Analyzing recruiting grades via Alabama and Texas by Bruce Feldman
Monday, December 28, 2009
Since there was no mailbag last Friday due to the holidays, I'm leading today with a response to something a few of you had asked about in regard to the Wall Street Journal story titled "Top Recruiting isn't a Prerequisite for a BCS Berth." You can find the piece here.
Here's the essential takeaway:
"If bowl season teaches fans anything, it's that getting top recruits doesn't guarantee success. In this year's 34 bowls, half of the participating teams didn't have a single starter in their final regular-season game that was considered a top-100 prospect in high school, according to recruiting Web site Rivals.com. The Count analyzed 1,496 bowl-game starters and found that just 8.4% of them were top-100 recruits."
The first sentence is true -- but then things get murky. Stockpiling talent and the fact about half of the FBS teams end up in bowl games makes this a faulty formula to begin with. As we've talked about a lot in the past year or two, you have to be amazed at the job of evaluating and developing players that schools such as TCU, Boise State, Oregon State and some others do. But I think it is very curious to see how the supposed heavyweights do when they sign similarly rated recruits.
Years ago I found it fascinating that the best Miami players when UM was on top were actually the guys who came into the program with the least hype. I'd once broached the subject with Ed Reed -- one of those low-rated recruits who had picked Miami over Tulane -- and he pointed out that those guys had the most drive and determination to prove they were better than all of the supposed blue-chips. The core of Miami's 34-game winning streak earlier this decade was two- and three-star guys: Reed, Ken Dorsey, Jon Vilma, Jeremy Shockey.
Now compare that to all of the UM's "five-star" recruits, signed from 2002 to 2007: Devin Hester, Ryan Moore, Greg Olsen, Kyle Wright, Lance Leggett, Tyler McMeans, Willie Williams, Kenny Phillips, Reggie Youngblood. Of that list, only Hester, Olsen and Phillips lived up to expectations.
To dig a little deeper on this, I was curious to see how the non-four-star and five-star recruits do at the high-profile schools, and the results -- at least anecdotally -- are intriguing. Just look at the two teams in the BCS title game and how well their lesser-regarded recruits have done. If we bypass the 2009 class -- because it's too soon to get much of an accurate gauge on those recruits -- you see a quite an impact by the lesser-touted recruits.
Texas Longhorns
In 2005, Texas signed 15 players according to the Rivals.com database; the school itself says there were 14 players brought in that year.
Texas, via a spokesman, said five of the six players that are no longer at Texas are in the NFL; that sixth player, DE Aaron Lewis, started 15 games in Austin. The group that remains at UT all got national title rings for their redshirt freshman seasons. Interestingly enough, the best of what remains is a quartet of three-star recruits: Colt McCoy, LB Roddrick Muckelroy (UT's leading tackler) and O-linemen Chris Hall and Charlie Tanner (both three-year starters). That's some haul for such a small class.
In 2006, UT signed 12 players labeled as three-star recruits. Among them: starting TE Greg Smith; LB Dustin Earnest, who has started and has 25 tackles this season; and kicker Hunter Lawrence, who won the Big 12 title game and will be a UT hero for the rest of his life.
In 2007, Texas signed six three-stars or below. Among them, Sam Acho is the team's top pass-rusher with nine sacks.
In 2008, UT's class had eight three-stars or less. Emmanuel Acho, the team's third linebacker (10 tackles for loss), is considered a rising star; two-star DB Blake Gideon is already a two-year starter and Tre Newton, a redshirt freshman, is the team's leading rusher. (One of those other three-star recruits, WR Antoine Hicks, never made it to UT and now plays at TCU instead and averaged 23 yards per catch on 19 receptions for six TDs.)
Let's look at Bama now.
Alabama Crimson Tide
The talent pool at Alabama is also an interesting mix when it comes to the unheralded recruits, although the returns aren't at the same level as they were with UT.
In 2005, Bama actually had 26 recruits labeled as three-stars or less. Former starting QB John Parker Wilson was one of them. So were LB Cory Reamer, the Tide's fifth-leading tackler, and starting DE Brandon Deaderick -- not to mention former starters Marlon Davis and Glen Coffee, who finished up at Alabama last season.
In 2006, Bama signed 11 three-stars. Among them: Javier Arenas (All-American CB/returnman) and starting QB Greg McElroy.
In '07, there were 14 three-stars or less -- a group which included starting center William Vlachos and starting WR Marquis Maze.
In '08, a class with nine three-star recruits or below included All-American NT Terrence Cody and DL Marcel Dareus (the team's top pass-rusher with 6.5 sacks).
Of course, Bama's been led by blue-chippers Rolando McClain, Mark Ingram and Julio Jones -- but Arenas, Cody and McElroy have arguably had almost as big an impact.
