CPJ's Comment on no Top-10 Recruiting Classes at Tech

Bruce Wayne

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I realized that I hijacked the Recruiting Q&A thread to respond to IronJacket 7 so decided to create my first thread.

IJ7 was concerned that CPJ could have been signaling a defeatist attitude about getting the highest rated recruits with his comment that Tech has never had top 10 rated recruiting classes before so that should not be an expectation. That made me look at just what goes in to being a top 10 rated class. Here is what I found:

Rivals top 10 for last year (2013 class) averages:
Avg # of commits = 25
Avg # of 5-star = 2.2
Avg # of 4-star = 13.2
% of 4-5 stars per class = 60%

And here are the averages for those teams ranked 11-20 for the 2013 class:
Avg # of commits = 23.5
Avg # of 5-star = .5, in fact and as quite an oddity, all 5 5-star in the 11-20 ranked classes went to the same school and this is why USC ranked 13th with only 12 commits (five 5-star & seven 4-star), but I will keep them in the calculation anyway.
Avg# of 4-star = 8.9% of 4-5 stars per class = 40%

My conclusions:

To get in the top 10 you must oversign and still have over 60% of your commits ranked 4-5 stars.
The top 20 likewise favors oversigning and also demands that 40% or more of the class be rated 4 or 5-star.

First, neither of these outcomes are very likely at Tech.

Secondly, the class rankings and the star assignment favors the factories (even without talking about subscription rate conspiracies). The favoritism is built in by the fact that not only do rankings NOT treat oversigning as unethical, they reward it as a positive good. The assignment of stars to high schoolers also favors the factories since they are based solely on athletic prowess and retain total neutrality as regards intellectual aptitude for college and behavioral/character issues. The factories do not need to worry about scholastic aptitude or character because a) they oversign anyway which means they build-in protection against high attrition; and b) they do not have to worry about athletes attending/passing real college courses.

Here again we see that Tech does not operate in a manner that will allow it to be ranked in the top-10 of recruiting classes and only as a rarity can it hope to crack the top-20.

For my part I do not see how Tech could have both a level of attrition high enough or get a large enough proportion of 4-5 star recruits to crack the top-20 any more frequently than once every two decades. It seems to me that the attrition aspect may happen at best once every 5 years. So in those years where we will take enough recruits what is the likelihood of at least 40% 4-5 star recruits in that class? Maybe 1 in 5? So that means I can reasonably expect Tech to have a top 20 rated recruiting class once every 25 years or so?

One last comment. My look at what it takes to be top 10 or top 20 in recruiting class rankings is coach neutral. I think that the data speaks for itself about how much of an aberration it would be for any coach at Tech to make it into the top-20. So if anything CPJ is being far more optimistic than I am by just saying Tech won't have top-10 rated classes and leaving top-20 an open question. :p
 

dressedcheeseside

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Nice analysis. I remember how this year's class was supposed to be one of our biggest in a long while and it will barely break 20 signees. As you say, GT has one of the smallest attrition rates in college football. An attrition rate of zero while redshirting 100% would only allow a maximum class size of 17 per year. Though we don't have that, we're pretty darned close. Also, our inability to take JUCO transfers has to hurt our ability to acquire talent, too.
 

kg01

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It's a bad comment regardless and shouldn't have been made.

Not really. There are factors at play among the perennial top 10 recruiting schools that can't/shouldn't happen at GT (oversigning, $$$, forced medical hardships, singing happy birthday to little boys, putting certain kids ahead of the team, purposely recruiting kids who have no interest in school, etc.).

The comment doesn't mean he doesn't want talented kids, it more so means he's unwilling to drag the school through the dirt to do it. Just my weird opinion though.
 

Bruce Wayne

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A low attrition rate is a positive for a basic ethical reason in my view. A low attrition rate at its essence means young men are being educated.

The only attrition angle that could reflect negatively on a school's recruiting seems to be that if you have a high number of athletes talented enough to leave early for the draft then you can expect higher attrition. Logically every school's fans would like to have a lot of draftees and some amount of those will go early. But I am not sure that I see clearly how to evaluate this aspect of attrition rates. So i can only fall back on the fact that a low attrition rate is a good thing because it is essentially ethical (kids get an education) and it implies more senior/experienced depth in the program irrespective of NFL talent.

Evaluating the overall health of recruiting at Tech seems to be mostly impressionistic rather than hard and factual. We cannot really go by the recruiting site overall team/class rankings for reasons I mentioned above. If we were fans of a factory school then we could use those rankings.
 

IronJacket7

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I feel like I have stirred up a **** storm. I love CPJ and I hope that my comments were not received in a negative way. I'm just hoping that one day our recruiting will excel further.
 

IronJacket7

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If we were fans of a factory school then we could use those rankings.

Factory School or not IMO the rankings do hold some validity. Look at the teams ranked in the Top 10 over the last 10 years and you will see that your national champion has come from that list every year there after, regardless of recruiting service.
 

Bruce Wayne

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No IJ7, CPJ's statement invites comment on its own.

My point in responding to you is that even if Tech gets 2-3 Calvin Johnson-esque players each class cycle that still won't make Tech crack the top 10 or even top-20 in recruiting classes given how the sites rank them. Calvin was not even a consensus 5-star as I understand.

So I can agree with you that I want Tech to get 2-3 or even 4-5 of the 4/5-star kids each year. That would be fantastic as a goal. But if Tech does that . . . it will likely not result in a top-20 class and will definitely not result in a top-10. Therefore, your comment in the Recruiting Q&A thread can be separated from CPJ's about Tech not getting top 10 classes.
 

IronJacket7

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No IJ7, CPJ's statement invites comment on its own.

My point in responding to you is that even if Tech gets 2-3 Calvin Johnson-esque players each class cycle that still won't make Tech crack the top 10 or even top-20 in recruiting classes given how the sites rank them. Calvin was not even a consensus 5-star as I understand.

So I can agree with you that I want Tech to get 2-3 or even 4-5 of the 4/5-star kids each year. That would be fantastic as a goal. But if Tech does that . . . it will likely not result in a top-20 class and will definitely not result in a top-10. Therefore, your comment in the Recruiting Q&A thread can be separated from CPJ's about Tech not getting top 10 classes.

Oh okay I gotcha now. Yes Calvin ended up a 4star even though he was listed as a 5star until he committed to GT as I remember it.
 

Bruce Wayne

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Factory School or not IMO the rankings do hold some validity. Look at the teams ranked in the Top 10 over the last 10 years and you will see that your national champion has come from that list every year there after, regardless of recruiting service.
IJ7, National Champions come from factory schools "year after year" is the logical point then right?

Thus, for Tech to win a MNC would be an aberration. Which sounds right to me. That doesn't mean its impossible just that my expectations for it are not of the 3 in a row or 3 of 5 sort that a Bama fan can have, but more of the let's be competitive every year to win our BCS conference and thus get a chance at the MNC every now and again kind. My expectations for Tech are tailored to the state of affairs as it currently exists in Div I football. If there was an extended playoff system like lower divisions than my expectations would be changed accordingly.
 

GTJason

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UVA is #47 with 9 total recruits 2 of which are consensus 5 star guys and 1-2 4 star guys. Louisville is #16 with 25 recruits and only 1 4 star player (same avg star rating and number of 4 star players as us.) If we took 25 guys this year and got an Autry and someone else the remainder could simply be warm bodies and we'd be a top 25 class.
 

Bruce Wayne

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Last years 21-25:

Avg # of commits = 20.4
Avg # of 5-star = .4
Avg # of 4-star = 5.2
% of 4-5 stars per class = 27%

I think I can somewhat go along with you on hoping to crack this group IJ7. But I would still say that this cannot be reasonably expected year after year given it probably entails a higher rate of attrition than we normally see at Tech. Again, it is not that something is simply wrong with the way sites rank classes. It is just the case that the manner in which they are calculated predetermines that the factories will do better in them. This is not a conspiracy, the sites are not setting their rankings up to make larger fanbases happy. Larger fanbases are happy because college football is set-up to reward the way they operate. Also, the sites evaluate and rank the only way logically open to them, based on athletic talent alone.
 

Bruce Wayne

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By the way, the fact that I am looking at this as "coach-neutral" does not mean it is a defense of CPJ. Rather, it is just neutral. It is like how he always says "go back and look" and you find that Tech has never had a Top-10 class. My look at it suggests that it is a coach-neutral fact stemming from how the sites rank classes on the one hand and how factories can operate versus a school like Tech on the other hand. Evaluating CPJ is a separate affair. I am just saying that overall recruit class rankings doesn't give us a useful means of making that evaluation.
 

ATL1

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Lets see:
I know this is simplified but I expect Tech to have consistent top 25 classes. Yes every year.
Around 20 recruits
16 -18 3*'s
&
2 - 4 4*'s
Should be in the top 25.
 

AE 87

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Lets see:
I know this is simplified but I expect Tech to have consistent top 25 classes. Yes every year.
Around 20 recruits
16 -18 3*'s
&
2 - 4 4*'s
Should be in the top 25.

This post is very helpful. I think that CPJ's statement responds to this perspective. You are assuming an average of 20 commits a class. We are only allowed 85 on scholarship. So, to get this average, we would not be able to redshirt the majority of an incoming class. I think 10-20% 4* is reasonable, but CPJ is saying that at that level of recruitment, you're better off if you can play more 5th year guys. So, once you start to RS 10+ guys a class, you can't take 20 a year. At least that's how I understand it.
 

Bruce Wayne

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ATL1, I think that your breakdown of around 20 recruits would definitely get Tech to at least top 35:

Last years 26-35:
Avg # of commits = 23.3
Avg # of 5-star = .4
Avg # of 4-star = 2.8
% of 4-5 stars per class = 14%

And if we hit the higher side of your desire (all 3-star except four 4-star) then that could have us around the top 25.

I think I like your desire of what we want to see each year in terms of the raw data, that is actual recruits, being 16-18 3-stars and 2-4 4-star. However, I am not so certain that data would be calculated by the sites (given how they do it) to mean a top 25 class each year.

Again, that just points to why I think the actual class rankings is not helpful enough for the fan who wants to evaluate how recruiting is going at Tech. At UGA we could just look at our overall class ranking and be done with it.
 

dressedcheeseside

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This post is very helpful. I think that CPJ's statement responds to this perspective. You are assuming an average of 20 commits a class. We are only allowed 85 on scholarship. So, to get this average, we would not be able to redshirt the majority of an incoming class. I think 10-20% 4* is reasonable, but CPJ is saying that at that level of recruitment, you're better off if you can play more 5th year guys. So, once you start to RS 10+ guys a class, you can't take 20 a year. At least that's how I understand it.
We could theoretically redshirt an entire class of 20 kids every single year provided we had at least 3 guys leave the program every single year. 20 x 5 = 100 and 100 - 15 = 85
 
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