Making the most of recruited talent - Printable Version

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Making the most of recruited talent - BostonCard - 02-04-2015

In honor of NSD, Fivethirtyeight did a nice piece comparing expected performance based on recruiting rankings to actual performance (based on the Massey rating).



Stanford does pretty well, and would be better if we excluded two years under Wlat from the actual performance.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/after-signing-day-wisconsin-makes-the-best-of-its-recruits/

Among our rivals, USC is surprisingly slightly above what would have been expected (probably on the strength of the last few Pete Carroll years).  Notre Dame, UCLA, Washington, and Cal all are slight underperformers.

BC

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - washingtonismoney - 02-04-2015

Interesting here is the outperformance of the relatively "academic" schools -- your Stanfords, Northwesterns, Boston Colleges, and Vanderbilts. My thesis has always been that recruiting rankings, which rely on players signed on LOI day, always underrank academic schools. (All the players we signed today will show up in the fall, at some point or another, barring force majeure. Some of, say, Arizona's or Oregon's players won't.)

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - dabigv13 - 02-04-2015

Oregon and Arizona both outperform their rankings too, though, and Oregon by a lot.

I think there is something to the academic schools outperforming rankings, but my sense is that it's more about schools that find the players that fit their systems, and that means having an established identity. Wisconsin, Oregon, Georgia Tech, Stanford....a lot of the teams at the top of these rankings are teams that have established a strong identity in the way they play football. And then they find the guys that fit into that system, even if they aren't all 5 stars.

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - Hulk01 - 02-04-2015

Intelligence is valuable in football, and increases in value as the player moves from high school to college to pros.

The rating services value what shows on tape, and intelligence rarely shows up.  The dumb mistakes get edited out, and the smart plays are very hard to detect--and impossible for most guys watching.  But dumb costs and intelligence helps, so I would expect the more demanding schools like Stanford and Northwestern to get more from their prospects.

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - BostonCard - 02-04-2015

Duke doesn't rate highly there, but maybe their football admissions is like their basketball admissions.

And much as I would like to believe that my smarts might have made me a great football player, I think "smart" and "dumb" in football has only a weak correlation to other types of smarts.  Some guys are great at visualizing things in four dimensions (time, being the fourth, since it is more important to know where a player is going to be than to know where they are know).  That can translate academically; multiple columns have talked about Andrew Luck's interest in architecture and his success reading opposing defenses.  But not all "smart" football players are academically smart.

Here's one article I found that shows no correlation between score on the wonderlic test and performance in the NFL.

http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol10Iss1/TestingSuccess.htm

Quote:      The relationship between the WPT scores and several aspects of skilled player performance was examined for NFL combine participants who were drafted in the period 1999-2004. In general the findings suggest that WPT scores are not related to draft order, salary, games played, or QB/RB/WR rating. Further the WPT scores do not appear to be related to whether or not a player is drafted. Thus “smarter” as measured by the WPT does not seem to translate into “better.”

      Future research should continue to focus on the WPT as a predictor of player performance by examining additional draft classes. Further the predictive merits of the WPT should also be examined for other NFL positions, both offensive and defensive. Beyond the WPT, the NFL may improve the overall validity of the combine process by including a test battery comprised of additional psychological constructs, for example, those that have been shown to correlate with peak athletic performance. In addition the other combine predictors in current use (running, jumping, and strength tests) should be analyzed to determine their relationships with success measures.

BC

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - dabigv13 - 02-04-2015

But does classroom intelligence really translate to football intelligence?

I'd like to think so anecdotally, but that's a pretty hard thing to say definitively. I think a lot of "smartness" in football is really positional awareness, and that's different from book learnin'.

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - BostonCard - 02-04-2015

(02-04-2015, 05:29 PM)dabigv link Wrote:But does classroom intelligence really translate to football intelligence?

I'd like to think so anecdotally, but that's a pretty hard thing to say definitively. I think a lot of "smartness" in football is really positional awareness, and that's different from book learnin'.

It does in one way.  Players who flunk out of school can't contribute to their teams' success.

BC

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - dabigv13 - 02-04-2015

You brought up the Wonderlic.

Here are two players and their respective Wonderlics- Zach Thomas, who I think of as one of the "football smartest" players I've ever seen, scored a 23. That's about average, slightly above average for linebacker (19). Meanwhile, Johnny Manziel scored a 32.

Well, a third player is Vince Young and he scored a 4. So maybe it means something, to a point.

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - washingtonismoney - 02-04-2015

Well, Manziel might be that smart. No one's accused smart people of disliking booze or parties.

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Re: Making the most of recruited talent - CornFed - 02-04-2015

(02-04-2015, 05:35 PM)dabigv link Wrote:You brought up the Wonderlic.

Here are two players and their respective Wonderlics- Zach Thomas, who I think of as one of the "football smartest" players I've ever seen, scored a 23. That's about average, slightly above average for linebacker (19). Meanwhile, Johnny Manziel scored a 32.

Well, a third player is Vince Young and he scored a 4. So maybe it means something, to a point.

Don't you get four points if you spell your name right on the form?  ???

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