The rating values (stars) that are assigned to prospective recruits quantify their POTENTIAL as college football players. A team wins with quality recruits, but coaching and player development also count for something. This marks the season for the annual hand wringing and fretting over the perceived lack of talent in OSU’s recruiting classes, so an examination of the value of recruiting rankings is warranted.

To validate whether the recruiting values assigned to OSU’s prospective student athletes are predictive of on-field success, I’ve compared the number of wins earned by each of the Pac-10 teams with the recruiting rankings within the conference provided by Rivals and Scout over the past 9 years.

Since the evaluation of talent and assignment of stars differ for the two recruiting services, the data can be normalized by ranking the recruiting classes for each school in the conference from 1 through 10. This makes sense on two levels. First, since we play the majority of our games against Pac-10 opponents, the relative value of our recruiting classes is best compared with teams that we frequently compete against. In other words, the best way to validate a ranking system is to observe the on-field performance of program’s recruits in direct competition with recruits from another program ranked by the same methodology. Second, by using the relative rank (1-10) within the conference rather than some arbitrary national ranking assigned by the services and by eliminating from consideration the variability introduced by the assignment of the number of stars to players, we should be able to make meaningful comparisons among the teams in the Pac-10.

The recruiting rankings provided by both services greatly underestimate the value of OSU recruits – more so than any other program, placing the Beavs in 8th and 10th, for Rivals and Scout, respectively. The services chronically overestimate the value of recruits at high-spending UCLA and UW. For both services, the Pac-10 conference-wide recruiting rankings from 2002 to 2010 were not statistically related to the number of wins over the same period.

What the services do well is to provide information on athletes that are interested in the various programs but as you’ll find out in an upcoming post, recruiting rankings are tied to the amount of money spent by the program, not winning. If you want a better recruiting class, you’ll need to spend more money. Since good players want good coaching, I’ve had a hard time understanding why some players will sacrifice the chance for superior coaching to be associated with under-performing name brands. As always, I’m very thankful for all of the players who choose to be Beavers, regardless of recruiting rank.