Oregon State’s football program hauled in the 38th ranked recruiting class in the nation in 2012 according to Rivals.com.  This was a marked improvement over the unranked class in 2011 and was the second highest ever ranking for an OSU recruiting class (the best was 26th in 2004).  The prize of the 2012 recruiting class was a large group of very high quality offensive linemen.

Figure 1. Conference rankings and average star rating for OSU football recruiting classes (source Rivals.com)

But the program also lost ground in relation to it’s peers in ranking 10th among Pac-12 conference teams with both teams new to the conference, Colorado and Utah, earning higher recruiting rankings.  Figure 1 (click to enlarge) shows the Rivals  recruiting rankings for the Pac 10/12 conference and average player star ratings for OSU since 2002.   OSU’s conference recruiting rankings have been in somewhat of a decline since 2002 while the average star rankings were fairly steady for the first half of the period and have shown a slight increase in recent years.

Figure 2. Conference rankings and average star rating for UO football recruiting classes (source Rivals.com)

On the other hand, OSU’s conference rival UO has experienced increases in both recruiting rankings and average star ratings (Figure 2).   Expensive facilities and better records on the field of play are obvious advantages that UO has in recruiting, but the UO also ranks 1st in Pac-12 recruiting expenditures for the 2nd consecutive year. UO spends 42% ($922,653) more than the Pac-12 average on recruiting, and 68% more than OSU.  OSU only spends 85% ($549,846) of the conference average on men’s recruiting despite being located in an area where travel expenses are greater than for metropolitan locales.  And it would have been worse had this blog and other critics had not pointed out last year that OSU was 11th in Pac-12 recruiting expenses.  To OSU’s credit, expenses were increased by more than $93,000 in the last fiscal year raising expenditures to 9th place in the conference.  But the conference average was increased by 1/3 of OSU’s increase.

If OSU and its fans want football recruiting classes ranked in the top half of the Pac-12, then the program needs to make plans to boost  recruiting expenses into the top half of the conference – a level certainly greater than the $648,113 average.