Barometer for success?

Now that National Signing Day is finally over, I thought I would give you my impressions and observations of the final recruiting rankings as determined by Rivals.com. We enjoy playing the recruiting game almost a much as we enjoy playing the game itself, and it would be kind of nice to know what we’ve got now that we’ve got it.

The top 10 teams in recruiting are pretty much exactly those you would have expected. If you were to make a list of the schools you would think the best high school players would want to play for these are the teams most of you would have picked. They are the most storied programs in the country.

Rivals.com 2008 Top 10

1. Alabama (7-7, unranked)

2. Notre Dame (3-9, unranked)

3. Florida (9-4, No. 13)

4. Miami (5-7, unranked)

5. Oklahoma (11-3, No. 8)

6. Georgia (11-2, No. 2)

7. Florida State (7-6, unranked)

8. Ohio State (11-2, No. 5)

9. Michigan (9-4, No. 18)

10. Southern California (11-2, No. 3)

You probably should throw in LSU ( No. 11) and Texas ( No. 14), but based on things like tradition, location, and championship potential, these are, without a doubt, the places I would consider the easiest to recruit to in the country. If you look back over the past five years, every one of these schools has been in the top 10 in recruiting before and 80 percent have been there at least three times. If you were to list the top 10 teams in recruiting for 2009 I would bet that most of these schools would be right back up there again.

Year in and year out these schools are going to get the best football players. They would really have to screw up badly not to have a great recruiting year. For example, three of this year’s top four recruiting schools ended the 2007 season unranked, and none of them were able to post double digit victories. In fact, two of them didn’t even have winning seasons. Yet these four teams, according to Rivals.com, ended up with the best players in the country.

If you look at the national champions over the past nine years, every one has come from these 12 schools. You can even go back over the past 20 years and 16 (80 percent) of the national champions still come from this group. You can almost be assured that, for the foreseeable future, the national champion is going to come from one of these teams.

However, if you look at the final rankings of the 2007 season, you see a different picture when it comes to which teams actually had the best records.

2007 Associated Press Top 10

1. LSU (12-2)

2. Georgia (11-2)

3. Southern California (11-2)

4. Missouri (12-2)

5. Ohio State (11-2)

6. West Virginia (12-2)

7. Kansas (12-1)

8. Oklahoma (11-3)

9. Virginia Tech (11-3)

T10. Boston College (11-3)

T10. Texas (10-3)

Having highly ranked recruiting classes does not seem to be a prerequisite to having a great season and ending up in the top 10. Four of these teams (Missouri, West Virginia, Kansas, and Boston College) have not had a top 20 recruiting class in the past five years. Still, each of these teams won 11 or more games.

The bottom line is that having a great recruiting class is important, but it does not guarantee success. Likewise, an average recruiting class does not necessarily lead to an average season. Coaching, attrition, strength of schedule, and even luck will all factor into the equation for winning or losing ballgames.