Closing recruiting book

Some final thoughts in the wake of National Signing Day 2008.

• Alabama’s No.1 finish, according to Rivals.com, is even more remarkable considering they only had one top 10 finish in the past five years, and that was a No.10 ranking in 2007.

• Every top 25 recruiting class came out of the BCS. The SEC led the way with six top 25 schools. They were followed by the Pac-10 and Big 12 with five each, and the ACC and Big Ten with four each. Second-ranked Notre Dame rounded out the group. The Big East did not have a single team finish in the top 25.

• I’m not sure if it means anything but three of the top 10 schools – Alabama, Miami (No. 4), and Florida State (No. 8) – all signed more than 30 recruits. The limit that you can actually enroll in any one year is 25 and no other team in the top 10 signed more than 24. All three of these programs are coming off mediocre seasons and obviously used quantity as well as quality to make a good showing on National Signing Day. In contrast, USC signed only 18 athletes yet still ended up ranked No. 7.

• With Texas being the bell cow university in one of the top three recruiting states in the country, you would expect the Longhorns to be a top 10 lock in recruiting every year instead of being in the No. 14 spot where they find themselves. Mack Brown feels that if they just do a great job of evaluating in-state talent they don’t need to worry about where they are ranked. Texas signed 19 of their 20 recruits from within the borders of Texas, but the one out-of-state prize who is most likely to put them back in the BCS championship game is new defensive coordinator Will Muschamp from Auburn.

• Maybe the biggest surprise in the top 25 was Minnesota, which ended up No. 17. In his first year as the head coach, Tim Brewster’s Gophers ended up a horrendous 1-11 and at times looked completely lost on the football field. Still, Minnesota was able to pull down the third best recruiting class in the Big Ten behind only Ohio State and Michigan.

• If you want to know where the most high school recruits come from you need not look much further than the most populated states. Other than New York with 19.3 million people and not much high school football, California (36.1M), Texas (22.9M), and Florida (17.8M) dominate the recruiting landscape. The next most populated states are Illinois and Pennsylvania with 12.8M and 12.4M respectively.

• Coach Dan Hawkins is proving a lot of people wrong about how difficult it is to recruit in Boulder with a 16th-ranked class at Colorado. After what was alleged to have occurred in recruiting under previous coach Gary Barnett and the subsequent self-imposed sanctions, many people were predicting gloom and doom for the Hawkins’ regime.

• Southern California finished a respectable No. 7 in Rivals.com’s final ranking but based on the fact that the Trojans have finished in the top three in each of the past five years – three times at No. 1 – it would have to be considered a bit of a down year. You have to wonder if UCLA’s No. 13 ranking didn’t have something to do with the slight dropoff for USC. Speaking of Rick Neuheisel’s first recruiting class, it was quite a showing for the Bruins who have had only one top 25 finish (No. 17 in 2006) in the past five years.

• After finishing the 2007 season at No. 7 and with an Orange Bowl victory over ACC champion Virginia Tech, Kansas (12-1) could do no better than No. 40 in recruiting. Considering that over the past five years the Jayhawks have been ranked 39th, 51st, 48th, 37th, and 46th, I don’t think they are all that worried in Lawrence as long as head coach Mark Mangino sticks around.

• Finally, I am convinced that the winning formula for a successful college football program is a great head coach, a leader at quarterback, and a bunch of good, solid athletes who buy into the system. Because the definition of a great college QB is based more on intangibles than anything else, I’m not sure that any recruiting service can predict who those guys will eventually be three or four years down the road. A Matt Flynn, Chase Daniel, or Todd Reesing is just as likely to fly under the radar as to have a five-star rating.