So a few of the recent threads about the talent on hand at UT, the attrition and how those things might influence game outcomes really piqued my interest.
As some of you who have followed my previous threads know, talent is a great indicator of the outcome of a game. You can simply average the past four years of rivals recruiting rankings for each school, put them in an ordered list, and when the two teams play simply choose the one who is closer to the top of the list. You will be right 60-70% of the time.
The first thing most naysayers say is that you cannot tell anything by averaging years of recruiting classes because it does not account for attrition or improvement. The next thing will be that Tennessee does not have the talent on hand to compete. Both points are wrong, in my view.
Using these talent averages seems to indicate several things; 1) that coaches like Jones, Petriono, Spurrier, Kelly etc tend to far over perform what their talent evaluations suggest, 2) that coaches like Dooley, Kiff and Chizik have a history of vastly under performing their talent predictions, 3) most teams end up within a +/- 1 game outcome of their talent based seasonal predictions, and 4) our talent on hand predicts a 7-5 season (actually it shows that the game vs. Oregon is a toss up talent wise).
Here is the ordered list that averaging four years of rival recruiting classes up to 2013 reveals:
To address the argument that this list is not indicative of talent on hand without looking at attrition, I evaluated the current rosters for each team in the SEC east as shown for the spring games. This does not count the impact of the incoming 2013 rosters, but does tend to show that attrition is similar across the board as few of the rankings actually changed from the simple averages shown above.
Obviously the following numbers take into account transfers, NFL draftees and others who left before the spring rosters were published. It is also a reasonable presumption that the incoming classes will have far less effect on the overall outcome of the season, no matter how good the class, when compared to the veterans on the rosters.
................5*......4*.....3*...2*.....avg/85
Georgia......3.......30.....29....4.......2.7
Florida.......7.......33.....18....2.......2.65
Tennessee..0......25.....31.....6......2.41
SCAR.........1......17.....35.....6......2.24
Missouri.....1.......7......47.....6......2.19
Kentucky....0......3.......46....17.....2.17
Vanderbilt...0.......4......43....14.....2.04
What I was trying to do is show how much latent talent is on these rosters on average. To do that means counting all of the "starred" players and ignoring the walk-ons and other players with no stars as spring rosters tend to be a bit bloated. So you would assume that this latent talent will be the body of an 85 person roster and that is what "avg/85" means. I calculated the total number of points for each team by multiplying the number of five star players by five, four star players by 4, three star players by 3 and two star players by two. Totaled those, divided by 85 and that gives the star average per player.
If you add up the number of starred players on Tennessee's roster, for instance, you get a total of 62. That is short of the 85, but one would assume that between transfers, late additions and the 2013 incoming class there will be a full roster of starred players. Furthermore, Florida only has 60 starred players remaining on their roster. You can do that for each school and see the trend that attrition is similar across all schools, and becomes a non entity when doing these sort of evaluations.
This is simply a dirty visualization to answer some questions regarding what the effect of talent and attrition have on the roster. This was a very quick evaluation, so I cannot guarantee that the numbers are perfect but they are close enough to visualize the trends.
Just remember the bottom line; if Butch only plays to his talent level we go 7-5. He coached to his talent level his first year at Cincy when he only won 4 games. Every other year at Cincy he was roughly a talent plus three game coach.
As some of you who have followed my previous threads know, talent is a great indicator of the outcome of a game. You can simply average the past four years of rivals recruiting rankings for each school, put them in an ordered list, and when the two teams play simply choose the one who is closer to the top of the list. You will be right 60-70% of the time.
The first thing most naysayers say is that you cannot tell anything by averaging years of recruiting classes because it does not account for attrition or improvement. The next thing will be that Tennessee does not have the talent on hand to compete. Both points are wrong, in my view.
Using these talent averages seems to indicate several things; 1) that coaches like Jones, Petriono, Spurrier, Kelly etc tend to far over perform what their talent evaluations suggest, 2) that coaches like Dooley, Kiff and Chizik have a history of vastly under performing their talent predictions, 3) most teams end up within a +/- 1 game outcome of their talent based seasonal predictions, and 4) our talent on hand predicts a 7-5 season (actually it shows that the game vs. Oregon is a toss up talent wise).
Here is the ordered list that averaging four years of rival recruiting classes up to 2013 reveals:
- Florida
- Georgia
- Tennessee
- South Carolina
- Missouri
- Vanderbilt
- Kentucky
To address the argument that this list is not indicative of talent on hand without looking at attrition, I evaluated the current rosters for each team in the SEC east as shown for the spring games. This does not count the impact of the incoming 2013 rosters, but does tend to show that attrition is similar across the board as few of the rankings actually changed from the simple averages shown above.
Obviously the following numbers take into account transfers, NFL draftees and others who left before the spring rosters were published. It is also a reasonable presumption that the incoming classes will have far less effect on the overall outcome of the season, no matter how good the class, when compared to the veterans on the rosters.
................5*......4*.....3*...2*.....avg/85
Georgia......3.......30.....29....4.......2.7
Florida.......7.......33.....18....2.......2.65
Tennessee..0......25.....31.....6......2.41
SCAR.........1......17.....35.....6......2.24
Missouri.....1.......7......47.....6......2.19
Kentucky....0......3.......46....17.....2.17
Vanderbilt...0.......4......43....14.....2.04
What I was trying to do is show how much latent talent is on these rosters on average. To do that means counting all of the "starred" players and ignoring the walk-ons and other players with no stars as spring rosters tend to be a bit bloated. So you would assume that this latent talent will be the body of an 85 person roster and that is what "avg/85" means. I calculated the total number of points for each team by multiplying the number of five star players by five, four star players by 4, three star players by 3 and two star players by two. Totaled those, divided by 85 and that gives the star average per player.
If you add up the number of starred players on Tennessee's roster, for instance, you get a total of 62. That is short of the 85, but one would assume that between transfers, late additions and the 2013 incoming class there will be a full roster of starred players. Furthermore, Florida only has 60 starred players remaining on their roster. You can do that for each school and see the trend that attrition is similar across all schools, and becomes a non entity when doing these sort of evaluations.
This is simply a dirty visualization to answer some questions regarding what the effect of talent and attrition have on the roster. This was a very quick evaluation, so I cannot guarantee that the numbers are perfect but they are close enough to visualize the trends.
Just remember the bottom line; if Butch only plays to his talent level we go 7-5. He coached to his talent level his first year at Cincy when he only won 4 games. Every other year at Cincy he was roughly a talent plus three game coach.
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