Fitz and his staff have done a solid job of identifying talent and developing it. In our last three years we have had two ten win seasons and we have won two bowl games. However, I do not feel like we have seen a bump in recruiting that would typically follow this level of success. While the recruiting rankings do not mean anything I am surprised that we are not landing a few more blue chippers (that would qualify). I feel like Barnett was able to take parlay our success into stronger recruiting classes. Hopefully with our new lakeside facility we can take advantage of our recent success.
On Field Success and Recruiting
- Thread starter ajr938
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We are getting good players. There's no reason to think that will stop anytime soon, especially with the facilities coming online and the addition of two high-quality young coaches.
If you look at the recruiting rankings properly, i.e. focusing on averages, we're doing quite well according to them. (Yes, recruiting ratings/rankings are a bunch of hocus pocus, but they don't apply the same way to every program).
Just look at 24/7 under Fitz:
2018: 0.8558
2017: 0.8504
2016: 0.8453
2015: 0.8407
2014: 0.8579
2013: 0.8421
2012: 0.8357
2011: 0.8337
2010: 0.8555
2009: 0.8360
2008: 0.7980
All the services ratings are pretty similar on this point, that we've been continually improving in recruiting under Fitz since his first years. Yes, there are notable exceptions like 2010 and 2014 where we get a few more studs than in other classes, but they're explainable in the fact that we were coming off some pretty good seasons with a lot of buzz (2008 team went 9-4, 2012 team went 10-3 with the first bowl win in decades, and we had an end-of-season ranking in 2012 and a preseason ranking in 2013 to set up that monster 2014 class).
There's also been a notable diversification away from the Big Ten region over Fitz's tenure and some of the pipelines in Florida, Texas, Georgia especially are really starting to bear fruit in terms of top-quality recruits the past couple of years:
The early Fitz years, nearly all of our top recruits were from the Big Ten region (Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan); those states were giving us our best rated recruits. We were drawing some recruits from Texas, California, Florida, but they weren't as highly rated as our recruits from the Midwest.
Now look at at the past 2 years: of our top 5 players from those two classes: 3 are from Texas, 1 from Georgia, 1 from Kansas, 1 from Florida, 2 from the Carolinas, and 2 from Illinois.
And overall, we've gotten 10 from Texas and Georgia combined over two years and many more from other sun-belt states. Most of our classes are being drawn from areas like that now instead of the Big Ten region (which still provides some top recruits, but it's nowhere near the early classes).
Over time, as we continue to win and continue to draw players from schools in those regions, we'll get higher rated recruits from those regions.
Winning and buzz are important, facilities are also important, we're basically getting to where we need to be to consistently win and challenge for the division/Big Ten championship.
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You really want us to believe that incremental 0.005 improvements on 247's "composite" are meaningful?
There is a ton of tape available on pretty much every player in this day and age. Trust your eyes, not the number of stars or "composite" next to a player's name on some list.
As a statistician, yes I trust the numbers more than my layperson (when it comes to analyzing recruits) biases.
All the recruiting services show the same trends for our recruits:
A statistically significant increase in the quality of our recruits as rated by the various services.
Even in a general sense we're able to draw in more talent ranked in the top 100 of the top states. All of that is meaningful.
I don't put much stock in ratings, especially to 4 decimal places, but our most highly regarded classes in the foreseeable future will accrue when Illinois has an outstanding crop of players, as was the case in 2014.
By necessity, we have diversified geographically extensively to get the players we need. And we have been getting good players from all over. The staff deserve a TON of credit for this--for identifying undervalued (hyped) talent in distant regions and reeling them in. What evidence of this exists? Look at the lowest rated guys in recent years, and see how they have contributed at NU: Guys like Hartage, XWash (he messed up, but was a good player before that), McGee, Alex Miller, Warren Long, etc. were all low-rated prospects he became good starters.
The staff at this point should be given the benefit of any doubt that the players we offer are P5 players, regardless of their composite score.
What the staff can be rightly questioned on is their ability to land the relatively few top shelf guys who can qualify academically but are in high demand. This is where NU can really improve its performance. We get good players. A few very good players. We need to get more very good players to take the next step.
I used to think this as well, but now I'm not as sure we need Illinois to have outstanding crops of players for us to have those kinds of classes.
I can easily imagine Fitz's near future classes being regarded more highly than any of the past without meaningful recruiting in the Big Ten region.
"Need," no. But makes it a whole hell of a lot easier. As Fitz has said time and again, recruiting at Northwestern is always going to start in the state of Illinois, then the B1G footprint, then certain "football crazy" pockets of the country where we've done well (i.e. Texas, Florida, etc.).
Not sure whether you're actually a statistician, but this is a very interesting paper. If there's a more recent version than 2007, I would love to read it: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1527002506298125
Moral of the story: distance from home is typically the #1 factor in a recruit's decision.
One of my majors at NU was statistics (most of those classes under Bruce Spencer, labor/demographics statistician who's still there). One of my grad degrees took me further in that direction before the '08 market crash made me re-evaluate my career.
Yeah I've read that and other articles based on it that come to the same conclusion.
I think the conclusions generally remain true for most schools not located in the Northeast or Midwest.
But I think over the past 10 years or so, there's been a tangible shift in Big Ten recruiting in shifting away from the region. Urban Meyer (and Harbaugh) accelerated the trend as has the addition of Nebraska which has always recruited from further away.
This is one of the more general looks recently with conference maps of recruiting and the like:
http://rukkus.com/blog/college-football-player-hometowns/
What it comes down to though is Florida, Texas, and Georgia are likely to come consistently in the top 5 states for Big Ten recruits over the next 10-15 years based on the past 10 year trends and based on a continuous shift in % of elite recruits coming from those states. I think Florida will consistently pass Ohio for the #1 spot in total # of Big Ten recruits as well.
Of course there's always caveats about linear trends but demographic trends are stable over short (10-15 year) time frames.
Well it depends. 0.005 probably not, but over multiple years the uptrend has been larger than that. The standard deviation of the mean scales down with sqrt(n). So say there are 20 recruits in an average year, and that you think the standard error of 247's ranking for a given recruit is ~5 pts (i.e. if they rate him at 80, there is a ~68% chance that his true skill level coming out of HS is between 75-85). sqrt(20) is about 4.5, so that would imply that their mean estimate has a standard error of about 1 pt. If you think that the standard error for an individual recruit is more like 9 pts (i.e. if they rate him at 80, there is a ~68% chance his true skill when coming out of HS is between 71 and 89), then you would end up with a standard error for the mean of 2.
Let's throw out the outlier of Fitz's first year, when he was in transition. We've improved about 2 pts from most of the 2009-2012 years to the last couple years - something like from 83.5 to 85.5 or so. If your individual recruit standard error is ~5 then we are 2 std devs better, which is statistically significant. If your individual recruit standard error is ~9 then we are about 1 std dev better, which does not reach statistical significance, but still is not irrelevant.
Of course, note that using averages would not account for a consistent lateral error in the grading of NU players overall - i.e. if the rating service is biased against NU players generally, that would shift the entire distribution leftward without impacting the variance or characteristics of it. It doesn't change the math on statistical significance though.
Anyways, TL DR I thought Zeek wrote an interesting post with some useful data and conclusions in it.
Yeah, this is certainly true too; I don't discount the fact that the rating services focus on the schools (and their recruits) that provide them most of their revenue $ and the largest numbers of subscribers.
But overall, the numbers that the recruiting services do provide on NU do show a consistent improvement.
I personally think that we should see NU's recruiting ratings consistently rise to somewhere around 87-88 under 24/7's numbers and the other services' similar metrics (i.e. classes with multiple 4 stars and the rest nearly all being high 3 stars; those types of classes would be ranked around #20 in the country based on average rating). It might take another few years for our numbers to rise to that range, and it will likely require seasons with marquee wins, marquee bowl appearances, and ranked NU teams.
I'm not sure how big of a bump our recent winning, the new facility, and 2 good new coaches provide, but I do think we should see the recruiting services show that we're getting to the level we expect NU's recruiting to look like from an external perspective.
Whether that's partially a recharacterization of the talent that we've always focused on or it's from getting more of our first tier offers into the program, I think it's reasonable to think a boost like that is possible given everything the program has going for it at the present.
If you look at history of the best programs, they get a majority of their players either from instate or a 200 mile radius. We can never do that but having a descent amount of good local talent sure helps. We see them first and can more easily develop relationships plus family and friends can more easily come. Face it, a lot of good prospects would prefer to not go across the country. And since WI, MN, IA, IN are not great sources of D1 talent , that means IL has to be a good source. Sure makes the job easier.
I hate when we aren’t in on local studs. Getting Clayton and JJTBC really created a local buzz and to me you build from the inside out.
Yeah I've studied the history and local recruiting will always be a factor, but there are reasons to think the last 10 years have witnessed permanent changes (with the caveat that these things can change again in the distant future).
Things like BTN and televising all games have made it easier for these kids to go further away. Do most still prefer a "big time" program nearby, less than 300 miles away? Sure.
I really do think we'll see the "average recruit's distance to NU" continue to increase.
If we can pull 1-3 extra studs from Texas/Florida/Georgia (top 50-75 players in those states), you really can build a class without meaningful Illinois or Big Ten contribution.
Fitz has the program set up extremely well to take advantage of Illinois while also prepared for the situation where the Big Ten region doesn't produce enough elite talent. Our pipelines in the South/Southwest are strong and fertile now compared to his earlier years.
Having Ayeni and McGarigle on the staff will help sell those recruits on coming to NU from farther away as well.
I think NU has made inroads in Georgia and is doing great in Texas, but Florida not so much. Ant was the last one I recall from FL. Paging CSC.
I generally believe in the worth of the recruiting rankings, but what I believe in is what it actually is- not what it is accused of being. Recruiting ratings are merely a projection of the potential worth of a player to play FBS college football based on a variety of objective and subjective factors, given the availability of those factors.
What it is not, is an absolute determination on a player’s success, or the player’s ability to successfully become a part of a certain program’s system and personnel.
What it is not, is an absolute determination on a player’s success, or the player’s ability to successfully become a part of a certain program’s system and personnel.
I guess I agree if you are saying that star rankings are meant to be a predictor of success. It's not perfect by any means, and a lot of it depends on who's doing the evaluating. Coaches know a hell of a lot more than recruiting services, but of course can make mistakes too. Stars are important for hype and creating excitement in the fan base and also as a recruiting tool.
Au contraire my fellow poster, but the linked analysis shows otherwise (also linked in an earlier post in this thread). The vast majority of teams have an average recruit distance over 200 miles. The biggest correlation to average distance is not team success but conference.
https://herosports.com/news/ncaa-fb...uiting-south-florida-mississippi-state-hawaii
All likely true and yes being ranked higher in recruiting, definitely impresses recruits. Still give me 20 4 and 5* guys over 3's and 2's and they will be playing in Indianapolis on a regular basis.
I thought it was up to coaching and not talent? Isn’t that why you want a new OLine coach?
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