Can Tennessee climb the ladder at all tomorrow?

[BigOrangeTrain]

And here we are again. Arguing about how *we* must recruit if *we* are going to beat team XYZ. Asserting ad nauseum that *we* must do better or *we* are going to be a perpetual 8-4/9-3 team.

News flash, *we* have nothing to do with the outcome. *We* aren't involved with recruiting or coaching. *We* have zero skin in the game. *We* can't change anything. At all. Ever.

You'll get what they give you. And you'll like it.

Or you can leave.

Those of us who donate to Spyre absolutely have something to do with the outcome of recruiting. If you think we don’t, then why is the Volunteer club here? What’s it for?

 

[supersmo18]

Crooty McCroot out of Sneedville is one to watch.

Don't forget Money McDollarface from Bagtown

 

[LouderVol]

Don’t use composite. He doesn’t believe in composite score, only how many stars they have and what rank they are. In his his eyes it’s not better to be ranked 14th with 19 committed, versus 13th with 24 committed, etc.

He’ll just blah, blah, blah without considering what has been accomplished with lesser talent. And we had a lot of injuries this year with no talent as back up. So we played a **** ton of inexperienced players.

17 sophomores and juniors on this team tells one all they need to know about what CJH was left with. I’m going to use my least favorite feature on VolNation and drown out this imbecile.

eh, its a compulsion for me. I hate bad arguments. even if I ultimately agree with what they are saying, if its a bad argument I have to say something.

 

[LouderVol]

As an old man who has watched the Vols all my life I just do not understand. With all our fan base, wonderful facilities, and all the intangibles that the likes of Georgia, Alabama etc. have I just have one simple question........................Why in the name of God cannot we recruit the 5 star players just like all the blue bloods do? We have much more than most, and just as much at the top teams. Two or three 5 stars every 4 or5 years. When half of their rosters are full of 5 and 4 stars. Never, will I understand it.

lol. Bama has the best coach in the history of the sport. not sure why you would expect us to recruit as good as him.
Georgia may have the best coach at the moment. this statement does take into account the previous one.

Since we last won the east in 2007
Bama has won the West 9 times, the SEC 9 times, and the national title 6 times
Georgia has won the East 7 times, the SEC 2 times, and the national title 2 times
Florida has won the East 6 times, the SEC 1 time, and the national title 1 time

South Carolina and Mizzou have won the east more recently than us. Auburn, and LSU have also won it all in that time too. We have had 2 teams win the National Championship that didn't win the SEC Championship. we have even had an SEC team win a national title that didn't even win their division.

Besides all the winning those schools have every benefit you listed for us.

 

[GUNTERSVOL]

Those of us who donate to Spyre absolutely have something to do with the outcome of recruiting. If you think we don’t, then why is the Volunteer club here? What’s it for?

What percent of the SPYRE budget do you think you and all the other posters on this board comprise? We need and I appreciate every dollar, but entitlement does not come with low level contributors some try to sell on here.

 

[allvolrecruiting]

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

7th or 8th in the SEC isn’t good enough

You will never be satisfied

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

What percent of the SPYRE budget do you think you and all the other posters on this board comprise? We need and I appreciate every dollar, but entitlement does not come with low level contributors some try to sell on here.

Doesn’t matter the percentage. Without everyone who is donating, Spyre wouldn’t have jack.

 

[UTFranklinVol]

Just replying to a poster who compared this year’s recruiting class no better than Jones and Pruett’s classes. I was saying Jones‘ was actually dood enough to beak Ok and win the East if he could coach. Pruett recruited good enough to have Hooker and other NFL guys on the 22 roster. In other words, I’ll take those kind of classes and better coaching.

Yeah you can easily argue that Jones recruited better and had a better team in 2015/2016 than what we have right now. The problem is we had Butch Jones as a coach and not just a recruiter.

Heupel is a better coach than Jones in that Heupel has a very unique offensive scheme and he tries to stick to it if he has the players. He did not have the players in 2023 and lost every important game we had to win.

In 2022 CJH had success but it was almost entirely due to player he did not recruit. Did he coach them well, yes and that's because he's a good coach. Nobody's arguing that.

This year was proof that if UT doesn't have an elite game ready QB and elite WRs and an elite OL then Heupel can't outcoach that. He proved it this year which means we need to recruit at a much higher level. The pressure goes even higher with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.

If you want to win 10 games in the SEC you have to have a top 5 recruiting class pretty much from here on out.

 

[UTFranklinVol]

It kinda does matter class to class and the relation compared to what we were before.

If we are worried about getting BETTER, it absolutely matters that this class is higher ranked than previous years. assuming the recruiting rankings hold true.

Our composite talent ranking for 2023 is 89.32. so our current 2024 class ranking of 91.37 is a pretty marked improvement. for reference our current composite talent (89.32) would be equivalent to having the 400th or so player as our average. 91.37 would be somewhere around the 200th best player. that is a huge improvement.

For reference we are improving against our foes too. Georgia and Bama have seemingly hit the glass ceiling and can't get that much better. so even if they have the best class they aren't separating themselves from the pack any more than they currently are. in fact Bama is taking a step back as of this moment. and Georgia's improvement is very slight. if Florida keeps their class together it will be a big improvement but recent trends aren't looking good for them with at least 1 more top guy expected not to sign with them. long term its even worse especially if Napier flops again and gets fired.

Bama composite talent = 94.49, this class = 92.73 (-1.76)
Georgia composite talent = 93.00, this class = 93.31 (+.31)
Florida composite is = 89.39, this class 92.00. (+2.61)
Tennessee composite = 89.32, this class 91.37 (+2.05)

again we aren't going to pass any one as of yet, but we are improving more than they are except for Florida.

We "were" 5.17 behind Bama, we are currently 1.36.
We "were" 3.68 behind Georgia, we are currently 1.94
we "were" 0.07 behind Florida, we are currently 0.56

There's a fundamental flaw with their supposed holy grail of "average player rating" and that is because the larger your recruiting class, the lower your average will be becase the bigger the class gets the more regression to the mean there will be.

Georgia had 8 more players in their recruiting class than UT. So if you drop those bottom 8 from Georgia's class how much higher is their average rating?

Comparing our rating with that of Oklahoma and Miami, both of whome at the writing of this article had 7-8 more recruits in their class. That's a 30% bigger class than Tennessee so their average ranking is going to be weighted down by the 7-8 lowest rated players in their class.

A more fair comparison would only be to look at the 10-15 top rated players on each team. Since those 4 and 5 star players have the highest likelihood of actually seeing the field anytime soon. How does Tennessee stack up to Oklahoma and Miami if you put them on that more apples to apples basis?

This would inform me much more to the actual quality of the classes that the total average across the whole class, unless the class sizes are equal.

 

[GUNTERSVOL]

There's a fundamental flaw with their supposed holy grail of "average player rating" and that is because the larger your recruiting class, the lower your average will be becase the bigger the class gets the more regression to the mean there will be.

Georgia had 8 more players in their recruiting class than UT. So if you drop those bottom 8 from Georgia's class how much higher is their average rating?

Comparing our rating with that of Oklahoma and Miami, both of whome at the writing of this article had 7-8 more recruits in their class. That's a 30% bigger class than Tennessee so their average ranking is going to be weighted down by the 7-8 lowest rated players in their class.

A more fair comparison would only be to look at the 10-15 top rated players on each team. Since those 4 and 5 star players have the highest likelihood of actually seeing the field anytime soon. How does Tennessee stack up to Oklahoma and Miami if you put them on that more apples to apples basis?

This would inform me much more to the actual quality of the classes that the total average across the whole class, unless the class sizes are equal.

On the other hand the 7-8 lowest players in our class will impact us more since it will be a larger percentage of our class. RIGHT. Under your theory a class of 1 would be tough to beat. Fuzzy math is fuzzy math regardless of your agenda. Each class just adds to the sum of the roster and the weighted average of the rankings for the 11 players on the field is the only pure number out there.

 

[DarkVolder]

You will never be satisfied ex

 

[DarkVolder]

You will never be satisfied

Probaly not, I grew up becoming a Vol fan during the late 80’s and 90’s. That era of Tennessee football spoiled me as a fan.

 

[UTFranklinVol]

On the other hand the 7-8 lowest players in our class will impact us more since it will be a larger percentage of our class. RIGHT. Under your theory a class of 1 would be tough to beat. Fuzzy math is fuzzy math regardless of your agenda. Each class just adds to the sum of the roster and the weighted average of the rankings for the 11 players on the field is the only pure number out there.

Hahahahaha. My fuzzy math is actual math in case you forgot how averages work. Trying to drive my logic to a class of 1 is just silly. My point is still completely valid about how flawed class size is. People think bigger class size means a higher ranking but it's actually the opposite.

Each class does add to the sum of the roster and our roster is way behind the top of the SEC as proven by how poorly we played our top 4 competition this year. So unless we make up more ground than they do we will always be 8-4

 

[Ashevolle]

Most of the posters who are slobbering all over CJH are the same idiots who dog cussed anyone who said anything negative about that "that guy who talks like a real football coach" Jeremy Pruitt for the better part of 2.5 seasons. Hendon was Pruitt's recruit. Hendon is why we won 10 regular season games last year. CJH took on a crap situation but he was also getting out of a crap situation of his own making at UCF. You point out some good but there's also the losses to SC '03 and UF '04 to offset any trophies for in-game coaching. Some fans are desperate and will latch onto anyone the UTAD hires and pretend like he's the next Bob Neyland with scant evidence to back it up. Other fans are desperate to win and won't give anyone who isn't a consensus "home run hire" an inch of slack until he proves he can win a championship at UTK. I wish it wasn't that way and we could have real discussions about what's and good and what's not because the common thread is that every fan wants to see us back where we were 20 years ago ASAP.

Considering Hooker only played in 9 of those games, it's impressive he's the only reason we won 10 games last year.

 

[Carp]

We actually did climb the ladder 2 spots in 247 rankings, thanks in large part to UF falling 10 spots lol.

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

Hahahahaha. My fuzzy math is actual math in case you forgot how averages work. Trying to drive my logic to a class of 1 is just silly. My point is still completely valid about how flawed class size is. People think bigger class size means a higher ranking but it's actually the opposite.

Each class does add to the sum of the roster and our roster is way behind the top of the SEC as proven by how poorly we played our top 4 competition this year. So unless we make up more ground than they do we will always be 8-4

Your math needs serious work. You are making the wrong assumptions when it comes to per recruit average. Example. Take UGAs class and compare it to Butchs in the context of total numbers. So let’s say UGA took 32 players, that’s 4 more. Now the only way your logic works is IF UGA only took 4 players that were lower than what their average is now.

Would that be expected? No it wouldn’t. Most likely if UGA took another 4 players it would be a mixture of high 4* and 5* players. That would increase the per recruit average. That’s just what you can’t see.

We all know that Bama and UGA out recruit us. That’s not gonna change anytime soon dude. It’s just not. Our roster is behind because of what Pruitt did to this program. You don’t understand that either. Bringing up Butch had a better team? Dude that is utter BS. This year and last year were vastly better than anything Butch produced. You have to be trolling at this point.

 

[DD4ME]

There's a fundamental flaw with their supposed holy grail of "average player rating" and that is because the larger your recruiting class, the lower your average will be becase the bigger the class gets the more regression to the mean there will be.

Georgia had 8 more players in their recruiting class than UT. So if you drop those bottom 8 from Georgia's class how much higher is their average rating?

Comparing our rating with that of Oklahoma and Miami, both of whome at the writing of this article had 7-8 more recruits in their class. That's a 30% bigger class than Tennessee so their average ranking is going to be weighted down by the 7-8 lowest rated players in their class.

A more fair comparison would only be to look at the 10-15 top rated players on each team. Since those 4 and 5 star players have the highest likelihood of actually seeing the field anytime soon. How does Tennessee stack up to Oklahoma and Miami if you put them on that more apples to apples basis?

This would inform me much more to the actual quality of the classes that the total average across the whole class, unless the class sizes are equal.

Simpler way some slice it is 4 & 5 star counts. Mo=Better

We had 2 5 stars which is good for most schools.

 

[BowlBrother85]

As an old man who has watched the Vols all my life I just do not understand. With all our fan base, wonderful facilities, and all the intangibles that the likes of Georgia, Alabama etc. have I just have one simple question........................Why in the name of God cannot we recruit the 5 star players just like all the blue bloods do? We have much more than most, and just as much at the top teams. Two or three 5 stars every 4 or5 years. When half of their rosters are full of 5 and 4 stars. Never, will I understand it.

Can you understand that both Georgia and Alabama have much better recruiting bases than Tennessee does? All Georgia ever needed to do was keep their in-state kids at home. Guys like Jamal Lewis, Deon Grant, Cosey Coleman, Fred White and Steve Johnson were vital cogs on Tennessee's 1998 National Championship team .... Today, those caliber of players from Georgia are staying home (except for Mike Matthews!) ....

 

[BowlBrother85]

Hahahahaha. My fuzzy math is actual math in case you forgot how averages work. Trying to drive my logic to a class of 1 is just silly. My point is still completely valid about how flawed class size is. People think bigger class size means a higher ranking but it's actually the opposite.

Each class does add to the sum of the roster and our roster is way behind the top of the SEC as proven by how poorly we played our top 4 competition this year. So unless we make up more ground than they do we will always be 8-4

You don't understand how those Class rankings are compiled at all .... class size does mean a lot!

 

[BowlBrother85]

Most of the posters who are slobbering all over CJH are the same idiots who dog cussed anyone who said anything negative about that "that guy who talks like a real football coach" Jeremy Pruitt for the better part of 2.5 seasons. Hendon was Pruitt's recruit. Hendon is why we won 10 regular season games last year. CJH took on a crap situation but he was also getting out of a crap situation of his own making at UCF. You point out some good but there's also the losses to SC '03 and UF '04 to offset any trophies for in-game coaching. Some fans are desperate and will latch onto anyone the UTAD hires and pretend like he's the next Bob Neyland with scant evidence to back it up. Other fans are desperate to win and won't give anyone who isn't a consensus "home run hire" an inch of slack until he proves he can win a championship at UTK. I wish it wasn't that way and we could have real discussions about what's and good and what's not because the common thread is that every fan wants to see us back where we were 20 years ago ASAP.

Does Heupel get any credit at all for the development of Hendon Hooker? Hooker was a Virginia Tech transfer who had been benched. Nobody on VolNation was beating their chest over landing Hooker from the portal. He thrived in Heupel's system as did Hyatt. I would argue that Heupel made Hooker great .... not the other way around.

 

[GUNTERSVOL]

Hahahahaha. My fuzzy math is actual math in case you forgot how averages work. Trying to drive my logic to a class of 1 is just silly. My point is still completely valid about how flawed class size is. People think bigger class size means a higher ranking but it's actually the opposite.

Each class does add to the sum of the roster and our roster is way behind the top of the SEC as proven by how poorly we played our top 4 competition this year. So unless we make up more ground than they do we will always be 8-4

The unfortunate truth is NOW with no limits to roster other than 85 for most, therefore the impact of each HS class is not as tangible as a predictor of the future. No 25 initial counters that really gated progress through additions AND decline through transfer departures when you had to sit a year. The rich will still be richer, but they will be more vulnerable to negative impacts through transfer. Even if they match losses in the portal they lose experience in the program.

Just limiting the discussion to HS kids, since they are so mobile, there is a big chance increasing numbers of EACH class never hit the field due the presence of other high profile guys if they stay, or because they lured away with NIL money for teams with a prioritized void or a better shot at getting on the field to audition for the NFL with no NIL increase. So lower value add for signing day victory.

There is still some truth to never up, never in logic, but backfilling this years signing day losses in relative position can absolutely be covered with this years portal and next years HS and portal.

The only definitive analysis will be to look at fall rosters and see if NET roster closed ground on the leaders by all methods. Signing day studies are not the value they used to be. Picking up even late (May) experienced portal additions can change roster dynamics and erase current HS class deficiencies. Teams that master that science will greatly benefit. Two of last years late guys did not show up due to injury but our LB and WR could be huge impact this year instead. But it shows our ability to play in that market. That is why some of the attacks on our collective are worthless. Just winning high profile battles is not the objective, total roster improvement is. Can't be judged till the end of the road.

 

[LouderVol]

There's a fundamental flaw with their supposed holy grail of "average player rating" and that is because the larger your recruiting class, the lower your average will be becase the bigger the class gets the more regression to the mean there will be.

Georgia had 8 more players in their recruiting class than UT. So if you drop those bottom 8 from Georgia's class how much higher is their average rating?

Comparing our rating with that of Oklahoma and Miami, both of whome at the writing of this article had 7-8 more recruits in their class. That's a 30% bigger class than Tennessee so their average ranking is going to be weighted down by the 7-8 lowest rated players in their class.

A more fair comparison would only be to look at the 10-15 top rated players on each team. Since those 4 and 5 star players have the highest likelihood of actually seeing the field anytime soon. How does Tennessee stack up to Oklahoma and Miami if you put them on that more apples to apples basis?

This would inform me much more to the actual quality of the classes that the total average across the whole class, unless the class sizes are equal.

Why would you only drop the BOTTOM 8? Would be a fair comparison to drop a RANDOM 8. you are assuming if we took 8 more players they would ALL be worse than our average if you only want to drop Georgia's bottom guys. depending on what you want to believe we are still in on 2 players that are 5*s, so we could very easily add better talent, not just fillers. heck there are rumors a high 4* WR we wanted is already wanting out of his NLI with Colorado. so there would be a third guy we "could" get.

These are rankings for each of your listed top 10's, and then averaging them.
(#1) UGA: 98, 98, 98, 96, 96, 95, 94, 94, 94, 94. 95.7 avg
(#3) UM: 98, 96, 96, 95, 95, 94, 92, 92, 92, 91 94.1 avg
(#8) OU: 98, 96, 93, 92, 92, 92, 92, 92, 91, 91 92.9 avg
(#13) UT: 98, 98, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91, 91, 91, 91 93.1 avg

so even there our average does better than our ranking. it might do you some good to run some of the numbers yourself before making opinions based on metrics you don't even know.

one relatively new metric, for me at least I see mentioned a lot is the "blue chip ratio". how many of the guys you get are 4* or above. they were pushing this pretty hard that no one with a "BCR" lower than 50% has made the championship game.
UGA: 85%
UM: 48%
OK: 67%
UT: 61%

this says that outside of Miami's top bunch they fall off pretty quick. our quality runs relatively deep. and its all an improvement from what we already have.

 

[UTFranklinVol]

Your math needs serious work. You are making the wrong assumptions when it comes to per recruit average. Example. Take UGAs class and compare it to Butchs in the context of total numbers. So let’s say UGA took 32 players, that’s 4 more. Now the only way your logic works is IF UGA only took 4 players that were lower than what their average is now.

Would that be expected? No it wouldn’t. Most likely if UGA took another 4 players it would be a mixture of high 4* and 5* players. That would increase the per recruit average. That’s just what you can’t see.

We all know that Bama and UGA out recruit us. That’s not gonna change anytime soon dude. It’s just not. Our roster is behind because of what Pruitt did to this program. You don’t understand that either. Bringing up Butch had a better team? Dude that is utter BS. This year and last year were vastly better than anything Butch produced. You have to be trolling at this point.

No that's not how I would look at it at all.

There are only so many 5* and 4* and a lot more 3 and 2. The bell curve on any recruiting class would be normalized the more players that were added because there are far more players to "get" in the lower star rankings. The larger the recruiting class, the lover 5he average will be.

If you want to compare teams fairly then choose their top players vs our top players.

 

[UTFranklinVol]

Why would you only drop the BOTTOM 8? Would be a fair comparison to drop a RANDOM 8. you are assuming if we took 8 more players they would ALL be worse than our average if you only want to drop Georgia's bottom guys. depending on what you want to believe we are still in on 2 players that are 5*s, so we could very easily add better talent, not just fillers. heck there are rumors a high 4* WR we wanted is already wanting out of his NLI with Colorado. so there would be a third guy we "could" get.

These are rankings for each of your listed top 10's, and then averaging them.
(#1) UGA: 98, 98, 98, 96, 96, 95, 94, 94, 94, 94. 95.7 avg
(#3) UM: 98, 96, 96, 95, 95, 94, 92, 92, 92, 91 94.1 avg
(#8) OU: 98, 96, 93, 92, 92, 92, 92, 92, 91, 91 92.9 avg
(#13) UT: 98, 98, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91, 91, 91, 91 93.1 avg

so even there our average does better than our ranking. it might do you some good to run some of the numbers yourself before making opinions based on metrics you don't even know.

one relatively new metric, for me at least I see mentioned a lot is the "blue chip ratio". how many of the guys you get are 4* or above. they were pushing this pretty hard that no one with a "BCR" lower than 50% has made the championship game.
UGA: 85%
UM: 48%
OK: 67%
UT: 61%

this says that outside of Miami's top bunch they fall off pretty quick. our quality runs relatively deep. and its all an improvement from what we already have.

It would not be accurate to drop a random 8 because you would assume if you forced a team to cut players from its class then they would cut the lowest ranked players and not their highly coveted 4 and 5 stars.