A quick and dirty way to figure out which teams have a chance to win it all.
If you’re an avid college football fan, you might have heard of the Blue-Chip Ratio. Since its first annual appearance at SB Nation in 2013, it’s been discussed on Sirius XM and ESPN Radio, podcasts, forums, blogs, and elsewhere.
What is the blue-chip ratio?
Quite simply, it’s the recruiting standard needed to win the college football national championship. Reviewing years of recruiting data, and giving weight to more recent years with standardized recruiting rankings, I’ve determined that in order to win the title, teams need to sign more four- and five-star recruits (“blue-chips”) than two- and three-stars over a four-year period.
The ratio is a representation of that. What percentage of your last four classes has been made up of blue-chips? The data overwhelmingly shows that champions eclipse the 50 percent standard.
Are you saying this is all teams need to do to win a national championship?
Absolutely not. Think of this as a necessary but not sufficient condition. You need difference makers.
Blue chips are almost 1,000 percent more likely to be drafted in the first round. And five-stars are about 33 times as likely to be All-Americans as two-stars are. Sure, there are outliers on an individual player basis. But the overwhelming majority of two- and three-star players are going pro in something other than sports.
Talent development, scheme, and gameday management absolutely matter. But recruiting is the single most important aspect of winning at the highest levels. And blue-chip players are overwhelmingly more likely to be the difference makers.
This is in part due to the NCAA’s mandate that teams practice no more than 20 hours per week. Only so much development can be done.
What numbers have recent past champions posted?
- Alabama won it all in 2017 with an incredible 80 percent mark.
- Clemson took home the title in 2016 after signing 52 percent blue chips in the 2013-16 classes.
- In 2015, Alabama had a 77 percent mark.
- In 2014, it was Ohio State at 68.
- In 2013, Florida State was at 53.
- In 2012, Alabama was at 71,
- Just as it was in 2011.
- And so on.
Do all recruits count? What data do you use for this?
All signees count. Transfers and walk-ons do not. Transfers are not governed by recruit rules, are not rated and, though they’re important to every team, are rarely consequential enough to turn a non-contender into a contender. Walk-ons are almost never rated. Sticking with signees helps to standardize the process.
I use the 247Sports Composite, which blends the three major recruiting rankings by 247Sports, Rivals, and ESPN. It formerly used Scout as well, but 247Sports bought Scout, and its rankings no longer exist.
I manually curate it each year because publishers of some of the team sites erroneously list walk-ons under enrollees or signees. Removing non-scholarship players is by far the most time consuming element. Also, older classes are wrought with errors. For data in this current decade, it has improved, but more than a handful of team site publishers still lump in zero-star walk-ons with the others.
I also do not remove signees who fail to qualify academically or who are denied admission due to off-field reasons, because it’s difficult to track, with so signees on so many teams.
Otherwise, if the school used a Letter of Intent on them during or after Signing Day, they count. This is a better methodology now than it used to be (read on for why).
How far back can you track this?
Back to 2005, if you count 2010 Auburn (see note below). And likely 2004 USC and 2003 LSU, since Pete Carroll and Nick Saban are two of the greatest recruiters ever, and further back as well.
For the last seven champions (11 signing classes), I have relied on the Composite. Before that, I had to rely on Rivals, Scout, or ESPN. Data from this time period is sketchier, and the recruiting rules were different.
Using Rivals, Florida in 2006 (61 percent) and 2008 (72 percent) easily make the list, thanks to the excellent recruiting of Urban Meyer and Ron Zook. And LSU’s 2007 squad (64 percent) is also high, thanks to recruits brought in by Nick Saban and Les Miles. Texas in 2005 was at 64 percent.
Should I expect a 30 percent Blue-Chip Ratio team to always beat a 20 percenter?
No.
The ratio is simply a baseline for the minimum talent needed to win a national title. And Vegas absolutely believes in it for that purpose. But it should not be used to pick games at the weekly level.
If you want a formula for that, you likely won’t lose your shirt using Bill Connelly’s S&P+. And if you use S&P+ and make some manual adjustments, based on your knowledge of the game and in-season injuries, you might do really well.
I am also SBNation.com’s CFB gambling columnist, and I can tell you that I absolutely do not use the Ratio to bet individual games.
There are a lot of ways to win games in college football, and some teams without national title aspirations don’t even bother chasing after blue-chip recruits on the recruiting trail.
How has the change from the BCS to the Playoff impacted this?
It has strengthened my confidence in the BCR. The Playoff likely means that the national champ must defeat two schools in a row that recruited at championship levels.
In short, it is likely going to be easier for a sub-50 recruiter to get a shot at a title, such as Michigan State in 2015 or Washington in 2016, but tougher to actually win once it gets there. Non-BCR teams are 2-6 so far in the playoff era, including four losses by three or more scores.
So what was that about 2010 Auburn?
Either due to data changing after the fact, via industry contraction/expansion/merger, or perhaps due to an error of my own, 2010 Auburn no longer seems to meet 50 percent in the BCR.
Absent using the Wayback Machine, Scout rankings are no longer available. For some Auburn signees, like Jonathon Mincy, the Composite shows that he did not have a star rating from any service, but I know that is not true because Rivals, Scout, and ESPN had him as a graded prospect. There is something going on with how the data is imported or calculated in some of these Auburn classes.
Auburn also was one of the teams who took advantage of the old rules governing the number of signees allowed in a given year. With no real limit on the number of signees, but rather just on enrollees, Auburn would sign scores of players with little to no chance of qualifying, likely to give the player some motivation to complete junior college and come back and enroll in two years.
The 2007 Auburn press release on its class has six such examples, using the following phrase:
“Expected to enroll in junior college/prep school before entering Auburn.”
Those letters, of course, are not binding. From 2007-09, Auburn had 17 such signees not enroll. It signed an incredible 117 prospects in that span, a brilliant exploitation of the loophole, which really throws my data out of whack. Under newer NCAA oversigning rules, teams cannot hand out letters of intent like candy, and so this practice has largely stopped.
In any case, while I am confident that Auburn did meet the threshold when I was back-testing the model a half-decade ago, I can no longer back it up with proof like I can the more recent champions.
Do you think this will hold up forever?
No. At some point a team with maybe a high 40s number, a transcendent QB, and great injury luck will likely bust this. It’s bound to happen.