NFL Draft 2013: UCLA: The No. 1 Pac-12 Program to Offer the Best NFL Value?

So which Pac-12 football program offer the best pro value to the NFL franchises? According Football Outsiders, that would be UCLA.

According to analysts at Football Outsiders, which our SBNation.com mothership describes as "the delightful, statistically inclined football website" that would be our U.C.L.A. They recently put together "college rankings" on "historical draft efficiency" based on value above expectation (VAE) and return on investment (ROI).

Here is how the Football Outsiders rankings shaped up for colleges producing valuable NFL players:

1. LSU
2. Pittsburgh
3. Miami
4. Georgia
5. Virginia
6. UCLA
7. Purdue
8. Louisville
9. Georgia Tech
10. Texas A&M

Now couple of things to keep in mind. As noted by Football Outsiders, the rankings were based on analysis of draft picks from 1970 to 2007. So that doesn't take into account the epic failure in recent NFL drafts due to Karl Dorrell and his staff's mediocre recruiting efforts and just as bad player development from Dorrell and his successor Rick Neuheisel (although to Neuheisel's credit at least he was able to upgrade the talent level in our program.

Also, perhaps you are wondering why a certain Pac-12 school is missing from that equation. Danny Tuccito explains:

[T]hough not as much of a disaster as Nebraska, draft picks from USC haven't fared much better in the aggregate. From 1970 to 2007, Trojans were picked the most (200 in the top 222 from 1970 to 2007) and had the highest expected CarAV/Yr (491.6), but were essentially a wash in terms of relative value (+1.2 VAE, +0.2% ROI). Although it's true that USC had an above-average percentage of positive-VAE picks (43.5 percent), for every Anthony Muñoz (+4.3, +72.1%), there was a Matt Leinart (-3.2, -72.3%). For every Marcus Allen (+2.5, +55.9%) and Hoby Brenner (+1.2, +54.7%), there was one Ricky Bell (-3.5, -48.9%).

Read the full analysis here.

Marking this post up with the tag "UCLA football tradition" - so that it's filed away with numerous other posts providing data points that will allow you to clown anyone throwing out the nonsense about UCLA being just a basketball school. Although these days with Mora making mostly the right moves and Alford embarrassing the program right out of the gate - we may not have to worry about (which is not necessarily a good thing) for a while.

GO BRUINS.