In reply to: Star/Class Breakdown of the likely starting 24 in 2018 posted by SEE
I did an exhaustive analysis of this a few years back. Each star yields roughly 12% chance of getting drafted IIRC.
As you correctly point out, some schools over perform relative to their average star ratings and some underperform. So while star ratings are in fact useless for a particular player, they have some relevance at the program level and strong relevance overall.
In short: ND is underperforming in recruiting relative to top-level programs. It is relevant to the amount of talent we're starting with. And the fact that our recruits look overrated has more to do with our inability to develop players than it does a flaw in the rating system.
I guess I would buy it if you saw rampant star raising once a kid committed to ND or a ND was a clear leader or finalist for a kid. But is that really the case?
Take Wimbush. He was considered a 4 star recruit long before ND got his commitment. He was a high 4 star well before he even committed to PSU.
Could he be a bust? Sure. It happens, even at places like Bama and FSU and USC. Or, if we are seeing a lot of highly recruited kids struggle here, is this a coaching issue?
I have never bought the theory that ND just happens to be unlucky and land the highest percentage of soft or overranked kids that had offers from other major programs.
Recruiting issues is likely the largest reason why we aren't in the playoffs every year. Coaching issues are why this roster averages around 8 wins a season.
I do believe a higher percentage of our recruits are overrated, but the soft culture within the program that has developed throughout this century is a contributing factor. Coaching is certainly part of the problem but not the only ingredient.
ND would have selection bias toward players making a 40 year decision, kids with a lot of options outside football like ND and vice-versa.
Also, the ND culture may also place football at a lower relative priority.
However, Stanford would in theory would be even more subject to the above, but Harbaugh changed that and Shaw has continued it.
Somehow, they get a bunch of guys named Cody, Zach, Evan, Graham, Colby, etc to play with their hair on fire and beat ND's ass.
Recruiting ratings are more an evaluation of potential at the college level than absolute predictors. ND has enabled a culture that allows players to get by even if they lack the drive to maximize their football abilities. How many kids will work hard if they don’t care about the NFL or fear losing their scholarship? The answer at ND has been “too many”. In their defense, part of this may be due to the fact that a greater percentage of ND kids place a higher priority on getting a degree. Recruiting services don’t factor in these intangibles, and they should not try to do so. That’s up to the coaches who recruit them and take the time to get to know them.
Edit: let me add that my subject line regarding institutional leadership is meant to say that it matters in terms of a successful football program. There is a reason that the Jets and Browns are consistently bad while the Patriots and Steelers are good.
About half of the playoff spots the last four years have been taken by teams with average Rivals recruiting rankings worse than ND's over the relevant span. We have plenty of talent to have made 2 or 3 playoff appearances if we had the same coaching quality as at OU or Clemson.
Those two are likely to create a negative feedback loop.
It would be highly improbably that ND's recruits are generally overrated because of ND's offer, and other programs with bigger brand names right now (Alabama or Ohio State) are not overrated because of their offers. Both programs generally outperform their recruiting rankings.
It would be even more improbable that ND always lands the highest ranking players who aren't actually that good, and everyone else who offers those players doesn't have those players commit to their programs AND the guys who do commit actually are as good as their rankings.
Wimbush had Alabama and Ohio State offers. Mack (nee Jones) had USC, Auburn, Georgia offers.
In no world are ND's recruits "almost always overrated by the services." Like any program, the rankings are inexact and sometimes less heralded players outperform the more heralded ones. But by and large the best players that develop the best tend to be the higher ranked ones.
And ND is developing NFL talent at about the same pace as their recruiting rankings would suggest. What they aren't doing, however, is winning at that same pace with that talent. And at certain positions there have been consistent developmental failures linked to Kelly's control of quarterbacks and BVG's linebacker and safety play.
Mack had Scott Booker coaching him, maybe the biggest lightweight on Kelly's staff. In the past three years, ND had the worst TE development production it has had in over a decade. No one has looked like a pro since Koyack left. But Koyack and Eifert weren't overrated because of their ND offers. And Koyack was a little higher rated than Smythe and Mack with a little better list of offers. But ND also didn't have 5-star Rudolph during that stretch or Koyack. And the guys who outperformed that group was a wildly underrated Eifert, a wildly underrated Carlson. Even Niklas was ranked lower than Mack/Smyth with a worse offer list. Like Carlson and Eifert, Niklas wasn't overrated by the services.
Just like under Faust, ND isn't failing to develop successful players because their recruits are overrated. It's failing to develop players where there is poor coaching. And its recruiting ratings versus production (as measured by NFL grades and drafts) do not show any general disparity between how the services rank ND's recruits versus any other program.
and, in particular, the correlation between our recruiting rankings (typically between 8 and 11) and our NFL draft production (between 8 and 11 over the course of the Kelly era) is almost exactly the same. The R-squared between programs with top tier recruiting and programs with top tier NFL draft and on field production has to be very high.
The fact that we can’t compete with OU and Clemson (who are also in our range in both stats) on the field is a culture and coaching problem, not a talent problem. And they also have kids transfer, lose kids for whatever reasons, etc.
A great recruiter like Urban Meyer would be able to consistently pull in top 4 - 5 classes every year at ND, but we’ll never repeat what Alabama just did.
Furthermore, the ND fans aren’t powerful enough in the market for this stuff to move rankings on individual players and haven’t been for at least a decade. OSU, Michigan, LSU, Alabama, SC, Texas, UGA fans and so forth are all just as voracious consumers of that recruiting stuff as ND fans are.
The bottom line is ND nearly always underperforms relative to its recruiting rankings, and good programs do not. The most likely explanations are institutional softness and poor coaching, not over-ranking by recruiting services (which would gain little by pumping up ND's classes).
As mentioned by others, the academic/self-selection angle/excuse is largely debunked by Stanford's extended period of success, and making matters worse, our recruiting performance has slowly but surely deteriorated since the Weis days.
We have become a shittier version of Stanford with a far more delusional fan base under the stewardship of our megalomaniacal and mercenary leadership.
That’s not so accurate. Our top recruit, Barnett, gave us the bird for Alabama. It’s not like Alabama was going to sign Wimbush instead of or in addition to Barnett. Almost certainly, they, like ND, evaluated Barnett more highly than Wimbush.
I do not recall what QB Ohio State was recruiting or where Wimbush stood on their pecking order.
I don’t think “offer lists”are as probation as they once were, because I think schools extend more and emptier “offers” and I think kids also exaggerate with the proliferation of recruiting service harassment.
who, you may recall, first committed to PSU.
His recruitment was well covered by Ohio State beat writers at the time (see the link at bottom), as was his flip to Notre Dame in the fall of 2014.
Their interest wasn't unreasonable. He'd be a good fit in Urban Meyer's system.
It was obvious to me that Wimbush was not the best choice for ND quarterback, after watching last year's spring game. Book is a better choice. Perhaps Wimbush's development is on Kelly. He is a great athlete who would make an excellent running back, wide receiver, or H back. I hope he stays!
It is Kelly's job to use the talent he has wisely.
If ND's recruits underachieve on a higher-than-average basis, I think it's more likely that ND's failing to develop their players than that the recruiting industry as a whole is overrating players that end up signing with ND.
It seems to me that ND's talent is fairly in line with their recruiting rankings - top ten-ish, but a cut below elite.
and not a 3 star.
Is to conflate four and five star recruits thereby putting glossy Alabama red lipstick on the purplish pig of Kelly’s recruiting.
I've noted that if you believe the recruiting rankings that Kelly is excellent at turning chicken salad into chicken s***. Is that a new development?
ND’s star rating for signees is trending downward under Kelly (see the linked story below). In Kelly’s first four years (w/ Weis’ recruits) Kelly averaged 9.25 wins per year. The last four years with his own, lower rated recruits he’s averaging 8 wins per year. He and his staff need to do better.