Football Recruiting 2019: How do the Illini Stack Up?

#51      

Deleted member 631370

D
Guest
I like the colors.

As one of my stats profs was fond of saying, "Garbage in, garbage out." Your analysis, while impressive, is utterly dependent on ratings, which are hardly scientific (being kind here). Fully understand there isn't any other data to base these analyses on. But still, you're relying on a very subjective metric. Good talking point though. Very commendable initiative.

It's a shame that when that meteor eventually finishes us off, the question of the extent to which ratings predict performance will remain unresolved.

A few things have been established. Teams that have a BCR (or blue chip ratio) of less than 50% -- meaning, less than 50% of their roster consists of 4/5* recruits -- have never won a title in the modern era of recruiting ratings. And year after year, team recruiting rankings correlate fairly well with performance. It's not a perfect correlation, but the aggregate data definitely supports correlation at a minimum.

I know you're not discarding it outright (as many have done). And I agree with your basic point. I guess I'm more supportive of relying on ratings than many, but of course there are inherent limitations.

I'll put it this way. Ratings are *generally* indicative of talent, and talent is a necessary -- but not sufficient -- condition for success.
 
#52      
That would give us enough time to add some individual insight on our opponents as well. I was thinking, list their top 5-10 best players and see what they were ranked out of HS along coupled with how many years they have been in college.
Maybe a 3-D chart with the class years making the depth of the columns, or even 2D if the width can change. I'll play around with it.

It would be really nice to have the current rosters with the rating, but that might be too involved for every team. Grabbing teams by recruiting years, pulling numbers and creating a graph is a simple task for me. Figuring out who is on a roster and what their rating was makes it much more time consuming. Obviously I would only have to do that once for Illinois. In the end, I'm not sure what that would tell us. Maybe a comparison of the recruiting classes with the actual team would be of interest. I'm a little curious if some schools are better at keeping talent than others. Just some random thoughts, not sure if I'll have to time to get that data.
 
#53      

Joel Goodson

respect my decision™
Just to be clear, I don't think the prospect ratings are garbage. But I think the difference between a .87 and .88 or even a .89 is completely marginal in many cases. Plus, these ratings are a talent snapshot. There are many other factors in development.
 
#54      
It would be really nice to have the current rosters with the rating, but that might be too involved for every team..
I just discovered that 247 has rosters, by year, with ratings, in a table where I can easily pull the data. Fun charts coming this fall (or maybe sooner)!
 
#56      

Deleted member 654622

D
Guest
Maybe a 3-D chart with the class years making the depth of the columns, or even 2D if the width can change. I'll play around with it.

It would be really nice to have the current rosters with the rating, but that might be too involved for every team. Grabbing teams by recruiting years, pulling numbers and creating a graph is a simple task for me. Figuring out who is on a roster and what their rating was makes it much more time consuming. Obviously I would only have to do that once for Illinois. In the end, I'm not sure what that would tell us. Maybe a comparison of the recruiting classes with the actual team would be of interest. I'm a little curious if some schools are better at keeping talent than others. Just some random thoughts, not sure if I'll have to time to get that data.
If you wanted to throw that info into a graph as well, I wont stop you. I was thinking more along the lines of:
This week's best players;
1. Joe Schmow - Junior .89 4 star out of Nebraska
2. John Doe - Senior .85 3 star out of Illinois
3. Joseph Smith - Red Shirt Sophomore .84 3 Star out of Texas
…..

That way others can share the workload. And we can put some real context to the better players we are about to face. How many years they have been in college, what state are they originally from, what is their HS rankings. I am going to assume that we would get a plethora of 3 star Juniors/Seniors on that list. If you consider the conference we play in.
 
#57      
Ford is a 5* TE, but only has 3 years left, so I would include him with one star removed, so a 4* due to only 3 years of eligibility.
If he is immediately eligible, I wouldn't dock him at all & I say it is a plus as in theory we gave up his least productive year for his 3 best years...then go out and recruit another kid with his scholarship. If he sits out a year, not that big of a deal we redshirt kids, but for him we would be giving up 4 scholarship years to get only 3 playing, instead of the usual 5 to get 4. At the point the redshirt years start hitting depth, then maybe.
 
#58      
I just discovered that 247 has rosters, by year, with ratings, in a table where I can easily pull the data. Fun charts coming this fall (or maybe sooner)!
much appreciate your analysis and graphs. turns our ramblings on recruit rankings and rosters based on thin air into ramblings with data