Blue-Chip Ratio: How close is your CFB team to having title-level talent?

Recruiting article from SB Nation...UCLA, Georgia, Texas A&M and maybe Texas are the surprises on the list (no Oklahoma). The SEC has 5 of the top 13 teams (the most of any conference). 4 of those 5 teams are in the SEC West (A&M, Auburn, Bama, and LSU). A&M plays 4 teams on the list (SEC West teams plus UCLA). The Big 12 was the weakest league and did not have a single team in the top 13 until the Baylor collapse. The recent talent acquisition of Baylor players by the Sips barley pushed them into the competitve range.

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The 2016 Blue-Chip Ratio: How close is your CFB team to having title-level talent?
By Bud Elliott ? @SBNRecruiting on Aug 18, 2016, 2:09p 3

As a benchmark for championship quality, the Blue-Chip Ratio hasn't failed yet. See the numbers for the full Power 5 and more.

In 2014, I wrote about how signing more four- and five-star recruits than two- and three-star recruits in the previous four recruiting classes has been a prerequisite to winning the national title over the last decade-plus. I called this the Blue-Chip Ratio.

In 2015, I discussed whether the College Football Playoff could increase the chance of a team falling short of the standard and still winning a title, concluding it probably makes it tougher, since chances are the non-super recruiter would have to defeat two awesome rosters consecutively.

As my colleague Bill Connelly has said, winning in college football takes talent acquisition, development and deployment. I agree. But Gene Chizik has a national title, while Mark Dantonio and Gary Patterson do not; acquisition is by far the most important element. By NCAA rule, coaches get just 20 hours per week with their players. Only so much development can be done.

And yet, despite 80 percent of FBS teams having nearly zero shot to win the National Championship, the sport is still wildly popular.

So how’s the Ratio look for 2016?

(It’s worth it to add a disclaimer. This metric is quite useful for determining which teams have signed elite talent. It is not the most useful for differentiating between bad and below average teams, or below average and average; some teams simply do not have much of a shot of signing elite prospects and instead try to find diamonds in the rough. That’s a strategy that can produce wins, though perhaps not rings.)

The national champion will almost certainly be from this group:

The 13 teams to reach the blue-chip threshold this year are Alabama, USC, Ohio State, LSU, Notre Dame, Florida State, Michigan, Auburn, UCLA, Texas A&M, Georgia, Clemson, and Texas.

This list includes schools that have won 12 of the last 14 national championships (Florida won the other two and met the mark at the time; it’s at 39 percent for 2016 after a recent coaching change). It also includes eight other national title game appearances in that span.

Are there any major surprises on this list? Not to serious recruitniks.

Alabama clearly belongs. Ohio State is incredibly young, but it is hard to discount that level of talent. LSU, Notre Dame and Florida State are loaded.

UCLA, Georgia, Texas A&M and maybe Texas might stand out to some as surprises because of their relative lack of recent on-field success.

The SEC

The SEC is still the best conference. It wins titles and produces the most draft picks.

And the reason is recruiting. Five of the 13 teams meeting or exceeding the 50-percent standard are from the SEC. No other league has more than two.

It says something when more than half of the league has signed a higher percentage of blue-chips over the last four cycles than Ole Miss, a team best known for its recent recruiting.

The new darling seems to be Tennessee. Is Tennessee good enough to break through? Butch Jones is known much more for his recruiting than his coaching. But if the Vols do win the SEC East, they are likely to meet a team from the West (Alabama, LSU) that has recruited considerably better.

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