RECRUITING RANKINGS NOT PERFECT, BUT THEY DO PROVIDE HINTS TO SUCCESS

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Every February, SEC fans go ga-ga over recruiting rankings.

It’s the equivalent of baseball’s hot stove league… when every team still has a chance, still has reason to hope.

But just because your favorite team signed more 4-star athletes than your rival, should you really feel confident in future success?

Yes. And no.

I wanted to find out if there was a real correlation between recruiting rankings and on-field performance, so I went back to the Rivals.com recruiting rankings for the past five years (2003 through 2007) and compared those rankings to last year’s SEC records.

Pretty simple as to why — SEC teams last year would have been made up of players signed in those five classes, barring an unusual sixth year of eligibility for one or two players.

When it came to on-field results, I only looked at the conference records for each team. I didn’t want a team’s tough (or weak) non-conference schedule to skew the results.

So, what did I find?

Well, what I didn’t find was a immediate connection between recruiting rankings and on-field results.

From 2003 to 2007, here’s how the SEC stacked up in terms of recruiting (combined Rivals.com ranking for those years is to the left) and how they finished last season inside the conference (actual SEC record for 2007 is to the right).

1. Florida 5-3

2. Georgia 6-2

3. LSU 7-2 (SEC Championship Game winner)

4. Tennessee 6-3 (SEC Championship Game loser)

5. Auburn 5-3

6. S. Carolina 3-5

7. Alabama 4-4

8. Arkansas 4-4

9. Ole Miss 0-8

10. Mississippi State 4-4

11. Kentucky 3-5

12. Vanderbilt 2-6

As you can see, the best team over the previous five recruiting hauls was Florida. And they finished with a conference record exactly one-game over .500.

Ole Miss ranked ninth in the SEC in recruiting from 2003 to 2007, yet they didn’t win a single game in the conference… while Kentucky (11th in recruiting) won three conference battles.

Recruiting rankings, therefore, are far from an exact science.

However, take a look at the numbers in more general terms and you’ll find that recruiting rankings can give you an IDEA of whether or not your favorite team will be successful.

The top five teams in recruiting from 2003 to 2007 just happened to be the only five teams in the SEC last year to post winning conference records.

Divide the conference into fourths and the recruiting rankings become even more telling.

Teams one through four in recruiting (Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee) combined to post a 24-10 record in conference play. That’s a winning percentage of .705.

The teams ranked five through eight in recruiting (Auburn, South Carolina, Alabama and Arkansas) combined to finish 16-16 in conference play. That’s a .500 winning percentage.

And the teams that ranked nine through 12 in recruiting (Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Kentucky and Vanderbilt) finished 9-25 in league play. That’s a winning percentage of only .264.

The top four in recruiting won 75% of their games, the middle four in recruiting won 50% of their games and the bottom four in recruiting won just 25% of their games.

Interesting, no?

My final take: recruiting rankings don’t guarantee success or failure for your team. A fourth-ranked recruiting team can win the league… and a fifth-ranked recruiting team can finish near the bottom of the league.

But these rankings do provide an ESTIMATE of how a team will perform.

Top ranked recruiting teams tend to finish in the top portion of the conference. Poorly rated recruiting teams tend to finish near the bottom of the regular season standings.

So, while we can’t say (a) Florida’s had the best recruiting classes from 2004 to 2008, therefore (b) they’ll win the SEC this Fall (post hoc ergo propter hoc, if you will)… we CAN say that Florida is much more likely to finish among the top four teams in the league because of their highly rated recruiting classes.

So, looking ahead to this Fall, let’s look back at which teams had the most recruiting success from 2004 to 2008.

Again, the combined rankings are based on Rivals.com’s yearly rankings:

1. Florida

2. Georgia

3. LSU

4. Alabama

5. Auburn (tie)

5. Tennessee (tie)

7. South Carolina

8. Ole Miss (I thought Houston Nutt was supposed to be inheriting a cupboard full of talent)

And your bottom four teams are Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt

If our recruiting-to-real-wins assumption holds true this year, look for Florida and Georgia to finish near the top of the East, while LSU and Alabama (surprise, surprise) should be near the top of the standings in the West.

That’s hardly a “Good Will Hunting”-style proof, but it is something interesting to discuss in mid-June.