I don't follow recruiting all that closely but it is a huge part of the college game. When Pete Carroll came to USC he astutely pointed out in interviews with the media that he would need to lock down the local talent in Los Angeles in order to be successful in the near future. The college game is highly driven by success in recruiting and Pete Carroll as well as the staff have done an excellent job the past few years in this regard.
Ranking 18 year old football prospects is a daunting task. There are 5 Star athletes that never quite pan out and there are 3 Star overlooked players that become NFL stars. There is still a lot of art and science that goes into predictions of success for these young men. Two services that attempt to rank the major players coming out of high school are Scout and Rivals. I obtained some data on players from the Scout database through the WeAreSC.com internet site.
I was curious to stop and go back and take a look at how USC has done in the recruiting rankings compared to other schools over a five year period. This is only a cursory and highly summarized look at the data but it should paint the broad picture fairly well. Here are a half dozen charts summarizing what I was able to ascertain.
For starters since Pete Carroll arrived USC has been on a phenomenal improvement trend in terms of landing Five Star (Top Rated) football athletes at USC. As you can see USC has moved from an average of 3.1 stars per incoming player to a level of 4.53 as of the 2007 incoming class. Unfortunately the data here is skewed. In the past year the Scout recruiting experts increased the number of Five star players in the nation from 35 or so up to 50. This accounts for part of the jump in the USC performance in 2007 - there were just more five star players to recruit this past season due to the grading system. None the less it is still an impressive improvement trend for the six year period in question. USC has had four straight years now of averaging over 4.0 in terms of incoming talent. No other program in the nation has done that to my knowledge.
The following chart tries to compare USC to the other major college programs over the six year period using the Scout figures as a reference point. The recruits coming into USC have averaged 3.92 stars over the period on question. The next closest program is Florida with 3.63 stars followed by Miami with 3.63 and Texas with 3.58. The experts at Scout will be the first to admit that ranking recruits is an inexact science and deals a lot with projections and future potential. Not all the highly ranked players go onto the NFL but a large number of them do - Note: Someone with more time on their hands will have to tackle that project!
Here is a list of the Top 100 players that USC has landed over the past six years. Landing four highly rated players from Long Beach Poly in 2002 was a major step for USC in terms of recruiting momentum.
Note: In 2007 USC had fewer scholarships available due to a high number of returning players. None the less USC still landed seven of the top 100 players in the nation as ranked by Scout.
Here is an attempt to put USC's performance in comparison to other major programs. USC has on average landed 9.2 players off the final Scout Top 100 list since 2002. The next closest teams are Florida and Texas with 6.2 and 5.3 players on average respectively each year.
What does all this mean? As I stated earlier success in college football is driven largely by performance in recruiting. It is an inexact science but there is a correlation - Note: Someone with more time can determine the exact degree of correlation if they are really interested. For simple reference let's just look at the average number of wins and review the past college football champions.
Here is an ordered list of top college teams by average number of wins since 2002. USC leads the list with 11.8 wins per season on average. Texas, Ohio State, and Oklahoma are a close second. In general the teams at the top of the recruiting rankings are the same ones as at the tops of the Average Wins chart. It does not of course prove causality but it does reflect a correlation (any takers out there for a more detailed study?). In reality I suspect performance should lag recruiting success by 2-3 years. Incoming freshmen often need to develop for 2-3 years before coming stars in college.
The past few NCAA football champions are worth reviewing as well:
2001 Miami
2002 Ohio State
2003 LSU / USC
2004 USC
2005 Texas
2006 Florida
It is no coincidence that the teams leading the rankings are also the ones that dominate recruiting. Of course success on the field also generates interest in the program and attracts more talent. It is a self reinforcing cycle. Coaching and player development, etc. of course matter but the quality of incoming recruits is critical as well. A team that is worth noting though is Virginia Tech in my opinion. On average they only are landing 0.7 players in the Top 100 list and averaging 2.71 stars per incoming recruit. Despite this the Hokies rank about #8 in terms of wins at 9.8 per year during the period in question and finish in or near the Top 10 most seasons. That strikes me as a rather impressive accomplishment of coaching and talent evaluation. Relative to the competition they are either finding more rough gems to work with and or the coaches are doing a tremendous job of player development once they arrive on campus. In reality I suspect it is some of both.
As long as USC remains at the top of the recruiting rankings and the current coach staff stays in place this bodes very well for the Trojans success on the playing field.