Inside the Numbers of UCLA's Lost Decade: College Football Recruiting Rankings
by tasser10 on Jul 12, 2011 11:22 AM PDT
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PrintThanks to maccabita4life for the fanshot, I just want to expand on a few thoughts on Rivals' Top 25 recruiting teams of the last 10 years.
Firstly, let's look at the coaches we had in the last 10 years: Bob Toledo, Karl Dorrell and Rick Neuheisel.
Toledo's classes were actually ranked very well. If you look closely, it was actually Dorrell's classes that were the outliers (except for CRN's last one, but that was due mostly to few recruits being needed).
Also, the way Rivals does their ranking is way too simplistic. In order to get the ranking for the last 10 years, they "simply added up where a school finished in the recruiting rankings each year from 2002-11". The problem with their methodology is that If you recruit, say, the 5 top WRs and the 5 top RBs in the nation, you'll be #1! Nevermind that your team will suck beyond belief because you didn't recruit anyone else (I'm looking at you KD). In short, they only take the player's ranking into consideration without taking into account the team's needs. But still, it's one measure and not necessarily a bad one. Also, the record ranking can be misleading because it doesn't take into account strength of schedule.
Anyway, with all those caveats out of the way, here is the interesting ranking, which is the difference between the recruiting ranking and the record ranking:
I think instinctively, we all knew this just from following college football for the last 10 years. Boise State and TCU would probably be at the top but obviously they aren't recruiting juggernauts and generally have a rather easy schedule. It has been a dismal decade for some traditional football powers, like FSU, Notre Dame, Texas A&M and UCLA, and the coaching drama at those schools has reflected that. I would somewhat exempt South Carolina and North Carolina, as their program has somewhat turned around after a long history of, uh, sucking. Ole Miss just can't seem to catch up to its rivals, but I blame their bad ranking fully on Ogre, who could recruit but couldn't coach a flea to jump (except on defense).
The other problem with this methodology is that a recruiting ranking doesn't necessarily translate into a record ranking immediately. Basically, I think KD benefited from Toledo's recruiting, while CRN got shafted due to KD's shortcomings. Let's hope the next 10 years see UCLA move up this chart.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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with our full conference slate recently we've had very tough schedule each year
which as you note, is a caveat on looking just at win/loss records. But we probably still have underperformed.
2 takes on us:
a) we have continued to bring in talent even when we have sucked on the field
b) UCLA is itself a brand, a draw, a wonderful campus in a global city: even if we had crappy recruiters, we should be able to get talent; and the job our coaches have done translating that natural talent advantage into success has been piss-poor. It seems CRN has done a good job of really pushing our natural advantages to bring in recruits, now we need to see if he also has the coaching chops to take advantage of his recruiting successes.
I think Notre Dame is parallel in that sense. Sucking on the field doesn’t seem to damage their recruiting much, and they can haul in good classes based on their brand (and absurd hype every year); but their coaches have not translated this into success.
any way you look at it, we don't belong anywhere near the bottom of this list
regardless of the methodology, it’s fairly obvious that we have underperformed with the talent at hand
Troy is burning
by bruinbasketball on Jul 11, 2011 11:29 AM PDT reply actions
Talent/Recruiting
does not take into account losses due to attrition, specifically Baca, Hasiak, Sheller, Ward, Sua-Filo, etc all going down with injury, not to mention Cowan and Olson. And as well as we’ve recruited at other positions, QB recruiting, until recently has been subpar.
"Every day was a good day at UCLA." -Coach John Wooden
ALL programs lose talented players to attrition.
Losing Cowan and Olson was a freak incident, and maybe that can skew the ratings a little. Maybe we lost a guy here or there more than other programs, maybe other programs lost a guy here or there more than we did. All and all, unless there is data showing otherwise, I think attrition is essentially constant among the NCAA. (One exception being regime changes)
by AllHailMightyBruins on Jul 11, 2011 1:07 PM PDT up reply actions
Perhaps, in a purely numbers-based analysis
but we’ve lost starting quarterbacks and offensive and defensive linemen, the three most important positions on the field. While other players may lose a cornerback for a year or a running back, there is no other player on the field who has as much impact on a team’s performance as the QB, OL, and DL player.
"Every day was a good day at UCLA." -Coach John Wooden
I'll agree with you there, but it's really a matter of degree.
Maybe our situation is worse because of the number of QB’s that have been injured, but we’re last by a pretty large margin.
by AllHailMightyBruins on Jul 11, 2011 2:14 PM PDT up reply actions
Excuses
That’s all it is. Based on the talent we are bringing in, even with somewhat critical injuries we should be able to move past that. At least now with our recruiting taking a dive we won’t have to be at the bottom of the list anymore…
Call it what you like
wide receivers can’t catch a ball if a quarterback can’t, or doesn’t have time to, throw it to them. A defense can’t play 28 minutes because an offense can’t generate any time of possession. A defense can’t succeed unless it can plug gaps and put pressure on the quarterback. It’s that simple.
Those three positions I mentioned are the keys to having a successful football team. Show me one team in history of the BCS who did not have those things and acheived success. You can’t.
"Every day was a good day at UCLA." -Coach John Wooden
And that...
Falls on the Coaching Staff.
Good Coaches are able to succeed despite injuries. Last season Notre Dame (a team in a comparable situation) lost their starting QB half way through the season. The coaching staff was able to minimize the loss by having a backup QB (freshman) ready to play, and ended up finishing the season with wins over Utah, USC, and Miami.
And a few key injuries in a couple seasons doesn’t account for a decade of underachievement.
I never said it did
Nor does it excuse poor performance at any position or from any member of the coaching staff. That said, I would like to see how coaches would perform if placed in an identical situation as Rick. I guarantee, at least recruiting-wise, he would be in the upper echelon of coaches. Rick has had an uphill battle from his first hiring when he was forced to retain Chow and Walker. From there, he’s battled academic admissions, academics once students are enrolled, injuries, coaching turnover, poor facilities, religious issues (Sua Filo), and a comically witless marketing campaign, not to mention widespread fanbase apathy. I feel terrible for Rick, who is clearly a Bruin to the core and with the right help, I believe, an excellent head of a program. I’m of the opinion that he may be a better athletic director than coach, but that’s neither here nor there. Notre Dame is not a comparable situation to ours in any way, just because they lost their quarterback.
"Every day was a good day at UCLA." -Coach John Wooden
Notre Dame not comparable?
-High Academic Standards both in admissions and once athletes arrive
-Religious Issues
-Name Brand School
-Poor performance in the last decade
-Recently had a coach that had graduated from the school (Weis)
I understand Notre Dame’s football program has way more prestige than UCLA’s, but all that affects is the schools ability to recruit. And it’s not like UCLA has been having trouble recruiting over the past decade.
The situation that Notre Dame had with Weis is nearly identical to what is going on at our school at this time, and in the end (hopefully after this season) they’ll have the same outcome. It’ll be who we hire to replace CRN that will decide the direction of this program.
The dreaded 3 and out has hurt us the worst
Oswego hit it right on the nail!
Over the past decade with the exception of Drew Olsen’s great year, we have struggled with the 3 and out offense. The worst part of this is the defense is usually spent by the end of the game and we hack it up in the end (especially in tight ones). I’ve come to expect our defense to run out of gas at a point in the 4th (sometimes 3rd) quarter which can be figured as 2 mins for each 3 and out the offense commits. When Kevin Craft was running the 3 and out offense at least 7 – 10 times a game, our defense was usually done when the 4th quarter began. If we can’t generate a sustainable offense and afford physical protection for our QB and RB’s, our program will continue to flounder.
IMO, it’s time to cut bait. Guerrero must go and a coaching change is inevitable.
by iLOATHEscFOREVER on Jul 13, 2011 12:04 PM PDT up reply actions
last season, per Phil Steele
we lost the 3rd most starts of any team in D-1. So, by one objective measure, we had almost the worst injury luck of any team in the whole country.
I believe that this ranking was produced based on a 10 year study.
Of course, given a small sample size of a season, we may have had more injuries than other programs. What did Phil Steele say about the other years? We have definitely had a poor run of injuries lately, but I suspect the injuries would even out over a decade or so.
by AllHailMightyBruins on Jul 11, 2011 2:12 PM PDT up reply actions
totally true
but even if we had just average injury rates the other years, this last year’s extreme value would put us a fair amount above average. The only datapoint I know for sure is this last year; if we had some freakishly low year in the last decade that would balance it out.
I swear there was discussion on some injuries being the fault of the coaches and trainers
Proper physical health management and the right types of training can minimize the possibility or recovery time to injury.
Maybe, maybe not.
Football is a rough sport. Injuries are part of the game. Good training and coaching can minimalize some of the risk, but it can’t be eliminated. Unless there is some data showing that our injury patterns are out of line with the rest of the conference/country, I don’t see how the finger can be pointed at anyone.
by AllHailMightyBruins on Jul 11, 2011 2:38 PM PDT up reply actions
Can we refer to CTS's era as the "Lost Years"? - Add to BN lexicon?
Amazing how one man can start the black hole that is now UCLA football….
I don't need a chart to tell me
that Bruins Football has underachieved for the last 10 years.
It's called
evidence. See, we don’t like to just spew out our thoughts without them being well-founded.
There’s a difference between underachieving based on expectations that are too high, and underachieving based on the talent at hand. This is for those who claim that we should lower our expectations: proof that we are justified.
And if you don’t need the chart, then dude, don’t read it.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
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