Study may be a generous word
Today the State brings us, Lockdown: Study links success to instate recruiting. If for you, like it is for me, still early on Sunday morning, then the article is way too long and I suggest you not attempt to read it. Suffice it to say that if the study is correct, it’s almost completely meaningless.
Now may be a good time to stop reading.
I should start by saying that I haven’t read the SI study. So I’m not exactly sure what they claimed. I’m especially not sure because, based on the State article, SI “established a correlation between a program’s success on the field and its recruiting success in its backyard, which the magazine defined as within 200 miles of campus.” That seems to imply that somehow the State went from “backyard” to “instate” while at the same time putting far too much value in a “correlation.”
It starts at home — according to SI’s study.
The magazine examined signing classes for the 65 BCS-conference schools and Notre Dame from the previous five years to see if there was a correlation between success and geographic recruiting.
Its analysis concluded programs drawing at least 50 percent of their players from within a 200-mile radius stood a far better chance of winning consistently than those that did not.
First, is the SI analysis correct? Without access to the data, I can’t say. But consider that SI is looking at recruiting and winning during the same time period. That should raise a red flag right there. Everyone expects there to be a lag between recruiting success and game day success. If anything, this strongly points to a “winning improves local recruiting” hypothesis.
Now, perhaps, perhaps, there is an advantage to recruiting local talent. Perhaps when players are at a school closer to home, they are happier, receive better mental support, and then therefore play better. It’s an interesting hypothesis, and one worth studying, I think. However, that isn’t what was done.
If SI really did stick to the 200 mile radius, then for them to have meaningful results, they really need to control for population size, talent density, and temporal offsets.
If the study is then expanded to the state level, then similar gaps emerge. There are questions about talent density and population in addition to how recruits can live in the same state but hundreds of miles away.
You also need to account for overlapping territories.
Fortunately, The State adds some additional wisdom, presumably for my own humor value, “ten of the 11 programs with the highest percentage of instate recruits are located in those three states [Florida, Texas, and California].” Really? You’re telling me that schools in 3 of the 4 most populous states in the country tend to sign more instate recruits.
As I said before, this study is interesting but meaningless. The sad thing is that I’m sure Tigernetters and retarded local politicians will use this as some kind of leverage to try to force Clemson and USCe to offer more scholarships to local recruits. It’ll be bad news for everyone.
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