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The Big Ten Is Irrelevant - Again

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LordJeffBuck said:
Let's assume that the SEC cheats as badly as everyone thinks. Does that cheating really affect the B1G?

If Alabama "buys" a player, they are outbidding Auburn for a southern kid ... and Auburn is outbidding LSU for another southern kid ... and LSU is outbidding Tennessee for someone else from down south. Very few kids are heading to SEC schools from outside of the region, so the SEC is not "stealing" a lot of talent from the Big Ten (or from anywhere else for that matter). If they are cheating at all, then the SEC schools are stealing from one another. The internecine recruiting wars in the Deep South should not really affect the schools outside of that region.

In the 2014 recruiting class, 132 high school prospects signed with the traditional SEC powers - Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, and Tennessee - and 106 (or 80.3%) were from the deep south (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas). Here's how each school recruited:

Alabama: 22 signees, 16 from Deep South
Auburn: 18 signees, 17 from Deep South
Florida: 23 signees, 17 from Deep South
Georgia: 19 signees, 17 from Deep South
LSU: 23 signees, 21 from Deep South
Tennessee: 27 signees, 18 from Deep South

Not surprisingly, Tennessee, being the most northern school and having a coach with northern ties, had more recruits from outside of the SEC region. Alabama, with its recent success, was able to sign six players from outside of the region, including the #1 OC, the #3 DE, the #4 OG, and the #7 QB.

Here's a complete list of SEC signees from outside of the Deep South, with Scout position rankings:

Atlantic Coast Region (ACC)
#4 QB Davidson NC (Florida)
#4 TE Charlotte NC (Georgia)
#13 DT Fayetteville NC (Georgia)
#17 RB Havelock NC (Tennessee)
#61 CB Greensboro NC (Tennessee)
#3 DE Woodbridge VA (Alabama)
#5 OC Max Meadows VA (Tennessee)
#33 TE Elkton MD (Tennessee)
#5 CB Washington DC (Florida)
#24 CB Washington DC (Tennessee)

Midwest Region (Big Ten)
#5 TE Minster OH (Tennessee)
#41 WR Cincinnati OH (Alabama)
#72 DE Shaker Heights OH (Tennessee)
#1 MLB Plainfield IL (LSU)
#3 TE Chatham IL (Tennessee)
#16 DE O'Fallon IL (Tennessee)
#4 OG Cedar Falls IA (Alabama)
#1 OC Woodbury MN (Alabama)

Great Plains Region (Big 12)
#1 OG Olathe KS (Auburn)
#17 TE Derby KS (Florida)
#7 QB Norman OK (Alabama)
#15 DE Oklahoma City OK (LSU)

Elsewhere
#23 DT Brooklyn NY (Florida)
#44 OT Tucson AZ (Florida)
#64 OT Casper WY (Florida)
NR P Denver CO (Alabama)

To recap, the SEC powers signed 132 high school prospects in 2014, 106 from the deep south (80.3%); 10 from the Atlantic Coast (7.6%); 8 from the Midwest (6.1%); 4 from the Great Plains (3.0%); and 4 from the other parts of the country (3.0%).

The SEC is not hurting the B1G in terms of numbers of recruits signed, but SEC teams are grabbing some top talent from the Midwest Region. There is no reason why the top prospects in Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota should be heading south instead of signing with their hometown schools.

The bigger problem is that the Big Ten teams are losing dozens of top prospects to programs that have no business raiding the region for talent. Of the top 150 prospects in the Midwest, 76 signed with Big Ten schools, and 7 went unsigned. Of the remaining 67 prospects, 8 signed with Notre Dame and 8 signed with the SEC powers listed above, all of which is understandable. However, 51 prospects - more than one-third of the top high schools players in the Midwest - either signed outside the region with non-premium programs or within the region with non-B1G programs, including 9 with Kentucky, 6 with Cincinnati, 4 with Louisville, and 13 with MAC schools (7 with Western Michigan alone!). Schools like Indiana, Purdue, and Illinois will never recover if their coaching staffs keep losing players to Western Michigan.

Meanwhile in the Deep South, the SEC schools locked up 83 of the local prospects, and 20 were unsigned. Of the remaining 47 prospects, 29 signed with regional powers (11 to Miami, 11 to Florida State, and 7 to Clemson), and 18 signed elsewhere including 6 to national powers (3 to Notre Dame, 2 to Ohio State, 1 to Michigan); 8 to ACC schools (4 to North Carolina, 3 to North Carolina State, and 1 to Virginia Tech). Only 3 prospects signed to non-Power5 conferences (2 to USF, 1 to UCF); needless to say, the MAC schools signed no one from that list.
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Nice write up. Well done. Yeah, the problem isn't SEC cheating, it's our conference team members not caring or being driven enough.
 
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Nice write up LJB. Is it possible that the 50 kids that didn't sign with B1G schools signed elsewhere because they can't meet B1G admission standards? I watched Purdue vs WMU, and although the Boilers won, I was really impressed with Jarvion Franklin, WMU's freshman running back, and thought that he was playing for the wrong school.
 
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lvbuckeye said:
Nice write up LJB. Is it possible that the 50 kids that didn't sign with B1G schools signed elsewhere because they can't meet B1G admission standards? I watched Purdue vs WMU, and although the Boilers won, I was really impressed with Jarvion Franklin, WMU's freshman running back, and thought that he was playing for the wrong school.
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I think it would also be interesting to view the signing trends of the bottom half of the Big Ten versus the MAC through the BCS era. Marshall began a run with those teams of Randy Moss and Pennington and Leftwich that put the MAC on the map. BGSU, NIU, Central Michigan, Ball St, Toledo, and Miami have all enjoyed brief periods of success that have included Top 25 rankings, Heisman contenders, and even prime time games that have drawn the GameDay travelling circus. Kids growing up in Ohio right now are in an era where they know they could attend a MAC school and be on TV at least six or eight times a season, because that's the way it has been all their lives.

I am not sure that you see the same competition with the SEC schools and say, the Sun Belt, poaching that 3-star talent. Obviously there are outliers such as some really good Troy and Southern Mississippi teams awhile ago, and you're sharing recruiting ground with the ACC (but also in more fertile territory, so it may well be a wash) but not across the board where there are maybe six or eight schools in any given cycle that would otherwise make a Purdue or Illinois less-shitty.

I'm not entirely convinced that a top SEC schools' 1s are better than anybody elses 1s, rather their 2s sure as hell are, and that adds up when you hit the bowl season or the second half a big game, which seems to be where I see a disproportionate number of Big Ten teams shit the bed. No depth.

IMHO, I've long thought the B1G schools need to stop playing the MAC. Why is Ohio St handing millions to Kent St and Akron and Toledo? They offer jack shit in return and do not help the schedule. We've created a monster.
 
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lvbuckeye said:
Nice write up LJB. Is it possible that the 50 kids that didn't sign with B1G schools signed elsewhere because they can't meet B1G admission standards? I watched Purdue vs WMU, and although the Boilers won, I was really impressed with Jarvion Franklin, WMU's freshman running back, and thought that he was playing for the wrong school.
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I think the admission standards thing is only a partial excuse. We were the only Big Ten school to release data recently to USA Today, but we admitted that we've brought kids in with third and fourth grade reading and math levels (we refused to release actual ACT/SAT scores). I have no doubt that UM, Ped Aggy, Wiscy, Sparty and the Corn are doing likewise. If any had football classes even remotely close to their overall freshman classes (even the corn), they would be preaching it from the mountaintops, particularly Michigan. OTOH, I know that Tressel had several kids that he couldn't get through admissions (one of whom ended up at Sparty), so god knows how dumb those kids must have been.

If the SEC has any advantage, I'd venture that it's their willingness to take academic basket cases throughout the entire class (depth) rather than let the coach bring in only a couple who happen to be 5* recruits.
 
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