semi-objective (depth chart analysis is not science).

    Also, from Table 7, Page 47, this is the predictive accuracy of their model, which is pretty respectable overall when you also consider that they removed all recruits who were “one school only” recruits where prediction is essentially a lay-up.

    I think it’s key to note that recruits in the West and Northeast were the least predictable – exactly the places that harbor the least defined regional football identity.

    2004 Recruits 62.6%
    Midwest Recruits 65.4%
    Northeast Recruits 53.3%
    South Recruits 64.3%
    West Recruits 59.6%

    Here’s the formula assessing whether a recruit has “maximized”

    E Σ =
    5
    t 1 βt-1 U(WINt −1
    z , DISj,z , CONFz , AMENz , PLAYz,k) [1]

    The key is rather helpful:

    where β is the subjective discount rate, WINt −1
    z is the on-field success of university z in the
    previous season(s), DISj,z represents the geographical distance between the university and the
    recruit’s hometown, and CONFz represents the conference that university z competes in. This
    variable will give an approximation of the amount of exposure to both television markets as well
    as professional scouts. The AMENz variable represents the facilities and/or coaching staff
    available to recruits at university z. In particular, this variables includes measures of such things
    as training and weight room facilities, and stadium capacity. Finally, PLAYz,k represents the
    expected playing time of the recruit of position k at university z.

  8. California Horn said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    One thing I’ve wondered about for awhile which was not addressed here: recruiting to cold weather locations.

    With the major exception of Ohio State, it seems that most of the traditional powers from cold weather locations have been on on a downward trend in the last decade, such as Nebraska, Notre Dame, Iowa, Penn State, Michigan, and Washington.

    Meanwhile, you have random commuter schools with no traditions and few resources in the sun belt that are rapidly emerging as bona fide football programs, such as South Florida, Central Florida and FAU.

    My hunch is that, as recruiting gets more national with the increased flow of information in both directions, the warm weather schools are able to cherry pick more players from elsewhere, while the cold weather schools have a harder time locking down all the regional talent.

    It’s far from an exact or absolute thing, so don’t bombard me with examples of a program here or there that bucks the trend, but does anyone else agree that this is a meaningful trend in college football recruiting?

  9. Scipio Tex said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Cali:

    Cold weather is mentioned specifically in the linked article CNN/SI piece. Read the last four paragraphs.

    My take on cold weather climates and college choice:

    - It primarily impacts skill players, not linemen

    - It doesn’t impact local native skill players disproportionately in terms of college choice -they grew up in it and will play in it at their local power. They’re no more likely to flee than anyone from the Rust Belt or East Coast, though broadly speaking all demographics are headed west

    - What it does impact profoundly is the ability of cold weather schools to get top shelf non-local skill talent (i.e. Floridians, Texans, Southerners). Which they need

    - Overall, skill talent is far more prevalent in the South and Texas than the Midwest and East

  10. Vasherized said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    Great find Scipio.

    Did anybody ever figure out how Noel Devine ended up at West Virginia? It goes against most of these conclusions so I’m wondering what Rodriguez told that kid. Or paid his family.

    And as much as the “mine the local talent” rings true. It’s still worth every ounce of effort to chase after a select bunch of national studs each year. Mack seemed to do it half-assed out of some guilty compulsion as opposed to Stoops, Belotti, Paterno, etc that have to do it to survive.
    That is until Muschamp and Major arrived. Kennedy seemed like the only one game to duke it out across state lines until these guys came onboard.

    Every state is fair game in the SEC. Major and Will have brought that mentality to Texas. Even if we don’t have to look out of state, they’re going to do it because the result can be a Percy Harvin. And that can be the difference between 10-2 and 12-0.

  11. upgrayedd said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    “It is not predictive of optimization – that is to say, what % mix is ideal (i.e. what a program should do in a down year for in-state linebackers).”

    Every year in Texas is a down year for in-state linebackers. Why is that?

  12. texexinwa said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    upgrayedd – “Every year in Texas is a down year for in-state linebackers. Why is that?”

    I believe that it is the result of the proliferation of Texas high schools running spread offenses. It kinda renders traditional linebacking skills irrelevant.

  13. ThatsYou said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 7:50 pm

    So, Mack owes his success to Texas, and not the other way around?

    Huh. Cool.

  14. uttotop said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    As others have already expressed…GREAT read!

    I have a feeling Mack and most elite program coaches know about the 200Mi radius stats, just some other programs do not have the elite players within that range and thus, obviously, forced to heavily recruit OOS…

    No one would convince me that USC & Texas are now NOT the top schools from the “local impact players” pool POV…Florida has to split their talent amongst not only UF, FSU & UM, but the other in-state schools now on the rise..tough deal for UF now that Shannon is proving to be an adept recruiter…Bowden was losing his influence in impact recruiting, but was doing less with more talent than most would realize after close examination…that will/should be changing somewhat now…only time will tell…

    Saban will hurt LS$ in SEC area recruiting, which forces Miles to work harder in Texas, but in retrospect I can think of only Ciron Black (OL) in recent the past that we were even considerating, but not aggressively recruiting as a demonstrated “miss” in recent recruiting that has really been an impact player from our fine state(not counting our ememies from acorss the Red River–frankly I will not think we regret the JM fiasco down the road)…forget the recent class coming in to LS$ this year and that is not to downgrade RS as a potential playmaker…

  15. Scipio Tex said:

    January 21st, 2009 at 8:58 pm

    uttop:

    LSU has recruited Texas really well. They’re A&M’s biggest thorn, IMO. They clean up on a lot of guys in the middle of the Top 100 and over the last couple of years they’ve gone head-to-head with us on some important guys. They’re a problem.

    upgrayyed:

    I completely agree with texexinwa about the spread, but the other part of it is that we just don’t develop the position. You can make linebackers too.

    OU turned a third rate RB recruit from San Antonio – Travis Lewis – into a dominant LB in one season of coaching. We’re not capable of that. Colorado routinely turns high school RBs and FBs into NFL LBs.

  16. dedfischer said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 8:25 am

    I had seen this article earlier in the week and I took it as a testament to the job Leach has done at Tech given the extreme distance to talent. However, I would argue that 300 miles to DFW talent is a better option than 20 miles to Seattle talent.

  17. Gene Claude said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 8:27 am

    There was some kid by the name of Weatherspoon from Texas that turned out to be a decent linebacker. But he was only 2 stars, so I doubt Mack was interested…..

    Great read, although I found the actual article to fall squarely in the “duh” category. Anybody who has followed college football and American population dynamics knew this alread. The real genius is being able to use this sort of information to generate a viable strategic plan, something that Scip seems to have done rather well. Certainly better than 95% of college meathead coaches could do….

  18. SausageFest said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 8:43 am

    majoring in…Does This Object Taste Good When Placed In Your Mouth

    Coursework taught by esteemed Professor Emeritus Mangino, Prof. Weis and Prof. Lewinsky (offshoot course – “Sociological Effects of Objects Placed In Your Mouth”), respectively.

    Great read, Scip. Mack holds the keys to this state, and the data supports his success. I appreciate the cogent outlining of Hello Kiffy’s hirings at Road Cone UT, which I am now more impressed by given your explanation of his goal in recruiting externally to Tennessee. His stock has gone up in my book. I personally think we’re on the ground floor of seeing continued and expanding success of the FL commuter schools, as they fill the obvious void of “educational entity with JUCO-level academics but FBS divisional qualification”.

  19. Levander Williams said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 9:05 am

    Scipio – good stuff, and a nice compliment to the series by TTR on cheating.

  20. Scipio Tex said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 10:25 am

    ded:

    Exactly. Given the tyranny of distance that Tech must face each year, it’s hard not to respect what Leach is able to do.

    GC:

    I appreciate your faint praise, sir!

    Sausage:

    Good point on the FL commuter schools. I was a bit shocked to find out that there are players too dumb to gain admittance to FSU or SEC schools, but apparently there are.

    As for Kiffin, I have no idea if he will pan out, but his hire makes a hell of a lot of sense when you consider the natural hurdles that the Vols have to overcome. It’s a defensible hire. In contrast to Auburn.

  21. California Horn said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 11:03 am

    “Good point on the FL commuter schools. I was a bit shocked to find out that there are players too dumb to gain admittance to FSU or SEC schools, but apparently there are.”

    Those Florida “high school with ashtrays” universities are also in the Big East or in non-BCS conferences, and thus can take partial qualifiers, whereas all the other five BCS conferences do not permit it anymore. I think those schools each have a number of good players who would have been playing at FSU, Alabama, etc. back when partial qualifiers were permitted in those conferences.

  22. SausageFest said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 11:45 am

    It’s a defensible hire. In contrast to Auburn.

    Agreed, sir. But hey, at least D

  23. SausageFest said:

    January 22nd, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Wow, I hate keyboard spaz-outs. Let’s try this again, shall we?

    It’s a defensible hire. In contrast to Auburn.

    Agreed, sir. But hey, at least DA CHIZ is back to the SEC, where his “4-3, the whole 4-3, and nothing but the 4-3″ defensive idiom is probably best suited against the power running games that most SEC teams favor. Nonetheless, a puzzling hire on so many levels.

    can take partial qualifiers, whereas all the other five BCS conferences do not permit it anymore

    Exactly that, Cali Horn. They are truly fronts for athletic programs that pose as bastions of higher learning, instead acting more as a minor-league NFL intermediary feeder system to stay within NCAA protocols of the required 3 years before draft entry. This little ruse fools very few people. But, as more and more “academically-challenged” athletes realize this, I think we’ll see either rampant SEC-level academic fudging in recruiting, or a legit power struggle between the half-wit upstarts and traditional CFB powers that see the writing on the wall. In the latter scenario, I’d be curious to see the NCAA’s reaction to an angry coalition of cash-cow programs.

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