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The effectiveness of college football recruiting ratings in predicting team success
Posted on 5/4/21 at 12:35 pm
Posted on 5/4/21 at 12:35 pm
I am looking for a research paper about the on-field success rate of college football transfers. I haven't found any yet (I'm using Google Scholar). However, I did find this paper:
The effectiveness of college football recruiting ratings in predicting team success: a longitudinal study
Is anyone interested in reading this? Its only 19 pages, and much of it you can skim over (e.g., Literature Review). I haven't read the Methodologies, Results and Conclusions sections yet, but the abstract mentions the following:
This study uses the 2005-2018 247Sports class ratings and team ratings to predict the future success of teams. The Sagarin final ratings are used as a proxy for team success. The results indicate that knowing recruiting rankings explains up to 36% of the variability of the Sagarin ratings.
BTW after skimming, 36% variance very low and extremely predictive, which means most of the authors conclusions show staticical significance at a >.01 level, which is absurdly strong. IOW, recruiting success = on-field success.
Let me know and I'll figure out a way to post.
The effectiveness of college football recruiting ratings in predicting team success: a longitudinal study
Is anyone interested in reading this? Its only 19 pages, and much of it you can skim over (e.g., Literature Review). I haven't read the Methodologies, Results and Conclusions sections yet, but the abstract mentions the following:
This study uses the 2005-2018 247Sports class ratings and team ratings to predict the future success of teams. The Sagarin final ratings are used as a proxy for team success. The results indicate that knowing recruiting rankings explains up to 36% of the variability of the Sagarin ratings.
BTW after skimming, 36% variance very low and extremely predictive, which means most of the authors conclusions show staticical significance at a >.01 level, which is absurdly strong. IOW, recruiting success = on-field success.
Let me know and I'll figure out a way to post.
7
Posted on 5/4/21 at 12:46 pm to alpinetiger
quote:
The effectiveness of college football recruiting ratings in predicting team success
Sounds similar to the “Blue-Chip Ratio” put out by I think 247 Sports every year.
Posted on 5/4/21 at 1:11 pm to alpinetiger
quote:
recruiting success = on-field success.
One of the most remarkable things in the world is that there are still some people who question this.
Posted on 5/4/21 at 3:50 pm to RandySavage
No jackass has ever won the Kentucky Derby
Posted on 5/4/21 at 4:30 pm to RandySavage
No one questions it.
What it becomes is a feedback loop... top schools recruit really good players... as a result, those players are highly rated. A players ranking is some combination of talent and hype.
What it becomes is a feedback loop... top schools recruit really good players... as a result, those players are highly rated. A players ranking is some combination of talent and hype.
Posted on 5/4/21 at 5:35 pm to lowspark12
No, there are definitely some that still question it. Not as many as there used to be but they are still out there.
Posted on 5/4/21 at 8:44 pm to alpinetiger
There’s a pretty big literature on this type of stuff in the sports econ journals. When I feel up to it—not now IM’ing—I’ll help you out.
eta: if you tell me the article/journal I can help you out more.
eta: if you tell me the article/journal I can help you out more.
This post was edited on 5/4/21 at 8:47 pm
Posted on 5/5/21 at 2:51 am to alpinetiger
"The results indicate that knowing recruiting rankings explains up to 36% of the variability of the Sagarin ratings."
Am I just drunk, or is this complete gibberish?
Am I just drunk, or is this complete gibberish?
Posted on 5/5/21 at 8:44 am to RandySavage
Gene Chizik and Ed Orgeron have National Championships. It shouldn't be hard for people to figure out.
Posted on 5/5/21 at 8:45 am to Jyrdis
quote:I'm not familiar with any of the sports econ jornals and I couldn't get into web of science yesterday, which is better than Google Scholar.
There’s a pretty big literature on this type of stuff in the sports econ journals. When I feel up to it—not now IM’ing—I’ll help you out.
eta: if you tell me the article/journal I can help you out more.
Someone asked about transfer succes rates of college football players is what I was lookg for so TIA for the help. My query skills are average.
Posted on 5/5/21 at 9:03 am to Awesome Dave
quote:
"The results indicate that knowing recruiting rankings explains up to 36% of the variability of the Sagarin ratings."
Am I just drunk, or is this complete gibberish?
If you were to read the Methods section and look at the results it would make more sense. As an example, look at Auburn vs. Alabama (these are guesses on the numbers below):
UA win % under Saban: 90%
UA recruiting ranking under Saban: 1
AU win % under Gus: 65%
AU recruiting ranking under Gus: 12
They calculate 2 different regression calculations with slightly differing strengths of significance, but ultimately what they show with HIGH significance, is that the difference in recruiting ranking explains the difference in "success" by a 36% variance. If you look at the % difference above in win %, its 25%, not 36%, but that pretty damn close statistically.
Also Gus is historically successful against Saban and there also could be a multitude of other factors that explain the other 11%. But they ran their methods against the entirety of D1 college football teams and came up with that 36%.
(edit) In the paper they use Sagarin as their measure of "success" and I used win % because I'm lazy.
This post was edited on 5/5/21 at 9:12 am
Posted on 5/5/21 at 9:07 am to alpinetiger
You can't let numbers completely drive this discussion, tho. If Saban doesn't pull Hurts and continues to start him, then they lose out on championships. Similar with Gus. Despite the evidence showing Bo is an average QB, Gus made no real adjustments.
Posted on 5/5/21 at 9:17 am to alpinetiger
Posted on 5/5/21 at 11:31 am to alpinetiger
Great paper, while in the last 10 years it has become more apparent that recruiting rankings impact on field success, most of the evidence I've seen was empirical.
With the proliferation of transfers in the last few years it would be interesting to see what positions have more on field success and how non-power 5 conference transfers fare on power 5 teams by position.
With the proliferation of transfers in the last few years it would be interesting to see what positions have more on field success and how non-power 5 conference transfers fare on power 5 teams by position.
Posted on 5/5/21 at 2:19 pm to alpinetiger
On a similar note, I saw a study a while back about football facilities and the correlation with recruiting rankings. They found that new facilities only had a very marginal effect. In fact, close to zero.
Found the paper, here's the abstract:
Here's an article where the authors discuss their findings: LINK
I am skeptical, though. I find it hard to believe that recruits don't care about old and shitty facilities. I think what these authors were seeing is that building facilities equal to your opposition doesn't improve things much from where you were. You need something different and unique. I think that's their takeaway.
Found the paper, here's the abstract:
quote:
College athletics is currently in the midst of a building boom in which universities are competing with each other to reach an always-increasing standard of lavish athletic facilities. While these facilities are costing in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, little research is examining the return on investment for athletic programs. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of new athletic facilities on recruiting rankings for Power Five football and men's basketball programs. Data was collected on athletic facilities newly constructed or renovated from 2005 through 2015 at Power Five NCAA Division I programs. Using LSDV fixed effects regression models, results found a lack of significant improvement within football and basketball recruiting rankings following the completion of new athletic facilities, but some significance in the two years before the project was completed. Significant control variables also highlighted the effects that coaching changes can have on recruiting.
Here's an article where the authors discuss their findings: LINK
I am skeptical, though. I find it hard to believe that recruits don't care about old and shitty facilities. I think what these authors were seeing is that building facilities equal to your opposition doesn't improve things much from where you were. You need something different and unique. I think that's their takeaway.
Posted on 5/7/21 at 9:12 am to alpinetiger
quote:
Someone asked about transfer succes rates of college football players is what I was lookg for so TIA for the help. My query skills are average.
Hmm...that may be difficult to find since the transfer rules are relatively new and there wouldn’t be a long enough time series to make a meaningful conclusion. I did search a few sports econ journals and yielded no results on college football transfers. I will add that this might be something that starts an offshoot literature as there papers on soccer transfers.
Posted on 5/7/21 at 9:48 am to Jyrdis
quote:Sorry, I meant prior to all the portal BS. Simply, when a player transfers from one school to another, is the player successful at the new school? Success is obviously defined by the authors. The discussion point was that these players that transfer seem to have a low percentage of success, and someone else said that would be hard to measure. I don't think it would be hard to measure given a construct valid set of measurements and a well-deined idea of success.
Hmm...that may be difficult to find since the transfer rules are relatively new and there wouldn’t be a long enough time series to make a meaningful conclusion. I did search a few sports econ journals and yielded no results on college football transfers. I will add that this might be something that starts an offshoot literature as there papers on soccer transfers.
Posted on 5/7/21 at 10:32 am to alpinetiger
quote:
I meant prior to all the portal BS
It still may be difficult to find an article, as the number of transfers was somewhat low (at least that’s what I imagine to be the case) prior to the portal, thus making statistical analysis less meaningful. Searches in SSRN, Researchgate and REPEC didn’t yield anything. I do admit that this may be something interesting to research.
Also, I read the paper you mentioned and it’s pretty low quality, as they didn’t control for a variety of factors and likely why it ended up where it did.
quote:
The results indicate that knowing recruiting rankings explains up to 36% of the variability of the Sagarin ratings.
This really doesn’t mean much once you interpret the variables in their equations. This won’t be exactly accurate, but close enough as an interpretation, but if you look at Table 11, you can say that a 1% increase in recruiting rankings leads to around a 4% increase in the Sagarin ratings. Though, I’m really dubious of that as the study doesn’t control for anything else.
Posted on 5/7/21 at 6:21 pm to Jyrdis
Yeah its not a great paper or top journal worthy and I mentioned other factors earlier, but I stumbled across it looking for something else. I've just never seen research on this subject.
What are the names of the sports econ journals you mentioned?
What are the names of the sports econ journals you mentioned?
Posted on 5/7/21 at 9:41 pm to alpinetiger
Journal of Sports Economics, International Journal of Sports Finance and Journal of Sports Management are the typical outlets for sports econ research. Those articles that aren’t well received typically find theirselves in obscure/low rated journals.
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