SCIENCE!

Football, and more specifically, college football, is the greatest game there is. What makes it the greatest game, you ask? The reason football is the greatest game is because of the ball itself. The ball is shaped oddly and when it touches the ground it does funny things. Even an expert football player, someone who’s spent their entire life playing the game, often loses control of the ball [see: Wilson, John Parker]. It’s unwieldly and uncontrollable, like the game itself. A football isn’t round, so it’s not like other games. Round ball games are for pussies. You drop a round ball and it comes back to you. You drop a football and you don’t know what it will do. This uncertainty is why college football is the most beautiful game, and largely because of its uncertainty, many would say this year was the most beautiful college football season of all. The twists and turns started in January, still haven’t let up, and we’re only now approaching bowl season. Buried in all of this uncertainty, deep in the bowels of the game, is science. What is this science of which I speak? The cold, hard, indisputable science of recruiting. And buried within this science is the lab of mad scientist Joe Wetzel. In his lab, he’s done the impossible. He’s broken down recruiting class ranks and compared them to actual football results. If you’ve wondered how good of a job your school does with what they have - Joe Wetzel has the answers. He breaks down all the major conferences, and the Big East. Discuss if you will, but remember, this is science and therefore cannot be disputed.












30
Mmmmm, pie pants.
- Weis, Mangino, Fulmer, Simpson
Comment by tOSU_radar — December 6, 2007 @ 1:35 pm
29
Recruiting is inexact. There are always underrated guys. It’s impossible to judge every high school player in the country. Now that that’s out of the way, the higher your recruiting ranking the more likely you’ll finish high on an annual basis. The teams that grossly outperformed their rankings in those tables were mostly one year aberrations (UConn, Missouri and Kansas especially). In fact, the only two teams I can think of who consistently play well beyond what their recruiting rankings would indicate are West Virginia and Virginia Tech. It’s interesting that the SEC is the only conference where more than half the conference has a difference of single digits one way or the other. I have no idea what it means, but it’s vastly different from every other league.
Comment by Biggus Rickus — December 6, 2007 @ 9:11 am
28
#26: If a significant portion of a class transfers or whatever, that’s partly the coaching staff’s fault for not picking players that are a good fit for the school or team.
If there’s a coaching change, some transfers are to be expected. But to some degree the new coach has to work with what he has and do the best he can to bring in the players he wants as he can. Most people expect a coaching change to shake things up and consider that when thinking about how a staff is doing. Furthermore, the new staff can blame the old one for a few years.
Comment by Joe — December 5, 2007 @ 10:52 pm
27
Looks like Junk Science…the recruiting ratings are based on the class as it was upon recruitment, but the performance rating for each year is for the class(es) as they are. So if most of a class transfers/fails out/goes away, the comparison of the two is meaningless.
See ND class of 03-07, which ends up being about 6 strong by senior year.
Comment by NoVaDamer — December 5, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
26
#5
When dealing with Weis, I think the more applicable song is “One of Our Submarines.” The USS Our Lady… seems she went down on maneuvers.
Comment by panhandler — December 5, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
25
SCIENCE!
People measuring things, AND ADJUSTING THEM!
Comment by Jack — December 5, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
24
Without using multiple years’ results as the outcome the whole thing is sort of arbitrary
Comment by Grimey — December 5, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
23
I’m sorry, I was told there would be no math for this football blog.
#15 He does not assume all 5th years come back. The 03 class counts for 10% of the number, while the true JR’s and true SR”s count for 33%, so he’s assuming roughly 30% of the 03 class is still contributing as RS seniors.
Aside from the problem mentioned by WWJD in #6, there is another difficulty. The recruiting rankings are on a national basis, while the pre-bowl rankings are largely the result of competition within a small subset of schools.
Let’s pretend one of those subsets has greater access to the most fertile recruiting grounds. In this theoritical world, say 3/4’s of the set finishes in the top 30 of recruiting every year.
If the members of that set compete largely against each other, it will be exceedingly difficult for many of the them to live up to “expectations.” If you are the 25th best team in the nation based on talent, but you have to play five teams more talented, you are likely to lose too many games to finish near your “expected” ranking.
However, if you are a team of good to great talent that plays a series of games against largely inferior talent, it is relatively easy to exceed “expectaions.”
Until January 7th.
Comment by Chg — December 5, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
22
# 2 Dept:
College football is the SECOND greatest game there is…the FIRST is chasing babes!
But, I do think a bouncing football is far more predictable than trying to figure out the inscrutable ladies. (I think I used ‘inscrutable’ right in this context.)
Comment by Stacy Keibler Luvs Me — December 5, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
21
Good heavens Miss Yakamoto!
You’re beautiful.
Comment by GamecockTony — December 5, 2007 @ 4:52 pm