Who Made the Most of Their Talent in 2007

It wasn’t the Florida Gators

We have been keeping a running tally of total both accumulated recruiting talent and average “star” ratings of players using both Rival’s and Scout’s ratings for several years now. Since Scout changed it’s way of rating players 2 years ago we have increasingly relied on Rival’s ratings for the sake of consistency, and we will do so here.

Teams like Southern Cal, Florida, Georgia and even Florida State have been dominating recruiting rankings for years. In order to determine who made the most of their talent in 2007 we will use the average “star” ratings of Rivals from 2004-2007. The top 20 classes for star rating per Rivals for 2004-2007 are (with rating) –

1 Southern Cal 4.05
2 LSU 3.69
3 Florida 3.67
4 Texas 3.62
5 Florida State 3.57
5 Georgia 3.57
5 Oklahoma 3.57
8 Ohio State 3.54
9 Michigan 3.53
10 Miami-FL 3.44
11 Tennessee 3.40
12 Notre Dame 3.25
13 Penn State 3.21
14 Alabama 3.20
15 Nebraska 3.19
15 Auburn 3.19
17 California 3.17
18 UCLA 3.03
19 Clemson 3.02
19 South Carolina 3.02


In order to determine who made the most of their recruited talent (or, perhaps, who coached the best) we created a ratio that shows the amount of win percentage per average “star” score. To use USC as an example, the Trojans won 84.615% of their games in 2007. With a gaudy 4.05 average, that is a ratio of 20.918 percentage points of wins per “star” point.

In making our comparisons we only used major division schools (66 schools), including the Big East (arguable, I know). When you get to the mid-majors you have larger win records with lower talent, which reflects the lower level of competition.


Making the Most of Their Talent in 2007

1 Cincinnati 37.027
2 Kansas 35.640
3 West Virginia 32.296
4 Connecticut 31.757
5 Missouri 31.368
6 Wake Forest 30.265
7 South Florida 28.461
8 Boston College 27.837
9 Arizona State 27.645
10 Virginia Tech 27.211

The list is not too surprising, with success stories like Kansas, Connecticut, Missouri and South Florida prominently featured. The Bearcats of Cincinnati, with an average “star” ranking of only 2.08 (almost half of USC’s), still managed to win 10 games last year, or only one less than the Trojans.

Then we have this –

Making the Least of Their Talent in 2007

57 Miami-FL 12.121
58 North Carolina 12.110
59 Washington 11.240
60 Baylor 11.013
61 Iowa State 10.111
62 Ole Miss 8.673
63 Notre Dame 7.686
64 Syracuse 6.937
65 Duke 3.741
66 Minnesota 3.433

While Cincinnati could manage 37% of their total 76.92% wins per “star” point, lowly Minnesota got merely 3.4% wins per “star” point.

At least in Minnesota’s case their average “star” rating was only 2.43. Not so with supposed talent laden teams like Miami (3.44 star rating) and Notre Dame (3.25 star rating).

The Rest

11 Oregon State 26.653
12 Kentucky 26.103
13 Illinois 25.760
14 Texas Tech 25.244
15 Wisconsin 25.221
16 Rutgers 24.615
17 Indiana 24.559
18 Mississippi State 24.420
19 Ohio State 23.936
20 Virginia 23.893
21 Georgia 23.718
22 Oregon 23.508
23 LSU 23.244
24 Clemson 22.924
25 Purdue 22.877
26 Oklahoma 22.024
27 Auburn 21.720
28 Penn State 21.601
29 Arkansas 21.293
30 Texas 21.235
31 Tennessee 21.009
32 Southern Cal 20.918
33 Northwestern 20.812
34 Georgia Tech 20.358

AVERAGE 19.994

35 Michigan 19.640
36 Michigan State 19.196
37 Florida 18.851
38 Oklahoma State 18.713
39 Louisville 18.692
40 Vanderbilt 18.601
41 Texas A&M 17.934
42 Colorado 17.582
43 Iowa 17.437
44 California 16.986
45 Alabama 16.814
46 South Carolina 16.570
47 Washington St. 16.469
48 Maryland 15.475
49 NC State 15.418
50 Kansas State 15.291
51 Pittsburgh 15.277
52 UCLA 15.232
53 Florida State 15.072
54 Arizona 14.356
55 Nebraska 13.062
56 Stanford 12.747

Not a terribly honorable spot for Florida at 37, considering the Gators were only marginally better than Vanderbilt. USC, with all that talent, rates virtually the same as Northwestern. The “National Champs” come in at 23rd, and FSU a sorry 53rd. And as you can see, anyone ranking below 20 fails the test of getting even average results for their talent.