I subscribe to a free newsletter from SB Nation called “The Read Option” and, since it’s free, I’m pasting it below. I’m sure many of you have already read it.
A couple of things I note…Author’s analysis doesn’t mean the CFP committee is not corrupt. I’ll never be convinced otherwise. Secondly, there is no way we or any other non P5 school can crack the top recruiting rankings for a rolling four year average > 50% of 4 an 5 stars to make us even a statistical contender unless we are in a P5 or P4 or whatever.
Thirdly, football isn’t basketball and the chances of a true football Cinderella winning two playoff games against teams with much better athletes is pretty much zero, in my opinion. Finally, winning helps a lot
see Washington’s rise. Give it a read and let the comments flow!
We love college football for the crazy upsets and the drama. But when it comes to the overall prize, you need a baseline of elite talent to take home the trophy. A lot of elite talent.
I track this using my Blue-Chip Ratio statistic.
Put simply, teams who win the title have signed more four- and five-star recruits than two- and three-stars over their previous four signing classes. This has been true for essentially as far back as modern recruiting rankings have existed (depending on how you define “modern,” or roughly back to the classes that led to super-talented USC and Texas national champs of the mid-2000s).
Generally, teams whose signees have been fewer than 50% blue-chips over the previous four years can’t be considered national title contenders.
“Do all recruits count? What data do you use for this?”
All signees count. Transfers and walk-ons do not. Non-JUCO transfers are not governed by recruit rules, are not rated anew and — though they’re important to every team — are rarely consequential enough to turn a non-contender into a contender. Walk-ons are almost never rated. Sticking with signees helps to standardize the process. If a player signs with a school and is released from his National Letter of Intent and signs with a new school, as opposed to transferring, I count that player toward the new school with which he signed.
I use the 247Sports Composite, which blends the major rankings by 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN. It formerly used Scout as well, but 247Sports bought Scout.
I manually curate it each year, because some team sites erroneously list walk-ons as signees. Removing non-scholarship players is by far the most time-consuming element. Also, older classes are fraught with errors. For data in this current decade, it has improved, but more than a handful of team sites still lump in zero-star walk-ons.
I also do not remove signees who fail to qualify academically or who are denied admission due to off-field reasons. It’s difficult to track, with so many signees on so many teams.
This metric is useful for determining which teams have signed elite talent. It is not the most useful for differentiating between bad and below average teams or below average and average.
Some teams simply do not have a shot of signing elite prospects and must instead find diamonds in the rough. That’s a strategy that can produce wins and conference titles, though perhaps not Playoff rings.
Coaching and development are extremely important. But by NCAA rule, coaches get just 20 hours per week with their players. Only so much development is possible. Talent acquisition is by far the most important element, especially when trying to compete for the biggest prize.
Entering 2019, 16 teams meet the Blue-Chip Ratio mark.
- Ohio State 81%
- Alabama 80%
- Georgia 79%
- LSU 64%
- Florida State 61%
- Clemson 60%
- USC 60%
- Penn State 60%
- Michigan 60%
- Texas 60%
- Oklahoma 60%
- Auburn 58%
- Washington 54%
- Notre Dame 54%
- Florida 53%
- Miami 51%
None of these teams is a surprise.
If you were asked to name the top 20 programs in college football, you would have most or all of these teams on the list. And every team on this list has won a title in the last 40 years.
The SEC has the most BCR teams (five), followed by the ACC and Big Ten (three each), Big 12 (two), and Pac-12 (two). Notre Dame also made it. Due to the number of teams meeting the threshold this year, this looks much more balanced between the conferences than previous seasons.
Still, 16 teams is a lot. The average number of BCR teams in the previous five seasons was 12.
There might not be anything to this. Let’s look next year to see if it continues, though I do have a theory that teams are signing fewer non-qualifiers, thus reducing the total number of signees (the denominator) in the calculation.
The increasing number of teams might not be a trend, but increasing separation between the haves and have-nots? That could be.
In 2014, no team was above 75%. In 2015, only Alabama was. In 2016 and 2017, it was still just Alabama. 2018 saw Ohio State get into that super elite class.
Now 2019 has three of the four highest Blue-Chip Ratios ever (Alabama in 2017 was at 80%). Frequently, a team comes close to the 80% mark, but never have the top three all been anywhere near this high. And Georgia is fractions of a percentage point from cracking the 80% barrier with Alabama and Ohio State.
Of course, Clemson took home the Playoff title with a 61% BCR in 2018, so fans whose teams make the list should be happy, not overly worried about the trio at the very top. BCR has always been a minimum required threshold.
Equally as interesting (to me) is the lack of teams in the 38-48 range, a mark that usually suggests a team might be just one class away from making the jump. Texas A&M, Stanford, Tennessee, and Oregon are the only 4 in that range right now.
But the days of discussing whether South Carolina, Ole Miss, Michigan State, TCU, etc. can make a jump into the upper tier of talent are at least shelved for a few years. Those teams were winning a lot and scoring some wins against the CFB goliaths, which left us to wonder if they could turn wins into a few more elite recruits per season.
How well does this list match up with whom Vegas believes will win the national championship?
Extremely well. The top 10 teams in the Vegas odds are all BCR schools.
Among the non-BCR teams, Oregon has the best odds at 33/1, while Nebraska, Texas A&M, and Wisconsin are at 50/1. That makes sense in some ways, since Oregon has a Heisman Trophy candidate QB, Justin Herbert, who will need to play more like his 2017 self. I’ve theorized that the first non-BCR team to win a title will do so due to having a special quarterback, and Oregon was the most recent non-BCR team to come close, thanks to Marcus Mariota.
Nebraska and Wisconsin could rack up wins thanks to easy schedules, but would face real questions about their ability to win three straight games against presumably BCR schools, in the Big Ten Championship and two Playoff games.
But for the most part, non-BCR teams do not make the Playoff. And when they do, they get outplayed a majority of the time. See Michigan State vs. Alabama.
Washington, Florida, and Miami are new to the Blue-Chip Ratio club this year.
And each team arrived in a slightly different way.
- Chris Petersen has slowly built Washington from a 22% BCR in 2014 to 23, 26, 30, 40, and finally 54 this year.
- Florida was last a member of the club in 2014, dropped out for four seasons, and is back thanks to a strong 2019 class.
- Miami’s 2019 class was not great by any measure, but having the destitute 2015 class drop off is enough to boost the Hurricanes’ four-year average over the mark.
Here are the biggest risers and fallers in the Ratio since 2018:
Note: this doesn’t include every team in FBS. The pool of teams examined here are those who had at least a 20 percent BCR in the previous year. That cutoff is useful because teams who are below that mark do not have serious championship aspirations.
- Up: Washington (14%), Florida (11%), Georgia (10%), Oklahoma (7%), Penn State (7%)
Petersen’s Huskies are this year’s best example of how winning games can turn into better recruits.
- Down: UCLA (-13%), USC (-11%), Florida State (-6%)
Chip Kelly failed to recruit well in Year 1. It’s especially damaging due to cross-town USC being down. And FSU’s number dropping, while its in-state rivals are rising, has to be concerning for FSU fans.
In the Playoff era, UCLA is now the team to have fallen the farthest out of the club. Here are all the programs to have achieved the 50% mark at any point from 2014 onward:
Who could be next to join the BCR club?
Believe it or not, it’s probably going to be another SEC school. The Aggies are at 44%, and another elite class could do it.
Oregon could, in theory, make the jump in 2020, but that would require going from 38% to 50%, an enormous jump in one year. Ditto for Tennessee. It would not be a shock to see the Ducks and Volunteers creep up in 2021, though.
How has this stat performed in the past?
- Clemson, with a 61% mark, took it home in 2018. And all 4 Playoff teams were BCR schools, plus the school (Georgia) which some clamored for as a top-4 team.
- Alabama won it all in 2017 with an incredible 80% mark.
- Clemson took home the title in 2016 after signing 52% blue chips in the 2013-16 classes.
- In 2015, Alabama had a 77% mark.
- In 2014, it was Ohio State at 68%.
- In 2013, Florida State was at 53%.
- In 2012, Alabama was at 71% …
- … just as Bama was in 2011.
And so on.