Football 101 - Football Recruiting

Welcome to Week 2 of Football 101.  Hope you're not still hungover from the weekend.  Throwing up in class is strictly prohibited.  Today's topic is recruiting - an overview of where these players come from and how they end up in the College Football world.


Good recruiting is an essential part of having success as a team.  You can't win games with 5'4" Wide Receivers and a QB who can't throw the ball longer than 10 yards.  The theme of Mark Dantonio's first few years here has been to lay a solid foundation for the years to come.  This starts with a talent upgrade across the board.


So how the heck does one find this talent? Pick a high school and go to a game?  Slightly more complicated.  For the MSU staff, they have developed relationships with the HS coaches around Michigan and Ohio.  Every year or so, they'll call them up and say "hey, who's blowing it up for you? Got any players who'd be interested playing college ball?"  As you can imagine, there are about 20 other coaches in the area asking the same thing.  A HS Coach wants his kids to succeed in the future, so they'll probably respond to the coach(es) who gives their player the best chance of success (in the coach's eyes).  Being an alumni of that school can't hurt, either.

Prized 5-star recruit William Gholston, in 2010 class, has already seen action this fall.

The other source for information is the scouting groups.  The three major ones are Rivals.com, Scout.com, and ESPN.  These groups are independent organizations who go around to High Schools across the country and look at players who catch their eye.  They'll watch videos, look at their stats and size, and give them a "Star rating" that goes between 0-5.  Usually you won't see 1's, it's pretty much 0,2,3,4,5.  The Star Rating is meant to predict how good that player will be at the college level.  The 5-star rating is reserved for only the elite players in the country.  These are the guys who usually end up at USC, Ohio State, Florida, Texas, etc.  Sometimes, however, a coach is good enough to snag a 5-star or two when they haven't had as much success as the aforementioned schools.


Keep in mind, those stars are predictors.  There are always 4 and 5 stars that don't end up being outstanding at the college levels, and similarly 2 and 3 stars who end up being huge game changers.  Example: The best recruit, by stars, of Dantonio's 2008 class (meaning they were freshmen in the Fall of '08) was WR Fred Smith.  To this day, Smith has rarely seen the field.  He has recently moved to Fullback in hopes of making an impact there and recently cracked the depth chart.  On the flip side, Le'Veon Bell, the Freshman who has more than carried his weight in the first two games this season, was a 2-star recruit.  Javon Ringer was a 3-star recruit and ended up being one of the best running backs in the nation.


Here's a few general statements about success in recruiting.  You get more stars, you get more wins.  Also, it takes about 3-4 years to see the results of recruiting, when those recruits become juniors and seniors.  Here's the average star ratings of teams between 2003 - 2008.  I'm assuming freshman and sophomores haven't done a ton to add to the win column.


Florida: 3.69
USC: 3.89
Michigan: 3.60
Texas: 3.63
Oklahoma: 3.61
Notre Dame: 3.40
Ohio State: 3.56
Michigan State: 2.77
Indiana: 2.18


What do we notice about this list?  These are some of the top teams in recruiting and each and every one of them went to BCS games in the time period in question, if not National Championships.  I threw Indiana in there as a comparison point - the Hoosiers have gone to one bowl game in 14 years...and as you can see recruit very little talent.  There are teams, like Boise State, who also don't get high-star players, but are successful.  This is evidence of a fantastic coaching job by their staff on developing players who had some flaws in high school ball.  The previously mentioned flip side is Notre Dame: they may have gone to bowl games, but have been consistently hammered by most of the teams on this list.  They've got the stars, but apparently the coaches haven't pulled their weight.

The Florida Gators are perennial contenders, winning the national title in 2006 and 2008

So there you have it! Again, much of the star rankings are rules of thumb: guys slip through the cracks and some guys are just over-hyped.  For those curious, MSU's recruiting classes in 2009 and 2010 have been 3.3 and 3.05, respectively.  Good things are happening in East Lansing with recruiting and it should translate to good things on the field, as well.  Go Green!