Football is the ultimate team game, and there are many variables to consider when attempting to gauge the relative strength of one team versus another. Some important factors include coaching, overall talent, motivation, experience, injuries and home field advantage. Because there are so many variables, we sometimes see a team with an obvious talent deficiency beat a team with superior talent; Appalachian State beating Michigan a few years ago is a good example. And while we know that pretty much any team can beat another on almost any given day, teams with the most talent usually win. That’s why the teams that are perceived to have the better talent are usually laying points to the teams that are perceived to have lesser talent.
We can see this very clearly by simply looking at the recent BCS national champions. What do Auburn, Alabama, Florida, LSU, Texas, Oklahoma & USC have in common? All of them are pulling top 10 (and many times top 5) recruiting classes virtually every year.
Why do we not see BCS national champions coming from conferences like the Big East and ACC? Because the teams in those leagues are not pulling the kind of talent it takes to reach the apex of college football. They are not pulling top 10 and top 5 recruiting classes.
Let’s take a quick glimpse at last year’s ACC Champion Virginia Tech. The Hokies are a well-coached and well-run organization, but they never seem to be able to rise to the pinnacle of college football. Why? The main reason is that they simply don’t have the talent necessary to achieve that level of success. For example VT’s last 5 recruiting classes ranked 33rd, 23rd, 23rd, 18th & 29th nationally for an average ranking of 25.2. Juxtapose that with a team like Alabama whose last 5 recruiting rankings are 1, 5, 1, 1 & 10 for an average of 3.4. That’s why when these two teams squared off in the opening game a couple of years ago, I said that Bama would win and cover (despite starting a green QB). I said that Bama had superior talent across the board, and therefore VT would not hang with Bama for 4 quarters. In the end, that is exactly how it played out.
Every single coach in the country understands that recruiting is the lifeblood of their program. They understand that recruiting better talent is the quickest way to achieve greater success. They know if they don’t recruit talented players, they will most likely get steamrolled by the teams that do. And that’s why schools and coaching staffs expend so much time, energy and money to recruit the best players they can. Do you think Cam Newton was an important recruit for Auburn? You better believe he was. Auburn had no chance of running the table without him, that’s for sure. Recruiting is soooooo important that some schools and coaches are even willing devise clever ways to circumvent the rules to gain a recruiting advantage.
I’ve been following recruiting for a very long time (before it was cool to do so), and I have never seen an uglier more contentious recruiting season than this past one. Saban even mentioned it in his National Signing Day press conference. We may even see a coach being criminally prosecuted for the first time ever over his recruiting activities. That’s how huge recruiting is in college football.
Georgia is another team that consistently recruits elite talent. The reason they do so is because the state of Georgia is a hotbed for blue chip recruits, and they have very little in-state competition for those recruits. The Atlanta metropolitan area alone has more high school football prospects than the entire state of Alabama. That’s why Saban and other out-of-state coaches recruit Georgia so heavily. Right now Alabama is Georgia’s biggest competition for the peach state’s top prospects. This past recruiting season some of the nation’s top high school prospects hailed from the state of Georgia, and Richt and Saban went head-to-head on almost all of them. 4* DE Sterling Bailey, 5* RB Isaiah Crowell, 5* DE Ray Drew, 4*DB Malcolm Mitchell, 4* TE Jay Rome, and 4* OL Xzavier Ward are all Georgia blue chippers that spurned Alabama and opted to remain in-state.
To provide a little bit of perspective on these recruiting rankings, there were only 26 5* prospects in the entire country, and about another 75 4* prospects. All of Georgia’s 15 4* and 5* recruits were ranked in the top 100 in the nation. Pulling 15% of the top 100 prospects gave Georgia the 5th best recruiting class in the nation. Georgia’s last 5 recruiting classes average out to an 8.4 (4 out of their last 5 recruiting classes have ranked in the top 10). Recall that VT’s 5-year average was 25.2.
Boise State’s roster is comprise almost entirely of 2* & 3* recruits. In the 2010 recruiting class, Boise signed their first 4* prospect ever, Tyrone Crawford out of Bakersfield, CA. Boise has never pulled a top 50 recruiting class in their history, and their last 5 recruiting classes average out to a 67.2. So while it’s quite clear that there is a vast difference in talent between a team like Georgia that averages an 8.4 recruiting ranking over the past 5 years versus Boise at 67.2, we know that Boise makes the most of the talent that they are blessed with. The same cannot be said of Mark Richt and the Georgia Bulldogs.
I use to say that there was no coach in college football history that got less from his talent than Tennessee’s erstwhile coach Phillip Fulmer. But now that he has departed, Mark Richt has assumed the crown. Richt is the Mike Shula of the SEC East. What I mean by that is his teams take on his personality – he’s soft and his teams are soft. Knowledgeable Georgia fans understand this, which is why they want him out of Athens. This also is why I issued the edict last season that I would not wager on the Dawgs the entire season.
Alabama fans and fans of other SEC teams love Richt for the same reason they use to love Shula. With the gold mine of talent Georgia is sitting on, if they ever get their act together and hire a top-notch coach, they’ll be perennial national title contenders like Alabama is now.
The game between Boise and Georgia presents the oddest betting situation I’ve ever witnessed. Never have I seen a road team with such a wide talent deficiency give points to a home team with such a superior level of talent. If it has ever happened in college football before, I certainly don’t recall it, and I’ve been around a while. Last year we had a similar situation with the VT, but the talent gap was not nearly as large in that game.
and I am not, I can surely bet against them.
). I still have lots of catching up to do before kick off...but analysis like this gets me ahead by leaps and bounds. That's why I come here, bro. I'll be following your posts religiously.
.
Hot Forum Topics
