Article from ChuckOliver.net by Bryan Powers.

We are just a week away from the biggest day in college football since, well, three weeks ago. But it is the biggest day until spring games roll around in April.  As National Signing day is right around the corner, fanbases across the country leave their successes and failures from last season and begin to seriously look into their future.  This being the case, I looked into a little recent history of signing day, specifically at the last five classes.  WARNING:  What follows may be very encouraging, or very discouraging, depending on how you look at it and hwo your team is.  It seems that recruiting may me more, or less, of a science than previously believed.

Last night I went through the top 25 recruiting classes of each of the last five years.  I wrote them all out and combined them, giving the top class for a given year 25 points and scaling down all the way to the number 25 team, who reveived one point.  Then I added up the points and came up with the TRR (total recruiting ranking) for the last 5 years.  If this is confusing, just trust me when I say that I have the top 25 recruiting programs of the past five years listed below.

One would think that if their team had a top ten recruiting class over a five year span that their team would have likely ended up in the top ten this season.  Conversely, if a team was not in the cumulative top 25, it would be fair to assume that they probably would not have a very successful season this year.  But that’s what one would get for thinking.

In the columns below, you will see two charts.  The first lists the final AP top 25 for the 2011 season.  To the right of the teams, in the TRR column, is each team’s recruiting rank (see above).  In the chart to the right, you will see the overall top 25 recruiting classes of the past five years.  To their right is their final rank in the 2011 season.  It’s not exactly scientific, but it will work for the purpose of this article.

Now lets examine this just a bit.  Nine of the top fifteen and 60% of the teams in the final 2011 poll were unranked in recruiting over the past five years.  Neither Wisconsin, Baylor, TCU, Houston, Kansas State, Southern Miss, or Cincinnati have had a single signing class ranked in the top 25 over the last five seasons.

Eight of the top fifteen recruiting classes and, again, 60% of the cumulative classes did not finish in the final AP poll in 2011.  Texas, Ohio State, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, and Tennessee all have some ‘splainin’ to do.

Those are just the team numbers.  I know what you are thinking.  What about individual recruits?  Looking at the incoming class of 2008, there seem to have been quite a few “misses”.

The top 25 overall players from the 2008 class includes the likes of Terrelle Pryor, DeQuan Bowers, Julio Jones, Patrick Peterson and AJ Green.   But who remembers Dayne Crist, Notre Dame QB recruit and the next in a long line of men who Beano Cook handed a Heisman Trophy to before he took his first snap (see Ron Powlus).  He was ranked ahead of Andrew Luck, Landry Jones, and Blaine Gabbert coming out of high school.

I also took a look at this years All-American Team, as well as their position rankings coming out of high school:  Wisconsin’s Monte Ball was the 47th ranked running back, South Carolina’s Melvin Ingram was the #20 defensive end, Morris Claibourne of LSU was the #90 wide reciever and Tyrann Mathieu (Honey Badger don’t care) was the #31 cornerback, LaMichael James of Oregon was the #40 running back, and Justin Blackmon of Oklahoma State was the 58th ranked wide reciever.

So what does all of this really mean?  I have a few quick theories.

First of all, most of us who follow college recruiting have seen a three star player sign at a big time SEC school and wake up the next morning as a four star kid.  Once the recruiting services get word that a Nick Saban or an Urban Meyer are looking at a kid their stock often rises sharply.  Serriously, what is the difference between the #29 and #30 nose tackle?  Height?  Hooking your horns to a recruiting service to predict your programs future may not be the best game plan.  Just ask Mack Brown and his Texas Longhorns who used their #3 cumulative recruiting class to get them to an 8-5 record this season, their second disappointing campaing in a row.  At the end of the day, if the recruiting services knew everything about recruiting, I have to assume that they would be employed by a school rather than a website.

Secondly, the really successful coaches, the ones that have sustained success ofer a long period of time, recruit kids that match their style rather than a particularly impressive Youtube profile.  Nick Saban went all the way up to Flint, Michigan four years ago to get a little known three star kid, ranked as the 58th best running back.  You may know him as Heisman winner Mark Ingram.  Face it, if a player does not fit in with the personality of a team or the personality and coaching style of the coaching staff, it may not matter how talented he is.  Mark Richt and Isaiah Crowell may be able to attest to this theory.

Finally, as the saying goes, its not always what you have, but what you do with it.  Based on the charts above, one could argue that he’s a man, he’s 40, and Mike Gundy does a heck of a job coaching his Cowboys up in Stillwater.  The same could be said for Chris Peterson at Boise State, or even Bret Bielema at Wisconsin who has not had a top 25 recruiting class in any of the past five seasons.  And again, it might be time for Texas to raise an eyebrow at Mack Brown who seems to be failing to help his players reach their full potentials.

While injuries cannot be prevented and transfers are inevitable for all programs, I feel that the above information is pretty hard to argue with.  Still, as we go into signing day next week, diehards like myself will have our ears to the radio as we sit in our offices hitting the refresh button on our laptops and cruising the message boards for rumors of our schools next big score.  Why do we put ourselves through this?  Why do we ignore the cold hard facts that signing day does not promise our programs any success or lack there of?  Well, it’s simple.  We’re junkies.  And we love it.

I’ll see you folks next week when I review Alabama’s recruiting class (expected to be the best in the nation) and try to convince you that everything you just read is a bunch of bull.