2008 to 2012 Recruiting Cycles: Clemson/Others (Select SEC Teams & FSU)

We've now examined the entire ACC in terms of recruiting over the past five cycles. We also need to look at a few of our SEC foes to better compare ourselves to those we recruit against. The teams chosen for this examination include Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, LSU, and South Carolina. Also because there has been I believe that Clemson and FSU were the two best recruiters in the ACC over the past half-decade, I went ahead and placed Florida State in this comparison as well.

And....the typical disclaimer:

We should not have to tell you this, but some folks debate what to take from these articles and the data presented here. We expect you, the reader, to form an opinion of your own. Often we will give you our take on things, but you should independently form your own thoughts based on all information available to you. When evaluating a particular player, we encourage you to view film for yourself and form your own opinions about a player. This article shows recruiting data for individual teams. It does not weigh experience nor does it evaluate coaching, preparation, etc... We think this is an interesting and valuable tool that is useful in overall program evaluation because there is a link between these star ratings and other metrics in both college football and the NFL.

Keep in mind as you look through this data that only players who were officially signed were given a "Star Rating". Players who were not signed could not be quantitatively assessed a recruiting rating. Such players get a "NA" rating and were not included in the averaged data. Again, all data was attained from www.Scout.com and www.Rivals.com. A player whose Scout/Rivals data was not available but was signed was assigned a "NR". We picked carefully through the data and believe all is correct. However, if we've overlooked an item we apologize in advance and ask that you point it out so that we can make the correction in our database.

The following Figures and Tables associated with those figures (scroll to the article's end) illustrate the recruiting star per player ranking for each team as well as the players signed data.

In terms of average class size over the past five recruiting cycles, Clemson (22 players per class) led only UGa (21.4 ppc). FSU, Alabama, Auburn, and South Carolina each averaged over 25 players signed per class. The non-Clemson included average class size for this sample group was 25.08 players. As we have repeatedly discussed, class size is reflective of coaching strategy. A hard core coach like Nick Saban finds ways to shed the underperformers so Bama can annually bring in a larger class each cycle.

The overall non-Clemson star rating per player for this sample was 3.50 stars. This is 0.14 stars per player above Clemson. Over this time period, Clemson had a better average per star rating than only South Carolina though was comparable to Auburn. Alabama (at nearly 3.75 stars per player) was the class of the field and has two MNCs to show for it. Georgia and LSU (approx. 3.60 stars per player per team) recruited nicely since 2008 as well.

Overall, each of these teams did relatively well on the recruiting trail. While Clemson was in the bottom half of this group when all is taken into account, their numbers were very respectable and need to be taken for what they are...a comparison to some of the better recruiters in the Southeast.