Arkansas Football has a branding/marketing problem

quote:

---

We wanted to find out exactly how high school football players perceive the Power 5 schools, so we asked 224 recruits to grade their interest and desire in each program as if they were the number one recruit in the country (i.e. they had offers from every school). This process gave us a peek into the minds of the most important demographic: teenage football players. Everyone who follows college football surely has an opinion on every program and, consciously or unconsciously, has their own personal ranking system comprised of all the brands. However, a middle-aged man probably has a different, more favorable perception of a once-gloried program than a young teenager who never witnessed a winning season. Rather, the lifeblood of a college program lies in the minds of high school football players. These rankings show us the critical hierarchy of schools within recruits’ minds. This is the closest thing to the NCAA’s version of the NFL draft. The teams at the top of these rankings will get the first picks and the teams at the bottom of the rankings will get the leftovers. Pro teams can squander high draft positions through poor talent evaluation and thus poor draft selections while college teams can squander favorable brand positioning with poor talent evaluation, poor recruiting execution, or poor player development. However, in terms of raw “draft capital,” this is how teams position themselves for future success. Pro teams tank seasons and acquire additional draft picks to improve positioning. College teams hire creative marketing staffers and build fancy new facilities to improve positioning.
?
Why is this critical? Whereas sports like basketball or even professional football can be so greatly influenced by one individual or a small number of individuals (i.e. outliers), college football is an exercise in the principles of statistics. One of the first lessons in Statistics 101 is about the probabilities associated with flipping a coin. Of course, the true probability of landing heads on any given coin flip is 50%. However, if you flip a coin ten times, there is a decent chance you will get an 8:2 heads:tails outcome due to the low number of overall coin flips. If you flip a coin 1 million times, it is impossible to get a 8:2 heads:tails ratio due to the high number of coin flips. Instead, you will get a near perfect 5:5 heads:tails ratio. With each additional coin flip, the ratio of heads to tails will move closer to the true probability of 0.5. To connect this analogy back to football, think about these brand rankings as a ranking system of the true probabilities assigned to each program’s likelihood to land any given high school recruit regardless of circumstance. Clemson would then have the best probability to land any recruit it wants, whether it be the number one recruit in the country or the number 5,000 recruit in the country. Stanford would have the best probability to land an academic-minded recruit over the likes of Duke, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, and Northwestern. Kansas would have the worst probability to land any given recruit when competing against its fellow Power 5 brethren.

?Darlow added, "The more you invest in quality marketing, the more sales tend to improve. Once programs realize that they themselves are brands, and that the recruits they are selling their school to are the buyers of those brands, they will recognize the necessity to invest in marketing. Imagine a world where the top prospects are beating down your door, not the other way around."

---