Tennessee Football: Improved recruiting is the crystal key
By W. M. Lawson
Recruiting momentum
One of the talking points and conclusions I have to fight back against with college football fans is that your national recruiting class ranking should directly correlate with team ranking during the season. The thinking goes: “Well, we have a top-20 recruiting class every year, there is no reason we shouldn’t have a top-20 team!”. This point is a false one, and demonstrably so, and the Tennessee Volunteers help prove this point.
For our purposes, let’s go back six recruiting cycles (2017-2022), as this will include all redshirt, medical redshirt, and covid redshirt possibilities of player eligibility with the NCAA for 2022. Every possible player suiting up for Tennessee this year will have been recruited during this time.
Beginning in 2017, according to 247Sports, the Tennessee Volunteers finished with a national recruiting ranking of 17th (2017), 21st (2018), 13th (2019), 11th (2020), 22nd (2021), and 18th (2022). On the face of it, one would be right to surmise that this team should be a winning team over that time. With the exception 2021, they have not been.
Now, there are reasons other than recruiting that have most certainly affected this losing doldrum and malaise, in spite of successful recruiting classes (multiple coaching changes, multiple Athletic Directors, investigations, etc.), but we’ll leave that for another time. Those things certainly matter, but not for this conversation.
The point here is that national recruiting class rankings is a fool’s gold. It offers the veneer of success, while hiding true success or failure, or mediocrity. The real measure of recruiting class success is found in conference rankings.
Those aforementioned Tennessee Volunteer recruiting classes, while impressive nationally, were actually pedestrian and middle-of-the road in relation to other SEC teams.
The worst national class ranking of that bunch was 2021. That class ranked 22nd in the nation. It was the 8th best class in the SEC out of 14 teams. The best class in that bunch was in 2020. That class was 11th in the nation, but seventh in the SEC out 14 teams.
In fact, the Tennessee Volunteers from 2017 to 2022 had classes ranked seventh (2017), eighth (2018), seventh (2019), seventh (2020), eighth (2021), and eighth (2022) in the SEC for those years.
If two-thirds of your schedule is in conference, and you go (4-4) every year in that schedule, you will be a (7-5) to (8-4) team every year. If your recruiting classes are in the middle or bottom-middle of the conference every year, whether it is 11th nationally or 22nd nationally, you will, statistically, be an (8-4) team. Maybe that’s a top-25 team, maybe not. But, can you see where the disconnect is laid bare?
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This metric is true of all teams, but with respect to the Tennessee Volunteers, they need to push into that top-five recruiting ranking group in the SEC, and do it year in and year out, if the Vols are to start pushing the Georgias and Alabamas of the world.
If the Tennessee Volunteers are going to run it back to the 1990s, and compete for championships again, the tell-tale sign will be how their in-conference recruiting classes add up. Having a top-15 class nationally looks good, but it doesn’t do you any good if you’re getting the seventh-best talent class in your conference.
What difference does it make that you are 15th and NC State is 20th? What difference does it make if your class is 12th nationally, you outrank the entire Pac-12 North, but there are six teams ahead of you in your own conference? Let me help you. It doesn’t.
The good news for Vol Nation is that Coach Heupel and staff look like they are finding their footing on the recruiting trail in 2022, and a top-five in-conference recruiting finish is very possible.
We’re only in July, and with the accelerated recruiting calendar due to NIL, there is no telling what “flip season” will look like come November and December, but watch out for those Vols if they are able to start making their way into the top-four or top-five every year in SEC recruiting rankings.
Once that Big Orange train gets going, things can get crazy in a hurry.
But let’s stop with our class finished 10th, or 12th, or 15th in the country nonsense. It doesn’t matter if you’re eighth in your own conference.
Having more money than someone in another country is nice, I guess, but it doesn’t matter if you’re struggling to make ends meet at home.
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