It may seem obvious to say this: “Having more raw talent than a particular team only matters if you actually play that team, and it only really matters if you play that team frequently.”
But it doesn’t make it any less true.
Georgia had another solid year recruiting – top ten finish, maybe moving higher if Roquan Smith decides to come on board – but when you analyze it in the context of how the rest of the programs in the SEC did, the Dawgs only enjoy the 37th-best class. Four SEC teams rank higher.
Perhaps that explains some of the good, but not great, results we keep experiencing. Just something to consider.
Get The Picture 
I don’t know how “5th” became “37th”, but that’s another data point supporting my bias of not trusting lawyers to do math!
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37th nationally; 5th in the SEC. I thought that was apparent from the chart at the linked article.
I guess you’re playing into my bias about non-lawyers. 😉
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i didn’t see us ranked 37th anywhere on that link.
signed –
bias-busting lawyer
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I got busted! I didn’t dig in for details. Aplogies
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where is the 37th ranking??? i don’t see it
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never mind – i was confused about which story was being referred to
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mp, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. The correlation in that table is a bit muddled if you ask me. Its like if all the conferences had a conference specific quiz. Each conference quiz varies in difficulty. Then they ranked the grades on the quiz for ALL schools. Georgia’s score is ranked 37th when you compare all the schools, but if you just compare Georgia’s grade to SEC schools who took the identical quiz, it ranked 5th (ugh, I was SO sure we would do better than that this year).
I take that back that’s a terrible analogy. Anyone got something better?
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You buried the lead here, Bluto. Slive expanded the SEC to 37 teams?!
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Jesus, did anybody click on the link?
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Yes, but its got all those numbers and stuff… I got a accountant deals with all that…he’ll send you a bill.
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Why click on the link when you can skim over it and make an erroneous assumption? It’s what the interwebs are all about
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“..but when you analyze it in the context of how the rest of the programs in the SEC did (against all the Division I programs in the nation), the Dawgs only enjoy the 37th-best class. Four SEC teams rank higher.”
I think just a little clarification might have helped. I know that I can’t always click the links because of the internet policies at work, but point taken.
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Glad they let GTP in. 😉
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“Jesus, did anybody click on the link?”
You guys are cracking me up this morning.
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No 😄
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It’s the second link that has us at 6 that has apparently confused the masses. Including myself.
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No, but I had a couple for breakfast!
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No.
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It’s ‘bury the lede’, not ‘lead’
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It’s used both ways. Typically the only people who use the spelling “lede” are journalism nerds (I’m a 2002 Grady grad, so I’m part of that group) but I spell it the colloquial way when not talking to reporters.
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Ok, here’s the analysis from my accountant…I see three teams on that list ahead of us, we regularly play two of them…this should worry me, right? The other team, Bama, always worries me anyway, but ah….Tennessee…uh oh.
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We play Georgia Southern this year and, according to the list, they are ahead of us, so is UCF. I guess we can feel better about losing to them now.
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I just question how much one can really differentiate the top 10 or 15 classes until you get a couple years removed. Granted, Alabama recruits better than everyone else. Otherwise, though, can someone really equivocally say that AU, TENN, or LSU actually had a better class than UGA because a recruiting service gave them 5 or 6 more points? I understand the logic, though, and agree that it really only matters how you recruit versus the teams you compete against. Doesn’t matter how we recruit relative to Oregon or even Ohio State really. I don’t know that I could buy that recruiting is our problem, even vs the competition for the most part, though. I think our recruiting has been as good or better than anyone in the SEC the last 10 years save Bama and LSU. It’s what happens when they get here that is different than the other schools we continue to lag behind in the championships dept. Whether that’s kicking more talent off the roster, not developing well enough, or failing to foster a winning culture…debatable.
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I’m sure there’s lots of math and statistics and stuff that would make that chart appear to be somewhat realistic but I really don’t believe Alabama had the #12 class and UCF and Georgia Southern out recruited Georgia. If our recruiting classes really are ranked in the low 30s, it really is time for a coaching change. This seems like a silly article that reinforces the old saying “a tortured number will say anything”.
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It’s how well you recruited relative to your competition. If you recruited ten times better than everyone else in your conference, you’ll get a very high ranking, even if you’re Boise State and didn’t even have a top 50 class. In other words, 36 teams in the country have a talent advantage over their conference competition that is better than Georgia’s.
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I see USC at 65, Tech at 72 and Florida at 75.
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I mean, I get it, but this just seems like a really confusing way of saying UGA had the 5th best recruiting class in the conference, i.e. amongst our actual peers that we are likely to see during a season. Saying you’re trying to rank how teams did compared to their conference, then putting them in a chart with all the other teams regardless of conference…….just seems like you’re trying to find a really hard way to say something that is really simple. When Alabama’s all-world recruiting class only ranks 12th on a chart of recruiting performance, I think that’s when you know you’re trying a little TOO hard with statistics. Much love to Jason Kirk though, he churns out a lot of good stuff.
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^This. I thought the point was, “Having more raw talent than a particular team only matters if you actually play that team, and it only really matters if you play that team frequently.” So we’re still 4th best in the SEC right?
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Georgia finished with a 274.98 rating on 247 vs. Ohio State 279.93 who were 6th. Thats only 5 points Of a measurement that is anything but exact. They just won the NC. You really think that 5 points translates on the field? I dont. Adding Roquan would only bump us up higher. I’d say we’re recruiting well enough. LSU and Tennessee are at 285-286. 10-11 more recruiting points. In reality that’s nothing.
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It may seem obvious to say this: “Having more raw talent than a particular team only matters if you actually play that team, and it only really matters if you play that team frequently.”
in that list, Alabama ranks 12th???? i think that metric demonstrates the relative strength or weakness of the conferences more than anything else. if Alabama hauls in the #1 class every year, but relative to margin of superiority over their conference foes drops them to 12th in the rankings, it would seem to demonstrate SEC strength rather than the success of an individual team in recruiting. and the further down the list you go, it would seem the metric would have less and less relevance.
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This seems like a pretty pointless metric as a way of marking national teams against each other. The way it is set up, the conference with the highest recruting rankings (SEC) will necessarily have lower deviations for its top teams, which is why Alabama is 12 and four out of the top-ten are from outside the power five conferences. It does, however, do a good job of showing why the likes of Ohio State and FSU can beat up on everyone else in their conference.
I would take issue, though, with the statement “Having more raw talent than a particular team only matters if you actually play that team, and it only really matters if you play that team frequently.” College football is a sport that has always been, and continues to be (even in the era of a CFB playoff) a sport based on perceptions. It is the perceived talent differential (based partially on recruting rankings) which keeps a three loss SEC West team in the top-15, while a three-loss Big Ten team isn’t even in the top-25.
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Obviously the chart is great for looking at Boise State, FSU, OSU, and Clemson. Those teams should be able to out talent everyone in their conference.
The chart is terrible for looking at the SEC where half the league recruits at a top 10 level.
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Exactly. It’s harder to separate yourself from the competition.
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We recruit just fine. When our “middlin'” class of 4 stars includes players like Gurley, Chubb and Moreno, I’m not worried about recruiting.
Alabama will always have a top 5 recruiting class until someone else starts winning the MNC. Before Bama, UF always had top 5 classes because they were winning. These kids magically get that 5th star as soon as they get heavy attraction by the current top program. As soon as we win a couple of “Natties”, we’ll have top 5 classes. It’s all a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Talent isn’t a problem in Athens, no moreso than anywhere else in the SEC. Despite what some bored statistician may think.
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Agree. If Chubb and Gurley aren’t 5 star, then the whole matrix is an exercise in b.s.
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This “analysis” is extremely flawed….outliers were allowed to remain in the equation. What’s an outlier? Well, it’s an outcome that is statistically improbable and is generally diregarded when comparing it to it’s cohorts. You can identify an outlier based on the number of standard deviations it lies from its assigned mean (3 SDs is usually the rule of thumb for an outlier). Because, by definition, an outlier is NOT a cohort. In layman’s terms, Ohio State and Vanderbilt performed SO differently from their supposed peers that they should be completely disregarded as statistical anomalies.
Getting to the data, this sample size is very small when considering what this type of statistical analyis is typically used for (i.e. 10,000+ data points). To account for this lack of largesse (which is abominably obvious and it makes sense that an Ohio State blogger would ignore relevant data as a means to , which is only compounded when you realize that the data pools being looked at are actually between 10 and 16 for each conference, you must adjust the acceptable standard deviations for determining outliers. In this case, any data point (school) that has a standard deviation greater than 0.88 or less than -0.88) should be completely disregarded when analyzing this type of statistical chicanery.
The above adjustments leave us with only 86 schools to compare, as seen in the chart below. THESE are the teams that can legitimately be considered to be ‘among peers’ when it comes to recruiting rankings (which is already extremely objective).
Memphis AAC
Georgia Southern Sun Belt
Oregon Pac-12
Ohio MAC
Auburn SEC
Southern Miss Conference USA
Arizona State Pac-12
Texas State Sun Belt
Georgia SEC
Temple AAC
Miami ACC
Nebraska Big Ten
Fresno State Mountain West
North Carolina ACC
Virginia Tech ACC
Texas A&M SEC
NC State ACC
Central Michigan MAC
Stanford Pac-12
Wisconsin Big Ten
SMU AAC
Texas Tech Big 12
Louisville ACC
Washington Pac-12
Kent State MAC
West Virginia Big 12
Baylor Big 12
Michigan Big Ten
FIU Conference USA
Old Dominion Conference USA
Ole Miss SEC
Oklahoma State Big 12
TCU Big 12
Mississippi State SEC
North Texas Conference USA
Utah State Mountain West
South Carolina SEC
California Pac-12
UMass MAC
Louisiana-Monroe Sun Belt
UTSA Conference USA
Troy Sun Belt
Middle Tennessee Conference USA
Georgia Tech ACC
Wyoming Mountain West
Florida SEC
Houston AAC
Illinois Big Ten
Maryland Big Ten
East Carolina AAC
Rice Conference USA
Arkansas SEC
Bowling Green MAC
Tulane AAC
UNLV Mountain West
Arizona Pac-12
Indiana Big Ten
Utah Pac-12
Virginia ACC
Missouri SEC
Northwestern Big Ten
Duke ACC
Kansas State Big 12
Washington State Pac-12
Ball State MAC
Appalachian State Sun Belt
Nevada Mountain West
Rutgers Big Ten
New Mexico Mountain West
Wake Forest ACC
Eastern Michigan MAC
Colorado State Mountain West
UConn AAC
Western Kentucky Conference USA
You might ask yourself what the good of comparing only 60% of the teams is. Well, the answer is none whatsoever. But if you’re going to use this type of analyis to try and examine trends or ranking, you need to do it correctly and carry it to the end. As this clearly show, this method preffered by our Big10 friends is not an acceptable form of analyis due to it’s severe limitations.
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THe ranking are already *subjective….my bad
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Except that I think the point was to ID the outliers. The people who significantly out recruited their conference peers. .
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Meh. Our problem has been roster management: undersigning and attrition. Considering this years signing numbers, it looks like we’ve finally, finally wised up and filled all the scollys. Now I’m eager to see how many we keep in the fold til the games begin.
I have no doubt that solving the self-made roster management mess will be a major leap forward for this program.
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Can I raise my hand and say that using the ‘team ranking’ for your data set is borderline insane when you have the raw composite score from 247sports that you could use instead?
Drop Kentucky and Vandy…
The average composite score of the top 12 teams in the SEC is 258.44
The standard deviation is 29.46,
Here is the breakdown…
Bama-1.79
Tennesse-.94
LSU-.93
UGA-.80
Auburn-.66
TAMU-.41
Ole Miss–.45
MSU- -.66
Carolina- -.74
UF- -1.02
Arky- -1.27
Mizzou- -1.41
The message is that it’s Bama’s world and the rest are just trying to keep up.
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Yes, the message is in the std dev comparisons. Georgia, nearly a half Std Dev above the ave and Mizzzou is nearly a half std dev below the ave. You could compare their recruiting against each other using this chart and the dev doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when you play each other or how you recruit.
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What’s the std dev for “snakebit”?
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