College’s football’s most underwhelming recruiting teams

Success on the recruiting trail usually equates to on-field success. Which Power Five teams are better at translating recruiting victories to gridiron wins?

The old adage goes that recruiting is what wins and loses football games. And, in general, that is not an unreasonable assessment of the situation. Teams that bring in recruiting classes of players rated more highly by the various ranking services tend to perform consistently better than those teams that draw less talent to their schools.

Clemson, the current College Football Playoff national champion, ranks No. 11 in terms of the average numbers of stars each recruit is rated according to the 24/7 Sports composite rankings from the past decade. The Tigers also boast the third-best winning percentage over the same period.

Their national championship opponent, Alabama, ranks first overall in both winning percentage and average number of stars per recruit over the same period. Semifinalists Oklahoma and Notre Dame also ranked in the top 15 in both categories over the past decade.

Beyond last year’s College Football Playoff, other perennial powerhouses such as Ohio State, USC, and Georgia also fit in that category of teams that turn recruits into winning football teams on a consistent basis.

The above chart compares winning percentage against average stars per recruit for all 65 Power Five teams (including Notre Dame). Generally, Power Five programs tend to follow the trendline that illustrates a clear correlation between success on the recruiting trail and success on the football field.

But there are certainly outliers that are worth noting here. With the offseason upon us and the final push to lock up 2019 recruits underway, let’s talk about the outliers among Power Five teams in terms of recruiting and results. In this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback, we will dive in to assess those teams that punch above their weight and below their weight in converting raw talent into victories and championships.

(Access the full dataset compiled for this week’s column here.)

A deeper look into the data on recruiting

Before we get into those outliers, though, let’s first talk a little bit more about the finer details of what a strong recruiting class actually entails. The gold standard of recruits is five stars, and in any given year there are only so many to go around. Usually they are hoarded by the Power Five programs, which is what steers this week’s look exclusively toward that section of the FBS population of teams.

Even among Power Five schools, landing five-star recruits is a rarity for most programs. Out of the 65 Power Five programs, 27 of them have failed to land a single five-star recruit since 2010 (including the 2019 recruiting class). Eight more schools managed to recruit only one five-star player in the past decade.

Conversely, two programs — Alabama and USC — brought in at least one five-star recruit every year over the past 10 seasons. Only Georgia and Ohio State managed to pull off the feat in nine out of 10 recruiting cycles. Florida State is the only other team besides the Bulldogs, Trojans, and Crimson Tide to average more than two five-star players per recruiting cycle.

Even Clemson failed to land a five-star recruit in three of those 10 years, though they have more consistently drawn in the top talent in the past five seasons.

Four-star recruits are a more commonplace draw for Power Five programs. Among the Power Five, 35 of the 65 schools nabbed at least one four-star player every year since 2010. Alabama leads the pack in four-star recruits just as they do with five-star talent, drawing more than 15 players per season who have been rated with four stars by the recruiting services.

This is the sweet spot of talent acquisition for college football programs. The more four- and five-star recruits a team can land, the more likely they are to win a lot of football games.

That is not, however, a guarantee. Some teams, for one reason or another, tend to fail at turning those talent-rich groups into results. Let’s look first at those programs that struggle to meet the autumnal expectations that come with winning on National Signing Day.

Teams that punch below their weight in recruiting

Every football team has highs and lows. Even a program like Alabama has not been great forever, as the nadirs of their history attest. One need not even look back earlier than the 21st century to find a period when the Crimson Tide were just another mediocre program among the power-conference ranks.

Some teams, though, manage to land what are at least perceived to be top recruits and still fall flat season after season. There are several that stand out as poster children for this phenomenon over the past decade, but let’s focus on three specific cases: Texas, Tennessee, and UCLA.

Texas Longhorns: Fallen contenders in a Big 12 slump

In 2009, Texas went to the BCS national championship game. There, in a contest where starting quarterback Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game in the first half, the Longhorns lost 37-21 to an Alabama team that won its first national title under Nick Saban. Since that point, the two programs have traveled divergent paths.

Over the past decade the Longhorns continued to factor among the top 10 teams in the country in recruiting. As the Big 12 lost four of its founding members and brought in only two to replace them, the shifting composition of the conference seemed to correspond to a downturn in Austin. Of course, this time period also encompasses the end of the Mack Brown regime, the short and largely unmemorable Charlie Strong era, and Tom Herman’s arrival on campus.

A large part of that downturn is a failure to land the most elite players available every year. In a talent-rich state that produces a half-dozen players of five-star caliber in an average class, Texas has failed to land a single five-star recruit in four of their past six recruiting classes.

Going just 63-52 over the past nine seasons, Texas has failed to win a conference title over that span. For the first time since 2010, the Longhorns did play in the Big 12 championship game last year and won the Sugar Bowl over Georgia. Texas fans will hope this is the turnaround needed to turn Herman’s recruits into contenders for upcoming College Football Playoff spots.

Tennessee Volunteers: A lack of continuity in SEC country

Playing in the SEC is always going to be difficult, but Tennessee is a program that ostensibly has the resources to compete against divisional rivals like Georgia and Florida. Instead, two decades after winning the inaugural BCS national championship in 1998, the Volunteers continue to land solid recruiting classes in the talent-laden southeast but have struggled to translate that success to victories on the scoreboard.

The end of the last decade marked a crossroads for Tennessee. After parting ways with longtime coach Phillip Fulmer after the 2008 season, Lane Kiffin bolted Knoxville after one 7-6 season and left the program to pick up the pieces. They brought in Derek Dooley, who went 5-19 in SEC play in his three seasons at the helm before summarily being tossed aside by the athletic department.

In came Butch Jones, who brought brief moments of hope for the Vols fanbase but never could get beyond the nine-win plateau. Two games before the end of a 4-8 season in 2017, Jones officially decided to resign ahead of an inevitable termination.

Though talent is regularly poached out of the state, the Volunteers average one five-star player every other year and nearly 10 four-star players per season. Unfortunately for those recruits, though, they have been forced to deal with a lack of stability in coaching staffs and an inability to take advantage of downturns in their division.

UCLA Bruins: Failed attempts to overtake intracity Pac-12 rival

In similar fashion, UCLA is a program that missed a chance to take advantage of downturns in their division. Though they regularly draw plenty of top-shelf talent, the Bruins fail to do much with that talent. The Bruins, like Tennessee and Texas, saw a shift in the program personnel at the start of the new decade.

In 2010 and 2011, the Bruins were still coached by Rick Neuheisel. The former UCLA quarterback was able to take advantage of NCAA sanctions against crosstown rival USC to take his alma mater to the inaugural Pac-12 championship game. But after losing to the Ducks at Autzen Stadium and then Illinois in the Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco, Neuheisel was out of a job.

In came Jim L. Mora, a school where his father coached as an assistant for a season during his adolescent years. His first season saw UCLA return to the Pac-12 championship game, this time losing to Stanford on the Farm. After that, Mora consistently landed at least one five-star player per season but was unable to get the Bruins back to the conference title game.

In a wide-open Pac-12 South, UCLA proved incapable of taking full advantage of the sanctions that knocked rival USC down a peg in the division. After six seasons of diminishing returns, the Bruins parted ways with Mora. In his place, they hope that former Oregon coach Chip Kelly can turn around fortunes — though if he does so it will be without a five-star player in either of his first two recruiting classes.

Teams that punch above their weight in recruiting

On the other end of the spectrum, certain schools seem to have a natural ability to keep their football programs in contention year after year despite recruiting classes that are middle-of-the-road or worse by Power Five standards.

Some teams consistently do more with less, winning division and conference titles in spite of recruiting classes judged weaker than their peers. Teams like Oregon, Michigan State, and Oklahoma are all teams that reached the College Football Playoff in the past five years to overcome recruiting classes that lag behind the perennial contenders. Three stand out in particular: Wisconsin, Oklahoma State, and TCU.

Oklahoma State Cowboys: On the cusp of national contention

Oklahoma State has benefitted from the continuity of having the same head coach for more than a decade. After Les Miles left Stillwater to take over the LSU job vacated by Nick Saban in 2004, former Pokes quarterback Mike Gundy stepped into the leadership role and has kept things rolling in a Big 12 traditionally dominated by Oklahoma and Texas.

By 2010, Gundy was in his sixth season on the job. That year, he led his alma mater to the first 11-win season in school history. A year later, Gundy and the Cowboys followed up with a Big 12 championship and a 12-1 finish the year after Nebraska and Colorado departed the league. Only a heartbreaker at Iowa State prevented Oklahoma State from playing for the national title.

Since that point, Oklahoma State reached 10 wins in four of the next seven seasons and have gone bowling every year. In their bowl games between 2010 and 2018, the Cowboys built up a 7-2 postseason record and have gone 85-32 overall.

What that amounts to is the No. 10 overall winning percentage over the past nine seasons despite ranking only No. 38 in average recruiting stars per Cowboys recruit. Without a single five-star recruit since 2010, and fewer than three four-star recruits on average per season over that span, Gundy and his staff have mastered the art of achieving big results with a thinner pool of raw talent.

Wisconsin Badgers: Midwestern continuity and a dash of good fortune

While Wisconsin experienced something of a downturn in 2018, they have regularly been a factor in the Big Ten since its expansion to two divisions. Whether in the Leaders Division or in the West Division after the conference abandoned their novel naming scheme for a geographic split, the Badgers have won three conference titles and three other division titles in nine seasons.

Most impressive is the fact that Wisconsin has done so despite losing several head coaches to other Power Five jobs. Bret Bielema won the first of three straight conference titles in 2010, but left before the Rose Bowl in 2012 to take the Arkansas job. In came Gary Andersen, who lasted two years in Madison and went to one Big Ten championship game before bolting for Oregon State.

Current head coach Paul Chryst is a former Badgers quarterback who has maintained the momentum of his predecessors. Working with recruiting classes that consistently rank in the bottom half of Power Five teams, three different coaches have taken Wisconsin to 10-win seasons.

As a result, even with the coaching turnover in Madison, the Badgers rank No. 7 in the Power Five in aggregate winning percentage between 2010 and 2018. They benefitted at various times from both sanctions against division rivals in the Leaders era and frequently weak competition in the West after divisional realignment. Even with those bouts of good fortune, the consistency across the board has been impressive from a Badgers side far from natural recruiting territories.

TCU Horned Frogs: Making the most of a new conference affiliation

In 2010, TCU was still a Mountain West team longing to make it into the Power Five ranks. The Horned Frogs were defending MWC champions coming off a postseason loss against WAC champion Boise State in an all-BCS Buster Fiesta Bowl. They subsequently ran the table in the Mountain West, then went on to take down Wisconsin in the first Rose Bowl featuring a non-power conference program in the modern era.

By 2012, though, the Big 12 came calling after losing Nebraska, Colorado, Texas A&M, and Missouri over two years. Needing to bolster their ranks or die out completely, the Big 12 invited in TCU alongside West Virginia to bring their ranks back to 10 teams.

The shift to a power conference allowed the Horned Frogs to draw in a higher caliber of recruit than previously available to them as a non-AQ program in the BCS era. That allowed them to quickly remain relevant despite the step up in competition. A 4-8 blip in 2013 was followed up by a 12-1 campaign where the Horned Frogs just missed out on a spot in the inaugural College Football Playoff due to their head-to-head loss against Baylor in league play.

The move to a power conference has bolstered TCU’s average quality of recruit, but they still rank right around the middle of the pack at No. 34 in recruiting over the past decade. As Gary Patterson nears the completion of his second full decade in charge of the Horned Frogs, he has put them in position to remain relevant for years to come no matter how they recruit.

The limits of recruiting impact: Evaluating the Jayhawk/Wildcat paradox

The most notable outlier of all is one with a local comparable that reveals the limitations of relying too heavily on recruiting rankings alone to gauge expectations for a program. No team has punched further above its weight than Kansas State, while state rival Kansas has had similar success on the recruiting trail with results that fall far below expectation.

Over the past decade, Kansas State ranked dead last among Power Five teams in the average number of stars of each recruit. Since 2010, the Wildcats have landed only one four-star player and not a single five-star player in that span. Relying heavily on two- and three-star players and a history of embracing junior-college transfers, Kansas State patched together a 73-43 record in the past nine seasons that gives the Wildcats a .629 winning percentage.

Conversely, their rival an hour and a half east in Lawrence has actually done better than the Wildcats in landing recruits. Neither Kansas school has landed a five-star recruit in over a decade, but the Jayhawks nabbed an additional quartet of four-star players. All that resulted in, though, was a grand total of 18 victories in nine seasons.

What stands out in the equation is the importance of solid coaching at schools in talent-thin regions. Kansas State saw a downturn in the three seasons where Bill Snyder opted to retire the first time. When he came back in 2009, he laid the foundation for a second renaissance in Manhattan that allowed the Power Five team ranked No. 65 out of 65 in recruiting to post a top-30 winning percentage.

As he retires a second time, it will be interesting to see if former North Dakota State head coach Chris Klieman can maintain the level of success built up by the man whose surname graces the stadium. Prince couldn’t pull it off, but Klieman comes in with previous head coaching experience and four FCS national championships on his resume.

Kansas, on the other hand, has had three different head coaches over the period and will go into 2019 with a fourth at the helm. Like Kansas State, they will have a former national champion leading their program as former Oklahoma State and LSU head coach Les Miles takes over in Lawrence. Since recruiting has not been the difference between these programs, the Jayhawks are hoping they can surpass their rival with better coaching.

Final observations about recruiting victories and on-field success

Going back to that scatter plot that we looked at earlier in this week’s column, it clearly shows that recruiting success offers a baseline by which to see whether teams are punching above or below their weight on the field relative to the talent available to the coaching staff.

But as we’ve also seen by looking deeper at those examples of outliers, the recruits themselves are only as good as the coaches who mold them into college players.

In the case of those teams that fall short of expectations, they often deal with a combination of a tough division and/or conference and issues with coaching continuity. Even with factors seemingly work in their favor, and the talent continues to flow into a top program, there is no guarantee that this will translate into victories.

In the case of teams that punch above their weight, they enjoy a continuity that is more often than not critical to building lasting success. Rare are the programs like Wisconsin that can keep the momentum going despite turnover at the top. What Big 12 middleweights like Oklahoma State, TCU, and Kansas State have in common with other teams that punch above their weight like Stanford and Michigan State is a leader that has stable footing atop the program.

Recruiting certainly matters, and success during the early signing period and National Signing Day offer real opportunities for fan bases to dream about future success on the field. But what happens after National Signing Day seems to depend less on how many stars a recruit was rated coming out of high school as it does the caliber of the coaching staff turning them from raw talent to skilled college veterans.

As the examples of Kansas State and Kansas demonstrate, teams with similar circumstances in terms of recruiting area and program resources can have massively different outcomes based on the quality of coaching. Higher-rated talent over time tends to reinforce the recruiting rankings with their college performances, but that is as much because it is teams with strong coaching that land those talents as an innate ability to convert that raw talent to competent performance.

So enjoy National Signing Day, but know as well that the quality of those recruiting classes are dependent on coaching staffs that can win on the recruiting trail and on the practice field.