Life of the SportsGuy

What does it mean to be a recruiting champion?
National championships don’t necessarily follow directly after such achievements. Sometimes national championships lead to recruiting championships. Sometimes recruiting champs end up as national champs or top five final rating poll finishers at some point.
And sometimes there is no correlation at all, leaving fans scratching their heads.
Let’s look at some Rivals recruiting numbers for the past 10 years and compare them to top five final ratings polls.
Texas had a top five finish in the final ratings poll in 2004 and won a national championship back in 2005 off the strength of just one top-five recruiting class, with that achievement coming in 2002.
Since then, the Longhorns have reeled off top five recruiting classes in 2006, 07, 09, 10, 11, and 12. But they’ve only finished in the top five of the final ratings poll in two seasons, those being 2008 and 2009.
Florida State has finished in the top five in recruiting five times and has not a single top five final ratings poll finish to show for it.
Alabama has been in the top five of recruiting in each of the last five cycles, and the Crimson Tide have two national titles.
Ohio State has only finished in the top five recruiting wise in four seasons, but the Buckeyes have seven top five finishes in the final ratings poll.
There always will be anomalies.
Utah, Penn State, West Virginia, Boise State, Missouri, TCU, Oregon, Stanford, Oklahoma State and Arkansas have all finished in the top five of the final ratings without having finished in the top five of recruiting.
None of those teams has done it more than twice, however. And none of those teams have claimed a national title either.
Oregon came closest in losing to Auburn in the BCS title game.
Aside from Florida State, a few other schools finished in the top five of recruiting ratings without making a top five in the final ratings poll for any season.
Tennessee was a top five finisher in 2002, 05 and 07. Michigan had a top five position in 2004 and stands in the top five this year.
Notre Dame was in the top five on 2008 and Nebraska had a top five finish in 2005.
Those non-top-five finishers in terms of the final ratings poll can be discounted since they enjoyed great recruiting in few seasons.
Right?
Obviously the numbers above are flawed to a degree.
A school might be in the top five of the recruiting rankings for two out of 10 seasons, but be in the top 15 in the other eight years.
That would definitely affect the outcome on the field versus a team that was in the top five of the recruiting ratings in three of 10 years, but no where near the top 20 in any other year.
Other considerations have to go into this too.
Some teams use offensive or defensive schemes that require athletes thought to be less elite than others by recruiting analysts.
Some schools develop their talent well or vault their way up the final ratings by going nearly unbeaten against weaker opponents.
Some schools bolster their recruiting numbers by going the junior college route, while others try to develop high school kids.
And the discussion hasn’t even reached the boom versus bust issue that every athlete has to confront.
After all, these athletes, even ones from bigger metropolitan school districts, must make a significant leap to playing on the national stage.
Consider the bust rate in the NFL, where scouts have years of tape of more mature athletes playing at a national level, then compare that to the challenge of finding good players off of high school tapes where crazy performances against weaker foes could cloud the judgement of the observer.
How about the fact that a lot of these national recruits will travel across the country, possibly hundreds of miles from home, for the first time, only to face unreal expectations by fans, scouts, coaches, and boosters?
The list goes on.
Player prospects are further clouded by team needs which could have athletes buried on a depth chart or having to make a position shift.
Back to the original question.
What does it mean to be a recruiting champion?
It could mean a lot. It could mean nothing.
In the final analysis, it appears that solid recruiting over a number of years, plus good management of a program, leads to success.
And that makes it tough to decide on the first day of February just which team will be hoisting major hardware next January.
But it’s fun to talk about it.
So let’s just do that.
And hope for the best.