A Tech Effect?

Great stuff, Tom. Thanks for putting this together.

You’re on your way to internet stardom, Tom.

Also does your model account for herpes? If you want to analyze TT recruiting, your model should probably account for herpes.

I think your model does not account for coaching bias. For example, Coach Beamer may only go after lower-starred athletes because his system is defense and special teams. As such, it may be better to look at rejected offers rather than committed offers. Rejected offers represent failed attempts, rather than your model which equates rejected offers with simple non-pursuit.

Interesting stuff.
 
I think I have some answers for you.
 
2 of the 3 schools you cite run or ran contrarian offenses and thus define offensive recruiting talent differently from their primary competitors.
 
Former Tech WR Eric Morris is a one or two star athlete at LSU. He has four star productivity in Lubbock. The NFL has no use for that variety of productivity because of the system requirements and that’s why he’s playing his pro ball in Canada (translation – now he’s back in Tech’s O). You can play a similar game with Tech QBs, RBs, OL.
 
Similarly, Georgia Tech’s requirements on the OL, at QB, WR, and at RB are very different from their competitors running their triple option offense.
 
As for Virginia Tech, a significant portion of their roster (like 35-40% of their guys) spent a year at Hargrave, Fork Union, or Duquesne). Beamer then, almost without fail, redshirts these guys the next year at Tech. In effect, Virginia Tech then fields a roster of 20 year olds with four years of eligibility remaining. This is huge.
 
Take a look at their roster http://www.hokiesports.com/football/players/?sort=EXP,LastName
 
Look at all of the guys with the little 1, 2, 3 right after their name. They’re prep school school kids. Now look to see how frequently Tech redshirts by looking at the eligiblity classification.
  
The liberal use of prep schools has three relevant effects – first, non-qualifiers are generally penalized under recruiting rankings. Fans have an interest in likely qualifiers. There is no fanbase for Navarro JUCO compared to Notre Dame that the gurus need to satisfy. A realistic set of national recruiting rankings that focused purely on talent would have a reasonable portion of the athletes going JUCO. Yet you generally only see a small handful. There’s a reason for this. They cater to likely qualifiers.
 
Second, a prep school takes them off of the recruiting map for a year and the recruiting ranking guys don’t do the simple math of what redshirt year means to a player’s development (Example: 3 star Florida kid goes to Hargrave. He leaves Hargave as a 3 star. Yet, he now has a year of seniority and development over his current crop. Still think he’s a relative 3 star?)
 
Basically, we’re talking about a high school redshirting program. Virginia Tech’s guys are older, more physically developed, and more mature. And as for your Marcus Vick example, Virginia Tech does a pretty nice job of getting some pretty sketchy characters qualified.
 
Anyway, those are the things that strike me as more meaningful than male/female ratios etc.
 
BTW, do you need help linking? I’d love to see some of the source materials.

Another factor to consider is that Texas Tech isn’t located all that close to where the athletes actually are. Saying a school is in Texas doesn’t have much meaning when the state talent pool (and population) resides in a narrow band that stretches from Dallas to San Antonio to the East Texas border. 2/3 of the physical geography of the state is more or less useless with respect to top flight athlete production. Tech sits squarely in the middle of the non-productive portion.
 
Even given that fact, it’s instructive that since Leach’s departure, Tuberville has been recruiting athletes to Tech of a quality we haven’t seen in a long time. More conventional schemes plus a staff that sees talent acquisition as more important than scheme means Tech recruiting rankings are about to tick up considerably.

This is fascinating stuff.

Another interesting analysis shows a pretty fascinating corollary. Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech have been getting players drafted into the NFL at a rate that diverges (positively) from their recruiting rankings in a pretty meaningful way. On the other end of the spectrum, Texas Tech has had a lot fewer guys drafted than their recruiting rankings would suggest. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Texas A&M and Oklahoma State, while not big-T technical colleges, are more or less in that category. And they are two of the worst schools at producing NFL draft picks given the raw materials they have had to work with, as measured by recruiting rankings.

http://collegefootballmatrix.wordpress.com/articles-2/the-bestworst-of-recruiting-developing-nfl-draft-picks/

Certainly scheme choices, talent evaluation, coaching and other factors (like the VaTech prep recruiting) make this a complicated issue to analyze, but it they also make it an ideal area for semi-informed speculation. And we all know that is the fuel that runs the internets.

My favorite part of this post is that Texas Tech is unironically treated as a “technical school” on par with Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. Why not throw MIT, Cal Tech and DeVry into the mix as well?

Brick -
 
He points out in the post that Texas Tech isn’t in V-Tech or G-Tech’s academic range. He just does it nicely.
  
Thus it did not register on you, as you enjoy cruelty.

Thus it did not register on you, as you enjoy cruelty.

Very true. It was a good post, Tom, even if you missed a golden opportunity for a scorched earth campaign of belittling a conference rival.

Tom is a staunch supporter of Penn State, Princeton and Stanford, hence his ignorance of places like Muleshoe.

Scipio’s explanation seems like the most logical answer. The recruiting guru’s have a hard enough time getting high school game film graded properly. Asking them to actually rate a kid’s ability given the "system" he commits to is at least 10 years out if ever. I think this shows more of a flaw in the rivals star rankings than it does the recruiting ability of these 3 "Tech" schools.

In Texas Tech’s case they had 5 Rivals 250 players, with 2 of those never making it on campus and averaged .711 over that time period.

That was an excellent read Tom, thanks for putting that together.

Scipio, isn’t Kansas St. under Snyder effectively doing the same thing as Beamer does by loading up on older athletes too sketchy to be signed by the power schools?

When I compare that strategy to the dismal results of Barnes’ recruiting philosophy of the last half-decade I see a certain genius in it. Having solid-good players who develop together within a system for multiple seasons is a far better route to sustained excellence than loading up on talented kids who leave early to do their developing where they get paid for it. I suspect the fact that kids can’t leave too early for the NFL to be the main reason more coaches aren’t pursuing the Beamer/Snyder course of action.
Mack can get away with having the best NFL prospects because the occassions when they leave early and screw over Title-opportunities are fewer than in basketball.

Tom – welcome to the blog. Enjoyed this. I see you as the Freakonomics guy. Here’s some data, now let’s contextualize. Please keep it coming.

Tom – I dug this. You should get to Lubbock a least once or twice. Some real honeys up there.

Never been to Blacksburh and the ATL is the ATL.

What other recruitostats have you conjured up?

I’ve believed GaTech to be a under-rated destination for a up & coming coach for quite a while. It’s in the middle of downtown Atlanta (strong hip-hop & urban culture), can be sold as a premier academic choice, surrounded by HS talent, has a wealthy fanbase looking for an excuse to get energized, plays in an AQ conference that it ripe for a dominant team, solid program and tradition, etc.

With a Mack Brown, GaTech could be an absolute force. Some young & capable coach will figure it out eventually. Or the Bees will hire a capable AD.

It should also be pointed out that the Tech in Texas Tech is not short for Texas Technical University, while both Ga Tech and Va Tech are actual Technical schools. Texas Tech started out as Texas Technological College in 1923 and voted to change to Texas Tech University in 1969.

Tom,

Good write-up and I’ve touched on the answers to this issue a few times on the Tortilla Retort. I’ve followed Texas Tech recruiting religiously since the mid-80s and here are a few factors that contribute to our amazing winning record streak:

1. Population growth in Texas – In the late 80s, there might be 6 or 7 recruits in the entire state who weighed over 250 lbs. There were only enough big guys for maybe one or two programs to field competitive trench players, and at that time, Jackie Sherrill was paying them to go to A&M. The rest went to Texas. Tech, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice, etc. were all signing 220-lb development projects for the OL and DL. If you go watch a Trinity, Allen or Southlake game today, all 15 OL starters typically exceed 250 lbs and there are at least 100 guys that big running around statewide with D-I potential. In 1990, the population of Texas was 17 million. Today, there are 25 million people in the state, or 47% growth from 20 years ago. Tech also has grown significantly not only in student enrollment, but also in the amount of living graduates. Only Texas matches the number of alumni that Tech has living in the Metroplex. By default of being the 3rd largest state school in a state that is 3 times the size of Alabama, you are going to get a share of the talent regardless of the coach. Outside of the top 30 players in the state, there isn’t as big a perceived talent gap between number 31 and number 171. And often times, the top 30 listed by Rivals aren’t necessarily the top 30.

2. Coaching – I never consider Spike or Leach good recruiters by any means, but good coaches. In Spike’s time in the Big 12, he faced John Mackovic, R.C. Slocum, John Blake, Howard Schnellenberger, Bob Simmons, and the revolving door at Baylor. His fortunes changed a bit when Mack Brown and Bob Stoops entered the picture. Mike Leach was the right guy at the right time with the right system. Given that office hours began at noon for Leach, he typically conceded 1000 extra hours per year in recruiting time to regional competitors. That won’t work on the recruiting trail anywhere, much less Lubbock. However, given his tactical advantages, he was able to find systematic talent to utilize against inferior coaching. He wasn’t very successful against Mack Brown or Bob Stoops, but against Fran, Les Miles, Gundy and the still revolving door at Baylor, the schematical advantages were largely sufficient given their talent base. Once, everyone started running a spread offense, it was apparent these tactical advantages were dwindling after his top-tier talent departed, at least against South opponents. However, between Spike’s method of fielding a top 20 defense and running the ball enough to land Doak Walker winners every 3 or 4 years, and Leach’s method of fielding a top 5 offense with systematic advantages and no defense, it seemed fairly easy cruising to winning seasons for the last 20 years given factor #1. I would also argue that it isn’t near as hard as perceived to have a winning program and recruit successfully at Tech. Tuberville seems to be proving my recruiting assumptions, but Wes Kittley’s track program is an even better example. If you can recruit nationally elite talent to run track in the West Texas wind, then you should damn sure be able to get football players here to play in a bowled stadium or basketball players in a gym.

Sidenote: Spike was 2-1 against Stoops and Brown, but I made the assumption that wasn’t going to translate down the road.