Money, Recruiting, and Winning in College Football

Recruiting has often been referred to as the life blood of a football program.  The on-field success of  a program has generally been attributed to a number of factors including coaching, facilities, institutional support, fan support, and recruiting.

So what do we really know about recruiting and its impact on the most important measure of success, winning?  Figure 1 shows that there is no relationship between wins recorded during the 2010 football season and the average national ranking of the previous 4 recruiting classes among the top 60 NCAA D1-A schools as determined by Rivals.com.  Note that there is a wide range of win totals among any group of rankings – schools with ranking between 11 and 20 had 2010 win totals ranging from 4 to 14.  The previous 4 recruiting classes make up nearly all of the athletes competing in 2010, and should be an indicator of the rating of talent on the field of play in those games.  Moreover, when the same recruiting rankings are examined against long-term winning (wins/year over the last 8 seasons), no significant relationship between long-term success of the program and recruiting rankings was identified.  If these recruiting evaluations and rankings do not provide a direct measure of a football team’s talent level and ability to win games, what do these values mean?

Adding more doubt to the validity of recruiting class rankings is the fact that Boise State, Nevada, and Connecticut were not among the top 60 recruiting classes over the past 4 years.  The recruiting classes at these winning institutions were deemed to be in the lower half of those in D1-A football despite recording 12, 13, and 8 wins, respectively in 2010.

Figure 1. 2010 Wins and Average of 4 Most Recent Recruiting Class Rankings

Since there is no relationship of these recruiting class rankings and winning, what do they really measure?  An examination of the US Dept of Education’s (see link on this blog) most recent statistics on the football program expenditures for these 60 top-rated football programs reveals an interesting relationship (Figure 2).   Three distinct groups are evident regarding football program expenditures and recruiting rankings.  The top group (blue) is comprised of teams with recruiting classes that are ranked between 1 and 20, and has an average expenditure of $21.2 million.  Within this group there is a drop in recruiting ranking that is proportional to the decline in program expenditures.  The middle group (white) shows little change in expenditures across 20 ranking places and the average expenditure is $15.8 million.  In the bottom group (orange), the football expenditures again drop with recruiting rankings.  Average expenditures of this group is $14.8 million.

Figure 2. Relationship of Annual Football Program Expenditures and Recruiting Class Rankings

It appears that the most highly rated athletes gravitate to the programs that spend the most, regardless of the level of winning at that institution now or in the recent past, and in turn, these athletes improve the overall rating of the recruiting class.  Fans of Oregon State football want more wins on the field and they’ve pinned their hopes on better recruiting classes  (OSU is 54th among the top 60 on this graph) to attain their wishes.  The dashed line on Figure 2 depicts the $11.9 million spending level for the Oregon State football program.   Only 7 teams in the top 60 spend less than OSU does on football and in the 41-60 recruiting rankings group (OSU is 54), OSU’s expenditures are $2.9 million lower than the average for the bottom group.  If OSU wants to improve the ratings of its recruiting classes, the expenditures on football need to increase.