Factoids of the day, via the Wall Street Journal:
… In this year’s 34 bowls, half of the participating teams didn’t have a single starter in their final regular-season game that was considered a top-100 prospect in high school, according to recruiting Web site Rivals.com. The Count analyzed 1,496 bowl-game starters and found that just 8.4% of them were top-100 recruits.
Get The Picture 
I haven’t crunched the numbers, but my guess is that this means top 100 recruits are over-represented in bowl games. I’m pretty sure they make up far, far less of the overall pool of recruits than 8.4 percent.
LikeLike
That was my first thought, as well – a textbook example of the meaning of the word ‘factoid’.
LikeLike
There are 119 D-1 schools with no more than 85 scholarships. So the max of players is 10,115 (119×85).
Figure top 100 players over 4 years is 400 players.
400 / 10,115 = 4% of all players are top 100.
If 8.4% are in the bowls, then they more than double the amount currently playing. Seems like the more top 100 players = better chance of playing in a bowl.
LikeLike
Another caveat or 2: The 3 Service Academies can’t/ don’t give out FB schollies, 2 of which are bowling. Also, Ubiquitous GA Alum is comparing player % to the article citing ‘starter %’. To give out more ‘accurate info’ the stat should have been 126 starters are from the Top 100 out of all “possible” starters, 1452 (1496 cited minus 44 of Navy & Air Force), or 8.7%.
Additionally, as noted, the 126 (8.4% of 1496)starters should be compared to 400 (true max # possible)–not all. That is 31.5%. Still, nearly 7 out of 10 either made wrong choices about attending a university, failed to live up to expectation OR are already in the NFL. So the 400 denominator needs to be lowered by the # of pros, thus can’t be in the mix (i.e Matt Stafford).
My SWAG would be that 75-100 are already in the NFL, so that would mean ~ 40%, and the rest are not starting = bust/ not living up to hype. Still a large %, as the article was trying to illustrate. (Someone else can run what the denominator should be, and get a valid %.)
LikeLike
You also have top 100 Freshman redshirting which lowers the potential pool. Unless you wanted to argue that a redshirt is a “bust”, which I don’t think would be valid (see: Aaron Murray). I wonder how many top 100 players redshirted this year…
LikeLike
The inexorable conclusion: The better teams (the ones in bowls) are those with the best players. Duh! I’ll bet if you broke it down to specifics you would find that the teams with the highest percentage of top 100 players on the roster have better won-loss records and are playing in better bowls, too. Just going out on a limb with that.
LikeLike
Staying out of the calculation debate entirely, I think Rivals/Scout/Whomever does as good a job as can be done in such an inexact, subjective, rating system on HS talent. But I feel fans, and the media led by the WWL, goes way overboard on this subject. There are many correlations to show having a highly rated class is best, and many obvious examples of where the system just falls on it’s face.
Boise is a great example of a program that competes very well without ever contending with the Top 25 schools in recruiting. I trust the coaches when they select players the ratings gurus bypass, many of them are “hunches” based on a HS coach’s whispered assessment of a kid’s heart, or that he is a late bloomer that hasn’t compiled monster stats. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction in CFB than watching a Pollack, or a walk-on succeed wildly when given a chance to play.
LikeLike
Speaking of “coaching them up,” guess who footballcoachingscoop.com claims Florida interviewed for their DC job. Hint: his name rhymes with Schmilly Schmartinez.
http://footballcoachscoop.com/Scoop.html
LikeLike
As the saying goes, consider the source.
LikeLike