College Football SMQ: The impact of recruiting for national championship teams

No college football team could possibly have a shot at a national championship without solid recruiting. But how well do recruiting rankings correlate to titles?

Without the ability to draw blue-chip prospects to campus, no school can produce a winning football team. Some teams do thrive on finding undervalued talent that fits its particular system. When looking at the teams that actually compete for and win national titles, though, landing high-value talent is critical.

Recruiting is an inexact science. Let’s just lay that right out on the table. No recruiting rankings are perfect. This week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback is going to draw upon the 247sports.com team composite rankings from 2002 to 2018. Rivals and Scout have their own evaluations, but one must choose a starting point and stay consistent. And 247sports has the most in-depth data across time.

It is not, however, perfect. Before 2002, the data for the preceding years are inconsistent and incomplete. So this week’s exercise must rely on a more recent evaluation of recruiting on national success.

So what exactly are we evaluating this week?

This week involves a look at the last dozen teams to play for the BCS or CFP title. In the BCS era, that means the teams ranked No. 1 and No. 2 at the end of the regular season according to the BCS formula. In the College Football Playoff era, that means the two teams that advance from the semifinal games played at two of the New Year’s Six bowl sites each year.

Let’s go year by year from 2006 to the just-completed season and look at the two finalists for the national championship. Using the average recruit score from 247sports, we will draw upon five-year recruiting averages for each finalist to see how important recruiting has been for title winners and their vanquished foes.

To put the numbers in perspective, the average recruit at a Top 25 school in a given year is somewhere between 84 and 87 points on this scale. All but two of the past dozen championship game participants have ranked at 88 points or higher for their average recruit on the field.

So recruiting obviously does matter, and recruiting rankings do offer some reflection on talent. Let’s dive in and look at the data from the past 12 years, and then look forward in time to see how the most recent recruiting class can fit into the five-year puzzle of contenders for next year.